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Welcome to from the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.

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We know both things are possible. The glittering prize, the sudden fatality. We dare to imagine the former, most of us deny. The latter deny it even when it confronts us. Geraldine Brooks Memorial Days I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm recapping the books I read in March. Before we get started, as usual, a thank you to everyone who has left reviews for from the front porch. ITunes, reviews and ratings are still the best way for new listeners to find out about from the Front Porch and as a result, discover our indie bookstore too. Here's a recent review Thursday Joy I've been listening to Annie and her podcast for a few years now and I always am delighted to hear her book recommendations. When it's Thursday and I realize that a new episode has dropped, I can't wait to listen to it and see what joy she might bring to me for that day. Thank you so much. If you have not left a review, all you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone. Look for from the Front Porch, scroll down until you see, write a review and then tell us what you think. Your reviews help us spread the word about not only our podcast, but about our brick and mortar business too. Now back to the show. Okay, March, Lions, Lambs, we're done. We're finished. We're recapping the books I read in March. It was actually a great reading month. I am pleased to say My audiobook slump finally came to an end. I think that has to do with my mental state. I also think it has to do with being in the car a little bit and needing some audiobook material, so that certainly boosted my reading. I also read a couple of books on on the kindle as I prepped for spring literary lunches. Spring literary first looks. So it was a busy month, but it was a month where I felt like, yeah, my reading mojo is back. Which was a good feeling. Maybe it was, you know, spring finally getting here after what felt like a long winter. I don't know if it felt that way to you, but it felt that way literally and metaphorically. And so it is my sincere hope that spring is here and we're feeling good. And yeah, I'm ready to talk about the books I read in March. So first up is the book I quoted at the top of the show, which was Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. At the very tail end of February, Jordan and I took a somewhat impromptu trip to Savannah. It's one of our favorite places to visit. We calculated and we think this was our seventh or eighth trip to Savannah, Georgia. It's a farther drive from Thomasville than you'd think. Just if you're ever coming to Thomasville, it's a farther drive than you think. And if you keep that in mind, if you keep those expectations realistic, you'll be so pleased when you get here. It's a longer drive than you would think, but it's a beautiful city filled with creativity and beauty and we love going there. And I love the independent bookstore there. There's actually several. But the bookstore that I enjoy visiting the most is E. Shaver. Perhaps you are familiar with it. I think they have such a well curated selection. I love all the nooks and crannies of the stor. I am drawn to stores that I could not own. East Shaver, Sundog Books. These are some of my favorite places. But I'm not sure I would be able to keep up with the inventory in stores like those. But I sure do love visiting. And I knew when we traveled, when we were going to Savannah, I knew I wanted to wait and buy Memorial Days there. It's a book that had been on my tbr to my knowledge. We did not receive advanced copies. And so I figured it would be a great book to pick up while we were in Savannah. And it was. And I read it the weekend we were there, which I guess to some folks would seem like a waste of money, but to me was a beautiful use of a beautiful use of my time and money. So if you're not familiar, Geraldine Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist hunter and I many years ago recapped or reviewed her book March, which is a retelling kind of sort of of Little Women, but told from or through the Father's Eyes. It was fascinating. She is also the author of Horse, which my dad read and loved last year, I believe that was last year, was one of his shelf subscription selections. So she's a prolific fiction writer, but this was is her, I believe, first memoir and it's a somewhat tragic story. It's certainly, I think, would earn a well deserved spot in the grief canon. This is Geraldine Brooks's reflections on the death of her husband, Tony Horowitz, who in his own right was a prolific writer, journalist. He had written a book, Spying on the South. Olivia and I both have vivid memories of this book. We sold several copies at the bookshelf and he died during the promotion of that work. So he died while on book tour. And I did not realize until this book was coming out that he and Geraldine Brooks were married. I had no idea. I also did not know that Geraldine Brooks is Australian. And so what I really loved about Memorial Days and perhaps what sets it apart from other grief literature is, yes, it's a memoir about the loss of Tony and particularly what it's like to lose someone so suddenly and to lose someone while they are far away from you. She was at home off the coast of Massachusetts and Tony was touring in D.C. and so I'm sure this was Geraldine Brooks's intention. I don't know if it was her original intention when she set out to write this book, but you get actually a pretty gut wrenching look at the processes of death and the American healthcare system, end of life care system, as Geraldine tries to navigate being far away, trying to identify the body, trying to get to dc. It's incredibly tense actually reading about those experiences. And I appreciate that she does not shy away from the difficulty of it. She is very open and honest with the difficulties she faced that only then delayed perhaps her true grief, her really being able to grieve. And that's what the book is a lot about, is taking these experiences and having to kind of compartmentalize so that she could be the caretaker she needed to be, not only to her children, but also just to Tony's end of life care, funeral planning, trying to get the body back, those kinds of things, things that we don't like to talk about as Americans, I don't think. And so she juxtaposes that with a few years after his death, realizing that she has not fully grieved, and she decides to go back home to Australia, to a remote part of Australia, to decompress and to finally grieve the way she thinks she's built and meant to grieve. We do not. And I say we, the royal we, the American we, but maybe humanity we, I don't know. We are not good at allowing ourselves time to grieve. I think it's an American. I think that's pretty American. And so reading about her experiences in Australia, it's also got really beautiful. I was not expecting the beautiful nature writing. So it's got this great nature writing. She's obviously a fantastic writer. So I'm not surprised. I fell in love with this book. You know, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you know how much I appreciate grief literature, grief memoirs. I don't know why I am so drawn to them, except maybe sometimes I think I'm a Wing 4 on the Enneagram. And I do find myself thinking about these things a lot. And I feel deeply comforted by somebody who's putting to words some of the hardest moments of our lives. And I don't know, maybe I'm building up a stockpile of books I'll need one day. But this one, I just thought is so gorgeously and well written, poetic, yet sparse. I mean, there's some, as I said, great nature writing. And yet this is not a long book. This is a short memoir. And she kind of goes back and forth between her time in Australia and then the early days of Toni Horowitz dying on Memorial Day, the early days of telling her children, of trying to get in touch with his friends, planning a funeral, trying to unpack the whys of Tony's death. He was in his, I believe, early to mid-60s, in supposedly good health. And so she begins kind of investigating that as well. I really like this book, if you like books like Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley. Of course, the Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which makes a pretty funny, actually appearance in this book. I think you will appreciate, maybe even love, Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. I certainly did. While also in Savannah, I had packed with me Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest, that is Atmosphere. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. No, you haven't missed anything. This does not release until June 3rd, so this is a pre order opportunity if you're a big Taylor Jenkins Reid fan. I am. I consistently like her work. I have not read all of her work, but I have read a lot of it, including some of the earlier stuff. So when Atmosphere got delivered to the bookshelf, Kendyl graciously gave me the opportunity to read it first, and then I passed it on to Kendyl and this is why I love our bookselling staff, our bookselling team team, because we do know which books are for which staffer. Like we know who's going to want to read this. It brings me a lot of joy. So, Kendyl, thank you for letting me read Atmosphere. So Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest. It is about Joan. Joan is an astronaut. This book is set in the 80s, back and forth between Texas and maybe a little bit of Florida, but I think mostly Texas, as a group of astronauts prepares for a launch. So I loved all of the astronaut training, the space prep, the I think, pretty well researched, realistic discussion of the space race. This is set, like I said, in the 80s. And so Joan faces some discrimination as a woman astronaut. She's also, and I thought this was a really interesting choice. She's also an astronomer. So she's a little bit different from some other members of her team who are scientists or members of the military. Her background is in astronomy. And what Reid does so well, which I think she does well in all of the books I've read by her, but particularly the books that are about these really ambitious women, is she takes their professional life and then also gives us glimpses into their personal life. So there's a really, I think, well handled love story that is part of this book. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a love story, I think maybe even actually now that I'm thinking about it, the subtitle, I don't know if that will stay the same, but I think on my copy, the subtitle is a love story, like Atmosphere, a love story. And there is a romantic love story. There are other love stories as well. But the friendships among the astronauts I really loved. But really, to me, one of the most interesting parts of the book, other than the space part itself, the astronaut training part itself, was Joan's relationship to her family. And in fact, by the end of the book, I wanted a bit more out of Joan's relationship to her sister, to her niece. So I loved those parts. And that's not surprising. I am drawn to dysfunctional family stories. And Joan has a dysfunctional family story as she is reaching toward literal new heights in her career. I loved this. I say I loved it. It took me a hundred pages to get into this. And that is because there are so many characters. And it took me a hundred pages and I looked. It really did take me a hundred pages to kind of get into the flow of who these people were and why I should care about them. Because the book goes back and forth between a current. I say current, this all is set in the 80s, but a current mission that Joan and her team are on a journey to space. So that's one part. And then it also flashes back to Joan getting her start as an astronaut and the initial training and the initial friendships and relationships. And I think that's great. I did not mind going back and forth, but because of that it took me a minute to situate who these characters were and to figure out, wait, who do I care about? Why do I care about them? What's their name? So it took me about a hundred pages, but after a hundred pages I was hooked. This is not my favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book, but if you like her, to me this is totally consistent with her work. And there are. I don't know if it will be in the final edition, but there's an author's note that of course made me appreciate the book even more. I do always love getting some insight into why an author has picked their subject matter or why they've developed the characters a certain way. So the author's note really did push this maybe into the love category for me. But I think it's a solid four star read and if you are a Taylor Jenkins Reid fan, I do think you will enjoy this. So this Is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid releases on June 3rd. I believe I have said this on this podcast before, but I do love picking books up on a whim. It does not happen often. It happens a little bit when I travel. It rarely happens at the bookshelf. I'm reading arcs. I'm reading for shelf subscriptions. I'm reading for a literary first look. I'm reading with a purpose. It doesn't feel like homework, but it kind of sort of is homework. But every so often I will stumble upon a book or I'll take a book home on a whim. And I'm always, I mean, yeah, I'm always delighted. I was going to say, is that, is that true? Is that being hyperbolic? But no, I'm always delighted. And that was certainly the case for my next book, Broken Country. This is by Claire Leslie Hall. At this point, you have probably seen this book everywhere. I certainly have. It's part of the reason I picked it up. We were leaving a staff meeting at the beginning of this month and I saw this book on the shelf. I knew I had ordered a lot of copies. It's a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and I saw a lot of copies on the shelf and So I did what I never do because I don't want to mess with inventory. But I took a copy without. Without checking it out, without marking it as taken out of inventory, because I just thought, I'm just going to see if I like this. Because, Reese, I feel like one of the unsung personality markers of our time is which celebrity book club you are most like or your tastes most align with. So, of course, you know, mine most align with Jenna Bush Hager, but I think for other readers, it's Oprah, it's Rhys, it's gma, you know, insert name here. And so anyway, Rhys books are not always for me. Occasionally they are, but. But not always. And I'll also say this about Rhys, because Jenna Bush Hager's picks, you could maybe predict them. I think she's pretty consistent in the themes and the writers and the stories she's picking. Rhys is all over the place in terms of genre. Maybe it skews a little more thriller. Anyway, this has the Reese sticker on the front. I knew it was a Reese pick, but I. I kept seeing it places again. You probably have too. I saw it all over the Internet and I thought, let me just see if this is for me. So I took it again. It's called Broken country by Claire Leslie Hall. I do want to shout out. The person I saw talking about this the most was Sheri. Sheri works for Zibby Books and she and I have followed each other online for years. And she posted about this back when it was in arc format, I think, even a different cover design. And so she is a reader I really do trust. So it wasn't just that I had seen this everywhere, it's that I had seen Sheri talk about it. And I thought, okay, if it's good enough for Sheri, I think it's gonna be good enough for me. So Broken country is set in the sixties in England in the English countryside. I will tell you, the 60s of it all is an interesting choice to me. I. It felt quite modern is what I will say. And so occasionally I felt like it was a little odd to be going back and forth from the 60s to the 40s. So we start with Beth. Beth is our main character. Beth and Frank live a quiet, even perhaps idyllic looking life in the English countryside. They raise sheep together. They seem happy in their marriage. And the book immediately opens. And this is not a spoiler. I am going to tell you what happens in literally the first chapter, which is Beth and Frank are with their she, sheep and a dog comes out of nowhere and begins attacking their sheep. And Frank and his, I believe, brother do what any shepherd would do and they wind up shooting the dog. So I do. I do need you to know that that happens. It is a relatively shocking opening act of violence. It's not a spoiler. It is the inciting incident to what unfolds next, which is the dog belongs to Gabriel. And Gabriel is Beth and Frank's neighbor, but he hasn't been their neighbor in years. He's a famous writer, only stays at the house part time. But he's back. And we soon learn that Beth and Gabriel have a romantic history. They were perhaps each other's first loves. And so there is immediately a love triangle element to this book among Bethesda, Frank and Gabriel. But then there's a flash forward to a murder trial and you, the reader, are left wondering, what? Why is there a murder trial? Who is on trial? What did they do? So there's immediately a courtroom drama and a mystery also unfolding. And then the book also flashes back. So I think if I'm right about this, there's about three timelines going on. I was never confused. I thought it was handled very well. The 1940s, 1940s, 1950s storyline is flashing back to Beth and Gabriel's love story. Okay, so all of those things are happening. A murder mystery, a courtroom drama, a romance. And that is why the blurb on the front of the book is from Delia Owens, where the Crawdads Sing. Because I can totally see why this would appeal to those readers. You know, as a bookseller, you're constantly trying to figure out why was a book so successful. And I'm sure publishers. Listen, I'm sure publishers are really trying to figure that out. That's why we have so many Daisy Jones. That's why we have so many Daisy Jones. It's why we have so many where the Crawdads references. Because they're just trying to look for the next big thing and they're trying to predict why did this take off the way it did? And I think the reason where the Crawdads Sing took off the way it did was because it crossed a variety of genres. I think Broken country is the same way. Yes, there's a love story component. Yes, there's a murder mystery component, there's a courtroom drama, and guess what? More beautiful nature writing. The way she writes about the countryside in England is really well done. You feel like you are there. In fact, I wanted to be there while I was reading this book. And so these characters I thought were really, really well drawn. I don't often do content warnings, as we've discussed many times on this podcast, but I will tell you that Beth and Frank. And again, this is not a spoiler. Beth and Frank have been happily married. They do have a pretty heavy grief that they are dealing with in that their son died two, I believe, two or three years previously. And so they are still kind of grappling with the loss of a child. And I do want to mention that because it does play a pretty significant role in the book. And if that is something that is difficult for you to read, you may just want to know that it's there. I think it's handled beautifully and it did not bother me, but it. But it may bother a more sensitive reader. I actually think my mom would really like this book, though, so for what that's worth. Okay, so that is Broken country by Claire Leslie Hall. I really do think it's worth the hype. I thought it was fast. Oh, my gosh, such a fast book. I finished it, I believe, in 24 hours. Just I took it back to the bookshelf the next day. I took it back because I finished it so quickly, maybe two days later. And so if you're looking maybe for a book to get you out of a reading slump, I also think this one, if you're a seasonal reader, I think this is a great spring summer book. I could easily see you enjoying this at the beach this summer. So if you need to wait to read it, I totally understand. Maybe spring is a busy time for you. It would make a good summer read. So that is Broken country by Claire Leslie hall and Rhys. Well done. Rhys doesn't need my approval, but I thought this was a great book. Then I returned to my roots, which is I picked up a weird little book by Marcy Durmansky. I'm so excited. I was so excited to read this because I loved her book, Hurricane Girl. This is her new book called Hot Air. I don't even know where to start about this book. If you like weird, I'm not talking about, like, speculative fiction, magical realism, weird. That's not what I mean. If you like realistic fiction where the author makes unusual, unconventional choices and the characters do unusual, unconventional things, then, boy, do I have an author for you. I loved Hurricane Girl and Hot Air, to me is more of the same in the best possible way. So in Hot Air, we meet Joni. Actually, we meet Joni. Johnny. Oh my gosh, they're all four J names. I'M gonna focus on Joni because Joni kind of takes us through the whole book. It's a short little book. We're introduced to Joni. She's on her first date for the first time in years. This is during the pandemic. She's a single mom. She and her daughter go to the home of this man and his son. So Joni's daughter gets a play date and then Joni gets a grown up date. And while Joni and Johnny are having dinner or maybe kind of on the tail end of their date, and Joni's maybe thinking it's a bit of a bust, they watch as this hot air balloon drifts closer and closer to them before crashing into Johnny's pool. And it is as surreal and as weird as you might expect. And what unfolds then is the story of these four people. The two people in the hot air balloon, and then Johnny and Joni to some extent. Joni mostly. Then we follow them throughout the course of the weekend. Like, how does this hot air balloon crash affect the course of the weekend? And so it's like a bottle episode of tv. You know, it's going to end as soon as the weekend's over. And it is the wildest and weirdest ride full of satirical thoughts about wealth. The man who is flying the hot air balloon is a billionaire with his billionaire philanthropic wife. Maybe their marriage is not, you know, all that it could be. We get some of his innermost thoughts, some of her innermost thoughts. Maybe there's some attempts at some partner swapping that is not really super successful. So all of it is so delightfully messy. Like, I can't wait to tell Hunter about this book because he loves a mess. And this is a messy, messy book where people just consistently make decisions that have you scratching your head. But the way Marcy Germanski writes them is also with a real tenderness. Particularly Joni. We. We really do kind of feel for her as she is trying to navigate single motherhood during the pandemic. And she makes mistakes and decisions that hopefully you and I would never make. We would hope not to make them. But Marcy Germanski really gives her characters a humanity where even though you don't like them, you do, you're still rooting for them. I mean, many of the characters in this book are unlikable, and yet I found myself hoping that their lives would work out and hoping that their decisions wouldn't too badly impact them. So if you like slightly weird books, I cannot recommend Marcy Germanski enough. This is her latest, it is called Hot Air. I loved it. If you're a literary fiction fan, you will love it. Character driven, but also very short. So plot driven as well because a lot happens in a short amount of pages, in a short number of pages. All month long, I was reading and listening to Elon Musk, the biography by Walter Isaacson. Speaking of books. On a whim, I was at the bookshelf one Saturday and I saw we've had this on the shelf. I mean, it came out, I believe, oh, gosh, late 2023. Anyway, so we've had it on our shelves and it was a New York Times bestseller. It may even have made its way back to the list fairly recently. But anyway, we've stocked it for a long time. I had no intention of reading this book because I'm just not super interested. I didn't read the Steve Jobs biography either. It's just not subject matter I was super interested in until this year. And I saw it on the shelves at the bookshelf and I thought maybe I should read that. And I do want to say I'm an enneagram5. I don't blame personality or identify personality as being responsible for every aspect of my decision making or what I read or how I behave. But I do think as an enneagram5, I like information and I like information to be presented to me as calmly as possible. And there was just so much news. And I have no doubt that once this episode releases into the world, there will continue to be breaking news, breaking headlines, and I just wanted a little bit more information. I knew nothing about Elon Musk except Tesla. That's literally all I knew. Tesla and SpaceX and even that. I mean, I'm. I don't drive a Tesla. I'm sure you're shocked. I don't. I don't drive a Tesla. And so I just. I didn't know much about him. And then it became apparent that maybe I should know more about him. And this felt like a good way to get the information I was looking for. This is my first Walter Isaacson biography. And what I will say is I was super intimidated by the size. And then I had no problem finishing it this month because I was super intrigued and hooked. The chapters are short, it's very readable. My understanding is the Steve Jobs biography is the same way. And so if you are looking for accessible, readable biographies, Walter Isaacson might be your guy. Like I said, I listened to this throughout the month, but I also read the physical copy. I became invested enough That I wound up downloading the audiobook because I wanted to finish it even faster than I'd originally intended. And you know what? I got the information I needed. I feel like I have a much better understanding of who is playing a pretty major role in our government right now. And I was able to consume it without rage, which was nice. Which was nice. It doesn't mean there's not stuff to get angry about. But again, I think it's perhaps my personality. And also, just when you're reading a biography, it's a little bit different from reading a headline or a tweet or an Instagram post. You can kind of take in the information again in just a calmer way. So somebody, oh, a sweet customer, reader, podcast listener, knew I was reading this and made the comment that she just felt like she couldn't. And listen, you. You don't have to. You do not have to. This is something I wanted to read and I wanted the information. I think all the time. I know I've referenced that. My family, you know, when we used to go to the beach annually together, we would all read and discuss together. This is the kind of book where I read it. My mom isn't going to read it. My dad might, but my mom isn't going to. My aunt isn't going to. And instead I read it. My other aunt might, though, I might give her my copy. Hmm, maybe I'll do that. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about. My aunt Nina might really like this book anyway. She's a fellow enneagram5. My point is, my mom, my aunt, they're not going to read this book. Instead, instead I get to read it and I get to tell them about it. And that is the beauty of all kinds of literature and all kinds of books. There are whole genres that I don't really enjoy. They are not for me. But I love listening to people talk about it who do, and I love getting the information from them that way. And so, anyway, I appreciated this. I was also pleasantly surprised by the readability of it. I was super intimidated by the length, and I needn't have been. I'm sure there is a reason, besides just the current climate, that this has been on the bestseller list for so long. It is a genuinely well written, readable, accessible biography of a enigmatic figure in our current history and both our history in technology and in invention and also now in our political history. So that is Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I thought it was a good audiobook as well. If you need an audiobook listen. And I think it got me out of my audiobook slump, actually, because after I finished it, I immediately was ready to listen to something else. And I downloaded the Tell. This is by Amy Griffin. This is probably the second book in March that I picked up in real time rather than advanced reader format where I saw other readers reading it. And I felt a little fomo. And the Tell is like an Oprah selection, I think. Oprah did. I imagine this. Oprah, Rhys and Jenna all got together to talk about this book. I knew literally nothing about it. I just kept seeing it enough places that I thought, well, let me try it. And I listened to a snippet of the audiobook, and it was a short audiobook, I think seven hours maybe, which is right in my sweet spot. So I was driving to the Atlanta area for a book event and decided that this would be a great road trip book. And it was. It's narrated by the author. So Amy Griffin narrates it herself. I was not familiar with her. I did not know who she is, who she was. She is a venture capitalist. And this is her memoir about her childhood in Texas, growing up as an overachieving kid, an ambitious kid who was drawn to leadership roles, who loved, for lack of a better term, loved a gold star. I mean, there were very familiar parts of. Of this book to me. She talks a lot about her Southern upbringing, her Texas upbringing, and then, and you know this, perhaps if you've read more about the book than I had, I had not. But then the book becomes about her adulthood. And she's a runner. She's an avid runner. And she realizes that the real question isn't why do you run? Which is the question she got over and over again. But it's really, what are you running from? And she had long buried memories of child abuse. And so content warnings abound. She gives content warnings at the very front of the book. So you do know what you're getting into, I guess. And it was brutal and also crucial to hear, in Amy Griffin's own words, some of the memories that she uncovered with the help of therapy, mdma. And anyway, I found the whole thing fascinating, heartbreaking. I now, I just finished this one a couple of days ago, and I saw that she had done an interview. She's done a lot of interviews, but she's done an interview with Kate Bowler, which I'm curious about. It feels so weird when you read a book like this to be like, oh, my gosh, I loved it because it was brutally hard to listen to. But I appreciated it and I appreciated the bravery it took and the courage it took to write about these things. And I think one of my favorite, I won't spoil anything, but throughout the book she is fighting so hard and you can hear her kind of put on her battle armor and she's fighting so hard. And then you as the reader hear the armor slowly come off. And that, to me, was my favorite part of the book. It's what made the book most successful. Certainly. If you like Chanel, Know My Name. If you appreciated that book, I think this would make a good book club conversation. I can see why it was selected as a, I believe, an Oprah pick. Yeah, I really appreciated it and I'm grateful. I'm grateful for authors who risk the vulnerability and the vulnerability hangover and the consequences of writing a book like this because the consequences are immense and we need their stories. So this was the tell by Amy Griffin. I listened to it on audiobook and it is narrated by the author as well. I was reading all kinds of books for our spring literary first look, which was held earlier this month or back in March. And one of the books I really wanted to read was when the Harvest Comes. This is by Denny Michelle Norris. She is the editor in chief of Electric Literature. So if you're big in the book world, like lit hub, book riot, Electric Literature, then you are familiar with Denny Michelle Norris. This is her debut and it admittedly caught my eye because I think the COVID is so gorgeous. It does not release until April 15th, so you've got a couple weeks. But the book is about Davis and, well, it's really about three characters. We're introduced to Davis first, and I do think he functions as maybe our main protagonist. Our main character, Davis, is a viola player. He is a young black gay man about to get married to his white boyfriend, his white fiance, Everett. The book opens during their wedding weekend. So Everett and Davis are about to get married. They seem incandescently happy. They are deeply in love. Everett's family is throwing the wedding. They seem. They remind me of the Kennedys. They seem totally on board. The wedding's taking place on Martha's Vineyard. It all feels at first like maybe a straightforward wedding weekend kind of story. But Davis, you soon realize, doesn't have anybody in his family coming. And we learn that his father is a Baptist pastor, a reverend, and certainly does not approve of Davis's choices. So he's not coming to the wedding. He and Davis are estranged. Davis is close, or was close with his sister, Olivia and at the last minute, she does choose to attend the wedding. And so that is where we get our three characters, Davis, Everett, his fiance, and Olivia, his sister. So those are the three perspectives that we get mostly over the course of the novel. The first half of the book is set over that wedding weekend where some tensions bubble to the surface. Maybe Everett's family, maybe certain members of Everett's family are not as happy about this arrangement or this relationship as we, the reader, thought they were, or maybe as even they thought they were. And then the second half of the book is in the aftermath of the wedding because no spoilers. This is not a spoiler, it's on the back of the book. But while they're getting married during the course of the wedding weekend, Davis and Olivia discover that their father has died in a car accident. So Davis and his dad never quite got the closure. They never got the closure, the redemption, the reconciliation maybe that they both were seeking. And so now Davis has to kind of grapple with the consequences of that. And so does Olivia and. And oddly, perhaps oddly, so does Everett because this, this huge grief now, which Davis is at first dismissive of, comes a big point of contention in their marriage. So this book belongs to Davis, but it is also Everett's story and Olivia's story. I like a lot of things about this book. Yes, it's kind of some dysfunctional family literature. It's talking a lot about sex, gender and identity, familial bonds, familial relationships. What happens when we make choices that our families don't understand. The writing is beautiful. I mean, really beautiful. It's a little surprising that it's a debut. Yeah, I really liked this one. I was trying to think of comp titles and the truth is I'm not quite sure I'd have to think about it some more. But I'm really glad I read this. It is open door in terms of sexual content. There are some open door sex scenes to be aware of, but that is not the point of the story. This is certainly I would classify this as literary fiction. And some, for some reason the sexual content of literary fiction just feels. It reads so differently to me, I think often because it's not maybe the point of what's going on in those pages anyway. This is a character driven novel. What happens when we don't get the closure or the reconciliation that we maybe unknowingly long for? That is when the Harvest Comes by Denis Michelle Norris. And then last but not least, I finished out the month with another audiobook. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Did I intend to read this book? I really did not. I really did not. I did not think that this would be for me. But I love John Green's narration. I trust John Green. I think he is one of the few authors. I'm thinking I'd have to look at a full list, but I think I might be a John Green completionist. Maybe. Hmm. I need to look. But anyway, I knew he was writing this book about tuberculosis. I follow him on Instagram, but I don't. I don't really think I had any intention of picking it up. And then I saw that it was available on Libro fm. John Green narrates IT. I think he's a great narrator. And I started listening to it on the way home from that trip to Atlanta and I was immediately hooked. I have said this line many times. I think I said it at literary lunch. I said it to the store staff, but I thought it was so apt. Jordan overheard me listening to this book, which is exactly, by the way, what it sounds like. It is a history of tuberculosis, the disease. And Jordan said, you know, John Green is like the professor you take in college, no matter what course they're teaching. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is so true. Like, didn't we all have those professors who you didn't maybe trust the class, like the, the class description, but you trusted the teacher, you trusted the professor. That is definitely how John Green is. Because this is a book about tuberculosis, the history of it, the realities of having a cure and not maybe utilizing it in the ways that we should. It's excellent. It's excellent. It's a five, I think it's a five hour long audiobook. It's a short book. So if you have been on the fence about this one, I, I can't recommend it enough. I thought it was excellent and I'm grateful for a voice like John Green's who is willing to write something a little different, a little outside what we might have called his typical genre. Although certainly he's extended beyond young adult lip for a while now. But I love that he's doing something differently and he's doing it to success and perhaps, oh gosh, I hope, maybe make a difference in the health and medical world. I really liked this book. I feel like I could hand sell it to almost anybody, which is a weird thing to say about a book about tuberculosis. So that is everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. I listened to that in audiobook format, narrated by John Green. And those are the books I read in March as usual with our Reading Recap episodes, we are offering a Reading Recap Bundle for this month. The March Reading recap bundle is $75 and it includes three hardback memorial days by Geraldine Brooks Hot Air by Marcy Germanski. In case you're feeling brave and want to try something weird and everything is tuberculosis, I listened to that book in audiobook format, but I wanted to include it in the bundle because there is this great video go find it of John Green on Instagram talking about the COVID design for this book and the end paper design for this book and I just think it's beautiful and I think the physical copy is worth owning. So you can find more details and the March Bundle online through the link in our Show Notes or go to bookshelfthomasull.com and type today's episode number. That's 5:23 into the search bar. This week I'm reading A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving by Lydia Sohn.