Transcript
Annie Jones (0:01)
Welcome to from the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
Annie Jones (0:24)
But none of that matters. All that matters is that it's Christmas and we're family. This might be a weird Christmas, but that's okay because Christmas is unruinable. Kerry Winfrey Faking Christmas I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf and Independent Bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm recommending some of my favorite holiday books for cozy reading. Do you love listening to from the Front Porch? Every week you can spread the word by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. 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, then tell us what you think. Here's a recent review from Meredith New and hooked. From the sound of the squeaky chain on the porch swing to Annie's voice to what she's saying about books and life in a small town, I love inhabiting this podcast. It feels like a conversation, albeit one sided. I like to think of this podcast as a conversation too. Meredith, thank you so much for sharing your review. And thank you to all of the reviewers who've left kind and thoughtful reviews for our show. We're so grateful anytime you share from the Front Porch with your friends. Thanks to you for spreading the word about our podcast and our bookstore. Now back to the show. This episode is part of a series called Annie Recommends. We've also done Shop Dad Recommends in this format, but basically we like to talk about a kind of book stack of books that I would hand sell you if you were in the store. We've done this several times so you can go back. There are links in the show notes, but episodes 4634-734814-98504, 511, 516, 550, 555 we've done this a lot. It's in the show notes. But we've done this for audiobooks. We've done it for spooky reads. We've done it for campus novels, rom coms. So sometimes all you want is a good book list. We know this because customers come in the store or email Keela all the time asking for recommendations based on a specific genre or criteria. A bookseller's favorite task, at least in my experience, is to go around the shop and put together a stack of books for a customer who's on the hunt. Even if they don't buy every book, we pick the fun is in the discovery. I do this all the time. I don't get to work on the floor as much anymore. But I really do love when somebody comes in and they say, oh, I just finished this. What should I read next? Or you know, what should I add to my list? And I like giving them a stack truly of about four or five books. And then I tell them, whatever you don't want, I'll put back. I did this recently for a customer, hi Karen, who had just read Kathryn Newman, and I think I found a couple of books for her. It was trickier for Karen because she's read so much. And then I did it for another customer who was shopping for somebody who had been through a grieving season. She wound up going with the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse. But anyway, I love doing this. To me, it's one of the most fun parts of the job. So that is exactly what we're trying to mimic on these episodes of from the Front Porch. Every so often I'll put together a book stack around a certain theme. This month, since we're smack dab in the middle of the holiday season now, I've got books to cozy up with for the holidays. I've made a short list of some of my favorite current and backlist titles. And just like I wouldn't overwhelm customers with a towering stack of books, I'm not going to overwhelm you either. I just want to give you five books I think you'd love, whether you're a regular reader of cozy lit or you're just just trying to get through the holidays. First up is the book A Home for the Holidays. This is by Taylor Hahn. I am pretty sure that this was my December shelf subscription selection last year. I should have looked before I started recording, but this was my holiday book last year. I feel like I typically find at least one great book each Christmas holiday season. So a few years ago it was Flight by Lynn Stager Strong, which was kind of more literary fiction. A few years ago it was the young adult novel Ten Blind Dates, which I still, I think I referenced on the last episode. I referenced my Mount Rushmore of holiday rom coms or holiday books and I certainly think that one would be included. Like I still have a print copy, I still flip through it sometimes. I even thought about downloading the audiobook this season, but there are so many that release every year and you never really know which ones are going to hit. I think Kathryn Walsh is a really great go to author. Anyway, I digress point is, last year I was looking for my holiday book and I especially struggle with December shelf subscription selections because not a lot of books come out in December. And I think I really struggle just by nature of there's not a lot to choose from. I think I really struggle knowing what to pick. But I loved this book and it was releasing in hardback. It is still only available in hardback, which is something I find a little bit odd. But it is reminiscent of my two or two of my favorite Christmas movies, While you Were Sleeping and the Family Stone. The main character is Mel. She's a wedding singer in Chicago who is grieving the unexpected death of her mother. I think you'll fall in love with Mel and she actually kind of develops this unconventional friendship relationship with her mother's former best friend. There's a multi generational sense to this novel that I think I really like around the holiday time because I'm dealing with a lot of my family and my family is multi generational, obviously. And so I do really like that she has this relationship with her mother's former best friend. There is a small romantic plot line, but I would never categorize this one as a rom com personally. To me, this is more a story about mothers and daughters. It's about grief, it's about moving forward. And there are moments when you think, oh, this is going to take a turn, or oh, this is going to be too schmaltzy. Which is often the case with holiday titles. But I feel like Taylor Hahn really knows how to rein it in this also, one thing that I'm always looking for in a book that I read during the holiday season is if it's set over a particular time frame. So this book is set over the course of two weeks in December, kind of leading up to Christmas. So you could read the book in real time if you wanted to. I think I'm giving you enough time potentially to do that. So I think that would be truly fun. That's not how I got to read it, but I would love if you got to read it that way. If you liked the book, this. Didn't this come out this year? Yes, the Griffin Sisters Greatest Hits. If you liked that. I think you will love A Home for the Holidays because there's also this element of music. Because Mel is a musician, we learn a little bit more about her mother, about the mother's relationship with her best friend. There was a lot going on here, but it was all handled really well. And like I said, it definitely has that dysfunctional multi generational family element. But it also has a slight romance and I found it to be very realistic, which is not always the case again in some of your holiday books. I will tell you that I personally as Annie B. Jones, I do skew more family stone while you were sleeping than I do Hallmark movies and so my choices are probably going to reflect that. My stack would would reflect that. But I loved this book, loved the COVID Think it would be very fun to have out and decorate with to decorate with during the holiday season. It is a Home for the Holidays by Taylor Hahn. Next in your stack, I would put the new book Before I Forget by Tori Henwood Hoenn. This released this week. And speaking of covers, this one is so great. It has a loon on the front. I just love it. It's got like this hot pink font text. I love this cover. It vaguely reminds me of the oh gosh y', all. What was that book called? The C.J. hauser Book? Because that book had ducks. I think that book had mallards on the front. Anyway, I read this one this summer and it is very much a wintry book. But I had a copy of the Arc. Again, I was looking for a December shelf subscription. I am going to go ahead and spoil for you that this is it. Too late. No, it is what it is. It's a spoiler. This is my December shelf subscription selection for this year. I read it this summer after reading Carly Fortune's One Golden Summer, which I don't always love Carly Fortune's books. I don't always think that they're for me. But one thing I do love about them is their setting. And I actually really liked One Golden Summer. I really did. I enjoyed that one quite a bit. And to me this book is a great, weirdly a great companion book to One Golden Summer. So if you read Carley Fortune's One Golden Summer a few months ago and now you're kind of looking for the wintry version, I would suggest to you that you pick up Before I Forget by Tori Henwood Hoen. This book is set in the heart of the Adirondacks, where Cricket, the main character, unexpectedly finds herself caring for her father as he grapples with early onset Alzheimer's. The book handles Cricket's quarter life crisis and her father's health with a light hand. Like the book deals with a lot of this with humor. Like based on the description I just gave you, you might think, well, Annie, that that doesn't sound like a good time. That doesn't sound cozy. But Cricket's relationship with her dad is really special and I think the portrayal of dementia is accurate. And yet you won't be drowning in grief while reading about it because again, there's a sense of humor here. The character Cricket is really, in my opinion, pretty funny. Perhaps because of her naivete, she moves back home to take care of her dad because this is like their family's lake house and she doesn't want to get rid of it and the only way to not get rid of it is to become the caregiver for her dad. The story here also takes a lot of twists and turns, including some that I was a little bit head scratchy over like wait. What? You'll see. I don't want to spoil it because it was not spoiled for me, but there is a twist that this book kind of takes that was not expected. And again, I was pretty skeptical but ultimately found it really charming. There is like in A Home for the Holidays, there is a slight romantic storyline, but that is not what is moving this book forward. This is about coming to terms with our childhoods, finding our families, and forgiving things that happened in the past. I really liked this book a lot. I was delighted to discover it and I think it'll be a fun sell this holiday season. It is not specifically Christmas and so that is one of the reasons I also wanted to include it. I know not everybody celebrates Christmas and so if you just are looking for cozy wintry books, I think this is for you. The setting is fabulous. It made me want to go to the Adirondacks. I always want to go there. I always want to go there. It doesn't take much, but I thought the setting was really good. It's what reminded me of the Carly Fortune books.