Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
When's the last time you read a great book? Maybe a book that changed your life or changed your perspective? Well, if you need a recommendation or two, I'd suggest you move over to the McConnell center podcast, where we're dropping weekly recommendations from academics and authors on books that just might be what you need. Search for the McConnell center podcast wherever it is you get your podcasts and give us a listen today.
- [00:28]
B
Welcome to from the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. Facts alone couldn't communicate the interior experience of being alone for so long in the blank of the ocean, out of time, the only structure the rising and the setting of the sun. Sophie Elmhurst A Marriage at Sea 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 April. Before we get started, a thank you to everyone who's left reviews for from the Front Porch. Itunes, reviews and ratings are still how new listeners can best find out about from the Front Porch and as a result, find out about our indie bookstore, too. Here's a recent review from Lori Great book suggestions. A great resource for reading suggestions. Annie provides details to help every type of reader find new books to enjoy, and she's delightful to listen to. Thank you for thinking so, Laurie Ann. 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 small brick and mortar business too. Now back to the show. Okay, y'all, I was worried about April. I was worried about April because it was the release of Ordinary Time into the world. I just wasn't sure how much bandwidth I would have for for reading. And I didn't have much. I was right. I was right about that. But what I did read I really liked. And that's the good news. And so we're gonna be. I mean, quantity wasn't bad, but we're gonna mostly focus on quality today. Quality over quantity. So I kicked off the month actually ended March with A marriage at Sea. This is the book that I led the episode with. It's by Sophie Elmhurst. This is a work of nonfiction that totally intrigued me when I was going through publisher catalogs. So this does not release until July 8th. So this is a book that you'll need to pre order or request from Your local library. But I think it's completely a summer book, so I do think that you should read it for summer. I saw this in the publisher catalog and immediately downloaded it to my Kindle because I thought, this looks like something that would be really intriguing. I don't know that it fits the bar or fits the requirements of shelf subscription. I actually had another July book already picked for shelf subscriptions, so it wasn't a priority book. But when I was cleaning out my Kindle, cleaning off my Kindle, I came across it, and I thought, well, let me give this a go. And I couldn't put it down. I absolutely loved it. So this is a work of nonfiction, narrative nonfiction. It tells the story of Maurice and Marilyn, who in the 7 70s. They fell in love, got married, they lived in England, and neither one was super content with maybe a normal. I'm using air quotes. Average life. They were more unconventional. And so they began looking into what they could do. I think they even contemplated, like, living on a farm or something like that. But they ultimately decided to buy and renovate a small yach. Yacht is perhaps maybe too generous of a term. These were not particularly wealthy people, is my understanding. Uh, Maurice and Marilyn saved a lot of money. They worked really hard because they wanted to ultimately live an unusual, unconventional life. So they worked really hard. They bought this yacht, they fixed it up, and their goal was to sail from their home in England down to New Zealand, and then they were going to start their life over in. In New Zealand. Not necessarily live off the grid, but kind of. And this is not a spoiler, I mean, in any way, shape, or form, but they leave on their journey, and they are victims of a shipwreck. There's, like, a breaching whale that runs into their yacht, and they are left stranded in a remote part of the open sea. This is such a fantastically told adventure story. I could not get over that it was all real, that it was a true story. Certainly there's all kinds of interesting details about the boat itself, about life on the open sea. Even before there was a shipwreck component. It was a pretty interesting read to me because it was all about this, this marriage and living this out of the ordinary life. And so even before the shipwreck, I was intrigued. And then after the shipwreck, the story becomes a survival story. And the reason I think the book would be appealing. Well, I loved it regardless, but I think it will be appealing to readers like me is because not only is it about the adventure, survivor, survival of it all, but it is also about Maurice and Marilyn and their marriage and what makes their marriage tick and what makes their marriage work and can their marriage survive a shipwreck? Will they be able to survive a shipwreck? So I wish I had more background on why Sophie Elmhurst wrote about this. There's some hints of why toward the end of the book, but not much detail is given about how she found out about this story because it took place in the 70s. But gosh, it was such an out of the box, out of the norm reading experience for me. I like narrative nonfiction. I'm drawn to it. I don't always make time for it in my current reading life, but I was thrilled that I did. It felt just so serendipitous. I had really just thought the description sounded good, thought the COVID was intriguing, and then really, really loved it and cannot wait for it to be hand sold this summer. If you liked and I'm going to talk about Amity Gage later, but if you liked Amity Gage's the Sea Wife, that came out, I believe in 2020, I think it came out Pandemic. I think you'll love this. Of course, if you love a survival story castaway, you know, you name it, I think you'll be intrigued. You know, it's almost like a real life Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson or something like that. I highly recommend it, especially maybe even if nonfiction is not your typical genre. This is totally compelling and I think you'll really enjoy it. So that is A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst. I also read electronically and I was surprised I did read this electronically. I also read Flashlight. This is by Susan Choi. She wrote Trust Exercise. She's a prolific literary fiction author. Beloved, award winning. I had not had a ton of luck with her books. I do believe I finished Trust Exercise, maybe even Hunter and I did a podcast episode about that book. I cannot remember, but I do think it was a book where he really liked it and I was just a little ambivalent about it. The reason I picked this one up, and I'll talk about it too in an upcoming new release, rundown Episode. But the reason I picked it up was because the premise is rooted in a mystery. So one of our characters is Luisa. She's a young girl walking with her father along the coast of Japan. They're on vacation with her mother. So it's her two parents and Luisa. She is walking with her dad kind of at dusk watching the waves come in. And then the next morning Luis's body is found. She is alive, but barely, and her father is nowhere to be seen. And the book kind of unspools from there. And I do. I really wanted to use that word because so much kind of unravels and unspools as the novel progresses. And I felt like I was in the hands of a genius. I feel like I finally am seeing what everybody already knew, which is that Susan Choi is an extremely talented novelist and storyteller. And this book is really, it's Luisa's book. We get to watch her grow up again. I'm using air quotes, but, like, recover from the trauma of losing her father. We also get the mother's perspective. Her mother is an American, and we come to understand what attracted her to Luis's father, why she got married, some of the things that make her tick. Her story is, gosh, it's really interesting and takes a lot of turns. And then we also, and maybe even mostly get the story of Luisa's father. And he is an ethnic born Korean, but he lived in Japan, was raised in Japan. And when I say the book on spools, it starts and really continues to be what happened to Luis's father. But it's also historical fiction about the history of north and South Korea, what it was like, maybe during the Korean War, a little bit, some history of Japan. Things I really knew nothing about and wouldn't have said I was curious about. But as I kept reading, I was completely drawn in and very invested in not only the individual character stories, but also this overarching history. I loved this book. I felt like it contained so many different facets and so many different elements, but they all tied together. I've said this before. I say this sometimes when I'm talking about a book that has multiple viewpoints or multiple storylines or time frames. But I was never confused. I completely trusted Susan Choi and was completely, completely enmeshed in the story. And I'm a little surprised by that because literary fiction is one of my favorite genres. But ever since 2020 can be really hit or miss. And I think that has to do with just my own probably broken attention span. But beyond that, even though I have maybe come back to a love of some literary fiction, it's not always successful for me, reading electronically. And Flashlight is a book that I normally would not have read electronically because it is longer and I tend to lose interest. The Kindle is really convenient, but it is not my favorite way to read. But I downloaded Flashlight because I thought, well, let me just give it a go, maybe I'll start it and then finish it when the physical book comes out. Or maybe I'll ultimately get an arc and I never did. Anyway, I had no trouble. Like I read this in the car on the way to Chattanooga on a trip. I read it before bed every night. I was very hooked. I was very, very connected to the characters and very connected to the storytelling. Maybe a comp could be the Many Daughters of a Fong Moy perhaps also. Oh gosh, what was the name of that book? Let me think. Gosh, is it. Maybe it's Swift river by Essie Chambers. That might be it. Just another novel where there's a missing father who kind of is at the core of the book. Also, oh gosh, one more comp for you. I think Angie Kim's novels could be could be listed here as well. So if any of those books are appealing to you or you've liked those, I think you will like. Flashlight by Susan Choi. This book releases June 3rd. Don't be mad, don't be mad. You can pre order or go ahead and get on your library hold list. Then I read a book that is out now and it is called Heartwood by Amity Gage. I mentioned her because she was the author, is the author of the Sea Wife. So Heartwood is her newest book. This is one that let me think Olivia, Erin and I have all read. We all loved it. It's definitely in our Venn diagram where there's a mystery at the center, which is appealing to Olivia and maybe even an adventure story, a survival story. But then there's also some real character driven components. So we have three women at the heart of this book. Valerie, who is a hiker who's gone missing on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Beverly, who is not necessarily a detective but like a park ranger, somebody who works for the parks, who it is her responsibility to help find people who are missing. And then Laina, who is this lady in her late 70s who lives in an assisted living facility and she kind of considers herself an armchair sleuth. So you have these three women. To me, Valerie and Beverly are the two most compelling voices that we hear from, though Laina certainly plays an important role. But Valerie and Beverly were my favorites. I think. Olivia frequently talks about books where there's a good detective versus she gets really tired of books where the detectives are not good at their jobs, particularly women detectives. Beverly is a great sleuth, She's a great detective, she's a great park ranger. She adds so much to the book. And then Valerie, we just watch her story kind of unfold through diary entries as she is trying to survive while lost in the woods of Maine. I liked so many things about this book. I liked the trio of older protagonists. Valerie is the youngest, I think at 42. I loved the setting, the Appalachian Trail, certainly. If you liked Cheryl Strayed's Wild, you will like this if you like and read Kimmy Cunningham Grant, which you should try her if you've not. But her book the Nature of Disappearing, if you like Peter Heller. All of those kinds of books where it's like great nature writing matched with a really compelling story. Because you want to know what happened to Valerie and you want to know if she's going to survive being lost in the Maine wilderness for this long. I have noticed that a lot of the books I'm gravitating toward right now are more adventure. Some in nature, survival in nature. I think that's because I'm looking for something that's really compelling. Olivia always points out short chapters. This book had short chapters. I was hooked from the first page. In Amity Gage's book, the Sea Wife, there is a survival element. There is, if I'm not mistaken, like almost like a book within a book component. This plays with some of those same themes where you've got Valerie's diary entries, you've got maybe a little bit of poetry and then the story itself. I loved this. I think it's a great crossover title. So if you are an Olivia reader, I think you'll like this. If you're an Annie or Aaron reader, I also think you'll like it. Great summer book too. Too. Yeah. Really liked this one. It's Heartwood by Amity Gage. Lots of survival stories this month. I don't know. I don't know if that's reminiscent of me trying to survive or not. Okay, then, another book that I downloaded to my Kindle and I totally thought until I was doing research for this episode, I thought this book was out already. So that's my bad. It is. Things in Nature Merely Grow. This is by Yooyun Lee. I loved Yooyun Lee's Book of Goose, which came out a few years ago. One of my favorite books of the year, I think when it released. This is her memoir and it releases on May 20th. So of the books I've mentioned, Heartwood is the one that is out right now. Things in Nature Merely grow releases on May 20, I believe. I thought this was out already because there was a great lengthy excerpt in the New Yorker from this book and that is what I would tell you to read. I'll put a link in the show notes. And the reason I want to do that is because I saw this book in the catalog and I of course ordered it for the store, but I was hesitant about reading it myself. And that is because this is a memoir about the deaths of Yuyun Lee's two sons. They both chose suicide. Vincent, her older son, in 2017, and James, her younger son, in 2024. In fact, I'm going to read for you a sentence that opens the book that I think sets the tone for the type of book that this is. There is no good way to state these facts which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both. Vincent in 2017 at 16, James in 2024 at 19. Both chose suicide and both died not far from home. So when I came across this book in the catalog, I was curious about it. I like Yuyun Lee. I ordered it for the store, but I did not know if I was going to read it. And then there was a piece in the New Yorker published at the end of March that was essentially an excerpt from the book. And I thought it was astoundingly beautiful, moving, stark, realistic. And so I, I downloaded the ebook to my Kindle and read it that way. And there is no denying the heaviness of this book. Certainly that sentence sets the tone. What I think you should do as a reader is read the New Yorker piece if you'd like, and then if you love that as much as I did, then I do think the book would be worth worth reading. I believe Yooyun Lee would not necessarily want this book included in the grief genre that I talk about so often here on the podcast. You know, I don't know that she would want it compared to. To the Year of Magical Thinking or A Grief Observed or Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley. Certainly that is what it reminded me of because as a bookseller, I'm constantly thinking of comp titles. But she writes a lot about how after her son Vincent's death, she wrote a book essentially for Vincent. And then after James's death, she struggled to know what to write, and this book is the result of that struggle. She talks a lot about obviously her personal life, her personal experiences with depression and suicidal ideation. She talks about her two sons with. With real love, with real motherhood in her voice. She talks about life after loss. And she writes a lot about classic literature and her son' both sound brilliant. And so she talks about their various interests, weaves those into the. Into the narrative. But again, I don't know that she really wants this to be considered a grief book. I'll leave it up to you to decide where it kind of fits, but I'm very glad I read. Was brutal to read, but I really did love it. I think she's an incredibly gifted writer, and I imagine this was an incredibly difficult book to write. You can almost sense that struggle with each page. This is not a book that sounds like it just flowed from her easily. So that is Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yooyun Lee. I highlighted so many, oh my gosh, so many lines, paragraphs in this book. Again, I know she probably wouldn't want it to be considered a grief book, but I will say she also has a lot. There's a lot in this book for those of us who might be accompanying others through their grief. There are some accidental lessons I think she puts in this book that I was really grateful to come across. So Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yuyun lee, out on May 20. And then, last but not least, I finished up John Green's Everything Is Tuberculosis in audiobook format. I reviewed that book in the March episode, and then I downloaded Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. That book released earlier this month, but at the time I was listening to it as an alc. That's an advanced listening copy by Libro fm. The audiobook is narrated by Julia Whelan, as are all of Emily Henry's books. Here's the deal. Every year I struggle to know, should I wait until late April to read Emily Henry's books in print format, or should I download the audiobook because then I get to listen to it before the book itself comes out. And it's a struggle every year. But for the past at least three years, I have chosen to listen the audiobook. And would I prefer the physical format? Yes, I would. I like Julia Whelan. I think Julia Whelan does a fantastic job, particularly if you like more dramatization in your audiobooks. And she really does that well and every. Like I said the past three years, it's almost like a tradition at this point, the struggle of knowing whether to do whether to do it or not, whether to listen to it or not, and then ultimately succumbing to temptation and going ahead and listening to it. So anyway, I would prefer the physical book format, but I listened to this one. Our main character is Alice. Alice is, in my mind, a Zooey Deschanel new girl type character. Dresses really quirkily, 60s vibes she's a journalist. She writes for, not a tabloid. I'm picturing like a People magazine kind of thing where she does like celebrity profiles and things like that. When we encounter Alice, she is in Little Crescent Island, Georgia, which I'm guessing here. I have not yet. I have not yet consumed any extraneous Emily Henry content, but it feels very Tybee island coded. Like I immediately was like, oh my gosh, this is Tybee because it's supposedly off the coast of Savannah. So anyway, if you have been there, I think this book will immediately appeal to you because of the setting. And I do like that her books, they're just fun to read. Spring, summer, because of the settings she chooses. This one's really fun. So kind of this Tybee island stand in called Little Crescent Island. She is there to try to interview Margaret Ives, who is like this media mogul, the daughter of a media mogul. She married into this music royalty. He died, she became a recluse, like that kind of thing. And Alice has discovered that Margaret is living on Little Crescent island and wants to do a story on her. Of course, of course. While she is trying to do research and convince Margaret that she's the person to write her story, Hayden. Hayden shows up. And Hayden is a music reporter. He also is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Listen. Beach Read is one of my favorites of Emily Henry. So I immediately love, like this, these two writers competing. I love that element. And this is up there for me. I really liked this book and I felt like it covered a lot more territory than romance. I felt like Emily Henry was exploring all kinds of character development and all types of characters. Like it wasn't just Hayden and Alice's story. It's very, very much Margaret's story, which felt a little bit different though I think you can see the writing on the wall in some of Emily Henry's previous books. I think I say this on an upcoming podcast episode, but I feel about Emily Henry like I do about Taylor Jenkins Reid. I really just like her storytelling and it's a matter of ranking which ones I like like better than the others, but she's kind of an auto read for me and I think a lot of people feel that way. So I don't know yet where this one lands for me in terms of my Emily Henry rankings, but I really liked it and I. I think we also get to see a little bit more of Emily Henry than the rom com writer we all really love. So that is Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. Listened to on audiobook, narrated by Julia Whelan. If you do listen to that one, I would love your thoughts on how we should be pronouncing. And I'm going to spell it the word C R O I S S A N T. Okay. I just. If you have opinions about that, you can. You can message me on Instagram. Okay. Those are the books I read in April. Now we've been doing reading recap bundles, you know, with these episodes. For the reading recap episodes we do these bundles, but for the last several months, because I've been reading so far in advance, including this month, a lot of these books don't come out for a couple of months. So this month the bundle is a pair. It's $50. It includes Heartwood and Great Big Beautiful Life. Actually two really great books that I think you'd like to read in the physical format. You can find more details and the April pairing online through the link in our show notes or go to bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number. That's 5:27 into the search bar. This week I'm reading Expecting Better by Emily Oster from the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow the Bookshelf Daily happenings on Instagram ookshelftville, and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website, bookshelf thomasville.com a full transcript of today's podcast episode can be found at. From the frontporchpodcast.com Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of from the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and fresh tone for our Thursday conversations. Our executive producers of today's episode are Cami Tidwell, Jamie Treadwell, Linda Lee Jost, Gene Queens, Martha Stephanie Dean, Beth Ashley Farrell, Amanda Wickham, Nicole Marcy Wendy Jenkins. Thank you all for your support of from the Front Porch. If you'd like to support from the Front Porch, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your input helps us make the show even better and helps us reach new listeners. 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 tell us what you think. Or if you're so inclined, support us. Over on Patreon, where we have three levels of support. Each level has an amazing number of benefits like bonus content, access to live events, discounts and patterns giveaways. Just go to patreon.com from the front porch. We're so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
- [28:40]
A
When's the last time you read a great book? Maybe a book that changed your life or changed your perspective? Well, if you need a recommendation or two, I'd suggest you move over to the McConnell center podcast, where we're dropping weekly recommendations from academics and authors on books that just might be what you need. Search for the McConnell center podcast, wherever it is you get your podcasts and give us a listen today.