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Welcome to from the Front Porch, a.

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Conversational podcast about books, small business, and.

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Life in the South. In yourself right now is all the place you've got Flannery o', Connor, Wise Blood I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week we're keeping things short and sweet with our 2026 Conquer a Classic announcement. Since 2020, Hunter McLendon and I have been leading from the Front Porch and Bookshelf fans and readers through a conquering of a classic work of literature. These are the books we know we wouldn't make time for without holding each other accountable. The white whale books that have been on our literal and metaphorical tbrs for far too long. These classic books also tend to be titles we don't want to rush through. Hunter and I are both naturally fast readers. We tend to binge our books, remembering how they make us feel. But, and I'll just speak for myself here, not necessarily remembering the details that might make them special. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I have come to think of reading slowly and deliberately as a spiritual practice, a kind of in your face to a world that moves fast and is slowly ruining my attention span. Each year we take 10 months to make our way through the classic work, even if we could read it faster looking at you, Lonesome Dove, or we would otherwise never finish. Probably you, Don quixote. So in 2020 we read Anna Karenina. In 2021, Middlemarch, 2022, Count of Monte Cristo 2023, Bleak House, 2024, Lonesome Dove. And this year in 2025, we officially read and conquered Don Quixote. Now for 2026, we're breaking format just a little. We are conquering the Complete Stories by Flannery o'. Connor. Every month on Patreon, Hunter and I will recap between three and four short stories from oconnors National Book Award winning collection. All of our patreon tiers, the five $20 and $50 a month members will have access to these recap episodes on the last Friday of every month. By November of 2026, we will have read every short story O' Connor ever wrote. Not only is this the first short story collection we'll have read as part of our Conquer A Classic program, it is also the shortest book we have ever read. As one book, the Complete Stories is only about 550 pages long. That's about half of what we typically read in a year. Maybe a little over half. Which is why I decided I wanted to do something a little different in 2026. Also, Don Quixote was a lot. Don Quixote was a lot. So our $5 a month Patreon members will conquer this classic book and receive the same recap episodes we've always done. All you have to do is purchase the book from the bookshelf or pull out your copy from that American lit class you took in college, then join us on patreon at the $5 a month level. That's it. That's staying the exact same. We're conquering one book together every month. But for our $20 a month Patreon members, we're declaring 2026 a year with Flannery. We'll read the complete stories with our $5 a month friends, plus each quarter we'll discuss one of Oconnors longer works. In February, I'll post a discussion guide of her novel Wiseblood. In May, we'll post one for the novel the Violent Barrett Away. And in August, I'll post a discussion guide for her work of nonfiction mystery and manners. Hunter and I will also watch the 2019 film Flannery and the 2023 film Wildcat, providing bonus movie recap episodes for our $20 a month patrons. I am thrilled about this format. All of our book club discussions will be conducted on Patreon in the comments, and the discussion guides will be downloadable. In case you want to host conversations in your own community, and I secretly hope you do. I'll also be recording a video intro to each work. Those can be watched at any time, and the book club conversations will live on Patreon, where you can participate at your leisure. If you've been a Patreon member for a long time, you know, we've tweaked and played around with this book club format before. We've done Zoom book clubs, live book clubs, recorded book clubs, and the truth of the matter is people want a book club, but it's hard to join at the times we set, and it's hard for Bookshelf staffers. So to kind of accommodate that and to kind of play around with the need for a book club format, but not really knowing how we're gonna all meet on Zoom together. All of these book club conversations for Wiseblood, the Violent Beard Away and Mystery and Manners will all take place on Patreon in the comments. Together I'll post discussion guide each quarter and a video introduction so it all kind of is there for you to take up when you're ready. So if in February you haven't finished Wise Blood, you can come back to it. You can participate in the chat. You can read and see the discussion guide. You can watch the video, really, at your convenience, at your leisure. I love the idea that by the end of 2026 a whole group of us will have dived deep into Flannery oconnors work in a world of quick bites and short form information. We will be stretching our attention spans and unpacking her work slowly over the course of 10 to 12 months, and we'll be doing it with what I hope has become our expected brand of humor and heart. Hunter and I aren't English majors, we're just two people who love to read, and I think our conversations reflect that. If you want to join us in our year with Flannery, here's a quick rundown to Conquer the Classic the Complete Stories Join us on patreon at the $5 a month tier. You'll have access to a digital copy of the 2026 reading guide and the monthly recap episodes. Plus you can also access all of our previous Conquer a Classic episodes and Guides. If you choose to buy the Complete Stories from the bookshelf, you'll receive a printed copy of the Reading Guide and a bookmark. In the past, this is important to note. In the past, our reading guides have depended on the page numbers for the specific edition of the book we're reading. Page numbers or chapter headings. We really do stick to a particular edition of a book. In 2026, that won't be an issue since we're reading based on the stories, not necessarily chapters, sections, or page numbers. That means if you already have a copy of the Complete Stories, it will work for this program. You just won't get a print copy of the Reading Guide. So you can choose to use your own copy of the Complete Stories. Truly the one that's been sitting on your shelf. I'm. I'm. I bet some of you have one. Or you can buy the copy from the bookshelf and it will come with a printed copy of the Reading Guide plus a bookmark. Okay, that's To Conquer the Classic, To Conquer the Complete Stories plus to read and discuss oconnors other works. You can join us on patreon at the $20 a month tier. When you do that, you'll have access to a digital copy of the Complete Stories Reading Guide, the monthly Recap episodes, then the quarterly book club discussions and video introductions, and our two movie Recap episodes, a bundle of all four of oconnors works. That's the complete stories, Wiseblood, the Violent, Beard Away, and Mystery and Manners is available at a discounted price of $68 on the booksh. Books, of course, can also be purchased individually if you've got a copy of Wise Blood but you don't have Mystery and Manners or vice versa. Also, you can always use your local library for this. All of this information, everything I've just said, can be found on our patreon page. That's patreon.com from the FrontPorch. And all of the books can be found on the bookshelf website. Bookshelfthomasville.com Our Conquer a Classic program begins in January, so your O' Connor books will ship no later than December 2nd. So if you order them today and you're like, why haven't they shipped? Well, it's probably because we're shipping out a lot of them. So we've given ourselves to the deadline of December 2, so Keela will have shipped them all out by the early part of December. So you can gift them for Christmas. You'll have them in time for January reading. Patreon memberships can now be gifted, too, pretty easily. So if you want to treat a family member to the 2026 program, go to patreon.com or forward/ from the Front porch gift. There's a link in your show notes. And if you order the complete stories through the bookshelf once again, we'll make sure they get their copy by Christmas. That's it. That's the plan. That's the 2026 Conquer a Classic. Do I, in the back of my mind, have a pilgrimage planned to Milledgeville for the end of 2026? Yes. In the back of my mind, this is something that I am planning, something that I'm thinking about. And so if there's a group of us who want to meet in Milledgeville at the end of 2026 to celebrate this, I think that would be really fun. So that's something I'm thinking about. Part of the reason we decided to tweak the format a little bit this year is because we've done Conqueror Classic. We've tackled a tome for gosh, I mean, since 2020 now. So how many books did I count at the beginning? What is that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? We've done six of these, and truly I love it every year, even in more challenging years like when we read Bleak House or Don Quixote. But we're, we're not necessarily running out of classic tomes to conquer together, but when you're trying to look for a 1000 page book or an 800 to 1000 page book, you are limited. And we've talked before about doing Jane Eyre or somehow, you know, doing the Brontes or Austin or something like that, and none of them has a classic work quite as long as we're looking for. So I like that this year we're kind of playing around with this in that we're going to conquer this classic. I think it will be just as challenging as years past because just because these are short stories does not make them easy, does not make them super digestible. There will be plenty to discuss together, plenty to scratch our heads over. So I still think it's going to present a literary challenge, but it is a lower page count, which also gives us time to, if you so choose, read her other works. And I think this is a format we could potentially mimic down the road. So if we do A year with Flannery in 2026, I think there's a world in which we do, I don't know, a year with the Brontes or a year with Fitzgerald or something like that down the line. So I'm excited as a reader. I'm excited as, honestly, I'm excited as a new mom, because reading short stories feels digestible and doable. I did conquer Don Quixote, and I'm really proud of myself for doing that, particularly postpartum. But I like that we'll be reading two or three short stories. I also think short stories are not. They're not often read by the general public. And this is just my opinion as a bookseller. Right. I'm selling books at the bookshelf. I don't see a ton of short story collections sell. And even when I was talking to my mom, like, I think Flannery o' Connor will be darker than my mom is maybe expecting or used to. And my mom doesn't typically read short stories, but. But because they are short stories, they are by their nature maybe more digestible than something like Don Quixote, which she wound up giving up on, you know, a third of the way through, which I think a lot of folks did. And so I'm hoping this will be a fun challenge. I still think it will be a challenge, but I think it will be fun. I also felt like a Georgia bookstore should tackle a Georgia author. And there's a lot to untangle about Flannery, and I'm ready to untangle it together. Hunter and I are super excited about this. This is a title we've been throwing around for a few years now. So to finally put it officially out there is really exciting. And I'm thrilled with the idea that together we will have read pretty much all of Flannery's works by the end of 2026, which. Which is just so cool to me. So that's the plan. That's the rundown. I hope you will join us. All of this information is in the show notes. It's Also@patreon.patreon.com from the FrontPorch. You've got time to decide. Recap. Episodes will begin in January. Our reading will officially begin in January. I hope you'll consider joining us this year. And you can always do what a lot of our Patreon supporters do, which is, I think, especially the year we read Lonesome Dove together, a lot of people read Lonesome Dove conquered that classic, maybe finished early. And so they went back and started doing Middlemarch or Anna Karenina. All of those back episodes are available on Patreon once you join us at the $5 tier. I'm so excited. I hope you can see how excited I am. Oh, or here. I hope you can hear how excited I am. I read. I first discovered Flannery o' Connor my senior year of high school. One of my English teachers gifted me a copy of Mystery and Manners and. And I still have the note in it from that professor. It kind of changed how I thought of myself, changed what I thought about writing and Southern writing in particular. And then we did more Flannery o' Connor in my Great Books program in college. But it's been a long time. I think I revisited some of her short stories during the pandemic, I want to say back in 2021, but that's probably 2021 is probably the last time I. I've read her. I have been to Milledgeville, and that gave me the occasion to read her letter she wrote back home to her mother. So I've done that recently. I've read her prayers recently, but it's been at least five years since I've looked back at her short stories. And so I don't know. I just. I think this is gonna be really fun. I think it's gonna be really fun. It feels like good, nerdy fun, which is my favorite kind. And so I hope you'll go to Patreon, join us at the 5 or $20 tiers and get ready for January. I'm ready this week. I'm Reading Whidbey by T. Kira Madden.