Episode 555 || Annie Recommends: Nonfiction
This week on From the Front Porch, it’s an episode of Annie Recommends! In this series, Annie curates a stack of books in a certain genre or theme for you – just as if you walked into our brick-and-mortar store, The Bookshelf. This month, Annie recommends a short list of her favorite nonfiction reads.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 555) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Cherished Belonging by Gregory Boyle
Awake by Jen Hatmaker
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
Bone Valley by Gilbert King
Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram and Facebook, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is reading The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, and Amanda Whigham.
Transcript:
[squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South. [music plays out]
Most of us don't hide the truth because we are unrepentant liars. We simply know the truth will disrupt it all-- the life we've built, the marriage we have, the image we've nurtured, the career we enjoy, the approval we've secured. Admitting the truth, hearing the truth confronting the truth is all highly consequential. We want the story of our lives, not necessarily our actual lives. Jen Hatmaker, Awake.
[as music fades out] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, I'm recommending some of my favorite non-fiction books for non-fiction November. Do you love listening to From the Front Porch every week? 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' and tell us what you think. Here's a recent review from Patty.
Another reason to love Thursdays. I truly love this podcast and the fact that there is a new episode every Thursday. I enjoy very much Annie's knowledge and recommendations and specifically her soothing voice. When I listen to this podcast, I feel as if I'm sitting with a group of friends enjoying a good cup of coffee and pastries while learning about what we should read next. Thank you, Annie and team for what you do.
[00:01:53] Thank you, Patty, and thank you to all of the reviewers who've left kind words and thoughtful reviews for our show. We're so grateful anytime you share From the Front Porch with your friends. Thanks for spreading the word about our podcast and our bookstore, too. Now, back to the show! Sometimes you just want a good book list. We know this because customers come in the store or email Erin and Keila all the time, asking for recommendations based on a specific genre or criteria. A book seller'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. So that's what we're trying to mimic here on these episodes of From the Front Porch. Every so often I'll put together a book stack around a certain theme. This month, in honor of Nonfiction November, I've made a short list of some of my very favorite nonfiction titles, front list and back list.
[00:02:52] And just like I wouldn't overwhelm customers with a towering stack of titles, I'm not going to overwhelm you either. I want to give you five books I think you'd love whether you're a regular reader of nonfiction or just trying to round out your reading before the year ends. So let's get started. Although, really before we get started, in case you like this format, in the case you like these types of episodes, I do want to mention, and there are links in the show notes, that we have done this now several times. Episode 463, 473, 481, 498, 504, 511, 516, 550. We have done my dad's recommendations geared more towards Father's Day. We've done spooky reads, campus novels, book club selections, audiobooks. We've done a lot of this because this is what we're best at, right? It's coming up with a list of books. So if you do like this episode format, there are plenty of episodes for you to go back and listen to. When I wanted to make this year's Nonfiction November list, because we have done this in the past, I was very cognizant of not doing any repeats. So most of the books I'm going to talk to you about today, there's one book I would consider backlist, but a lot of these are frontlist.
[00:04:09] So I do want to just be clear about that, that my selections today are geared more towards books that have released this year, except for the first one. The first book I'm recommending and pulling from the Bookshelf's shelves is Cherished Belonging. This is by Gregory Boyle. I needed this book so very much. I read this book last fall. That's when it released. So this book has been out for a year now. I did look to see, and it looks like it is still only available in hardback. They have not printed a paperback edition yet. You might recognize Gregory Boyle, Father Gregory Boyle, from his ministry Homeboy Industries out in Los Angeles. He has written several books that have done quite well, both in the non-fiction world and perhaps in the Christian non-fiction world. You might have read or be familiar with Tattoos on the Heart, Creating a Culture of Tenderness, Forgive Everyone, Everything. Anyway, he's written several. This is his latest, Cherished Belonging, The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. I read this last year, last fall, I listened to it. He narrates the audiobook. He's got an incredibly-- I don't know if soothing is the right word, but he's got a great audio book narrator voice. It was a pleasure to listen to him.
[00:05:24] I think I came across this book post-election, which isn't necessarily why I picked it up. It was a new release. And I think it was available from Libro.fm, maybe even as an ALC, an advanced listening copy. And so I downloaded it. My dad is a big fan of Gregory Boyles. He's read a lot of his books. And so, I don't know. This might've been my first Gregory Boyle book, I'm not sure, but boy, did I love it and need it. It is, in my mind, extremely counter-cultural. Honestly, I probably should revisit it. I probably need a printed copy, but it's all about seeing our fellow man, our fellow humankind as seeing them through the lens of tenderness and belonging. So I'm going to read a quote from the book just to give you a sense of it. But some of this felt pretty radical to my sensibilities. Gregory Boyle is a Catholic priest in the Jesuit tradition. And so certainly his worldview is affected by this identity, but truly some of what he is preaching, teaching, writing feels so counterintuitive to our current way of doing life.
[00:06:33] But anyway, he says, "You choose to cherish with every breath you take. And you choose to delight in the person in front of you. That's hard to do because you have to decide today and then you have to decide tomorrow. And it's never once and for all, but it's the practice." This is the review I wrote last year when I read it. Oh, how I needed this book. I downloaded the audio book from Libro.fm on a whim, trying to move beyond the celebrity memoirs I've been devouring. I was in a celebrity memoir phase when I read this book And Gregory Boyle's gravelly voice and quiet, thoughtful wisdom kept me company all November long. What Boyle is proposing in this book feels radical, upside down. Everyone is unshakably good-- that's the line that I still remember. Everyone is unshakably good and we all belong to each other. I love a book that makes me think, the challenges the ideas that keep me comfortable. Cherished belonging is going to be in my head and in my heart for a long time. And I stand by that review. Like I said, it felt really timely when I was reading it, but the truth is it might feel even more timely now. And this idea that everyone is unshakably good and we all belong to each other, those are not comfortable ideas. Those are not ideas where I'm like, oh, I'm really good at that. That sounds great.
[00:07:52] Instead, I found it to be extremely challenging. And in a world where at least I frequently find myself reading books that solidify my already set ideas or being on internet spaces or in in-person places where I already fit or my ideas already are the norm, it was refreshing to read a book that was both comforting and convicting. So there was a way in which his words were comforting and then there was a way in which his were really challenging. I loved this one. I would hand sell it to anybody. And I mean that. Yes, Gregory Boyle is a Catholic priest, but I would put this in anybody's hands, particularly just given what each of us is living through with maybe the constant news cycle, the inundation of-- I mean, the other day I got like a news alert on my phone and it had something to do with a lawmaker in Maine. And with all due respect, and I do wish that I lived in Maine, that is true, but I don't necessarily need a news alert that immediately makes me think, oh no, what's going on now? And it's happening in Maine. Please only give me news alerts for Georgia and Florida right now. That's about all I can handle. So I feel like we're spending a lot of our-- or I am spending a lot of my time on high alert. But I don't think I'm alone in that. I really don't. And so I would hand sell this book to almost anybody. I think it would make a great gift this holiday season. And if you're trying to read more non-fiction, I think this is super accessible. The audio book is fantastic. And I think it'll make you think, but also be like a warm blanket of a book, which I think we need right now, but also just we need always.
[00:09:35] Okay, next up I would put in this stack is Awake by Jen Hatmaker. I've referenced, I believe on this podcast-- if not on this podcast, at least on my Instagram I have talked about Awake, Jen Hatmaker's new memoir, particularly as it relates to the new Elizabeth Gilbert memoir, All the Way to the River. I think that's the name of it. It's not these books faults, but they came out at about the same time. And they're both by women of a certain age who are facing breakups of their long-term relationships. And they both feel fairly skin fileted, wide open kind of memoirs. That being said, because they both released at the same time, in my mind, (and this is perhaps unfair) it feels like you have to pick one. I read both. This is the one I personally think you should read. Now I have had other customers and podcast listeners let me know that they loved All the Way to the River. Let me be very clear, I did no dislike All the Way to the River. I liked it. I think Elizabeth Gilbert is an extremely talented writer. Her stories are well-crafted. I have read not all of what she's written, but close.
[00:10:45] So I like Elizabeth Gilbert. That particular memoir just felt so raw to me. And I think for some readers, that's a real draw and a real compliment. For me, it felt a little bit like maybe sit with this for a year. But that's my opinion, my sensibilities. The Jen Hatmaker book, I think, had the potential to feel like a tell-all. If you're not familiar with her, she's big in the evangelical world. That is where I became familiar with her, just through her work as like a women's ministry. I feel like the book Seven-- was that the name of the book? That was the first time I encountered Jen Hatmaker, I want to say, was in a Bible study or book group that I was a part of. This is way more traditional memoir. I would never shelve this nor I don't think she would want me to shelve it in Christian nonfiction. This to me is just a straight up memoir. She was featured in the New York Times. Not for the first time, but I do think this is the book that has made a splash. Because around 2016 Jen Hatmaker started to make a name for herself outside of evangelical circles because of some stances she was taking, both politically and theologically. And so I think she found herself on the outskirts of a place that formerly had welcomed her and recognized her.
[00:12:10] This book is, in my mind, and I've talked to several fellow readers about this, I think this is her best work yet. I think it really showcases her talents as a writer. She's always been funny. She's always been witty. I think she's always been a good writer. But this, to me, showcases it in a way that it hasn't been showcased before. I do think it is a comp to Elizabeth Gilbert, to Glennon Doyle. Again, I think there was a way in which this book could have been a tell-all. In 2020, I think, Jen pretty publicly (though she tried to be private about it) she and her husband had a crisis in their marriage. They got divorced. The internet followed along the fallout of that. This book is writing and her sharing her experiences with that divorce, but perhaps even more importantly with what reckoning the divorce brought in her, kind of the realization. And this resonates with me because I also got married pretty young. But she talks about not being fully invested in or aware of her financial situation and not knowing how to do home repairs and all these things that she and her husband as partners had shared. And then all of a sudden the load falls to her. And so there's a lot about that.
[00:13:27] There's also just a lot of back and forth about how she was raised in evangelical culture and maybe the unintentional toll it took on her adult identity. I'm thinking particularly about purity culture and the role it played in her sexuality and her sex life. This book so easily could have skewed into, oh my gosh, TMI. Jen, TMI. But instead, I think it's all handled really thoughtfully and gently. This is definitely her most personal work, but it did not read as an expose. It was reflective and hopeful, gut-wrenching, I thought pretty gracious, all things considered. Pretty humorous about the divorce, yes, but also about midlife, her own mistakes, and then a lot about the ways friendship and family can save us. You'll devour it. It's so fast. Like the Cherished Belonging by Gregory Boyle, I feel like you're going to want to sit with for a little bit, but if you're looking for just, hey, I want a book that I can finish on a Saturday, football on in the background, Awake by Jen Hatmaker should easily do the trick.
[00:14:31] Another memoir-- though I assure you, not all of the books I'm recommending today are memoirs. But another memoir that is on I believe it's been-- I don't know what it will be on this recording, like by the time this comes out. But as of this recording this book has been on the finalist list for the National Book Award for nonfiction. And it is Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. This released in May, like I said, finalist for the National Book award for non-fiction. I discovered Yiyun Li-- and I used the word discovered very loosely. But I personally encountered Yiyun Li's work for the first time when I read Book of Goose a couple of years ago, which I loved. Great backlist title if you're looking for fiction. But this is her memoir, her most recent memoir, and I did hesitate to read it. I read it while pregnant. This is a brutal reflection on parenting I want to say after, but that's not true, it's really during and through grief. It is about life after her two sons, years apart, both die by suicide. And so her writing here is so different from Book of Goose. It's fragmented, it feels poetic. It's blunt and disjointed. I mean, sometimes it is jarringly blunt. Intimate. I couldn't believe what I was reading and how she was able to express herself after true tragedy.
[00:15:53] She makes it very clear in the book. She makes multiple references to grief books and to books like Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. She does not, at least in her writing and publishing of the book, it seemed like she did not want Things in Nature Merely Grow to become part of the grief canon. I understand that. Certainly it feels like it could be, but I feel like years ago we talked about on this podcast about books about mothers and sons and how they're kind of hard to find. You read a lot of books about mothers and daughters, but mothers and sons, it feels harder to read about. There aren't as many of them. This is a beautiful mother-son book. It's really a tribute to who her two sons were and are. And then it's also about the love of a mother and shows perhaps a different kind of mothering. I don't know if you lost a child if this book would be a comfort to you. It's more like if you want to wail and gnash your teeth, and live to fight another day, this is the book for you. It's not a book that feels sorry for itself. The writing is just what you-- even though it's very different from Book of Goose, it's just what you would expect from you Yiyun Li.
[00:17:03] She's almost academic in how she's trying to analyze the deaths of these two beloved people in her life. And then you can also see her realize, wait, I don't want to be analytical about this. I want to be a mother about this; I want to be maternal about this. I loved this book. And "I loved this book" it seems like a dumb thing to say, but this is in my top 10 of the year. So you have heard me talk about it before. You will hear me talk about it again. If it were to win the National Book Award for nonfiction, which I don't think that it will, but if it were too, it would be deserved. I thought it was outstanding. I see where Li is coming from in that she doesn't want to just be "another grief book". And she's right. This does feel like even more than that maybe. It's excellent. It's brutal. I cried while reading it. It's tough to read. It's very tough to read, but I really liked it. So that is, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun li. I also think, just as an aside, certainly this is a heavier book to read, and if a customer comes in the store, I don't always hand them a book where I'm like, oh, by the way, content warning, suicide or suicidal ideation.
[00:18:12] Often, if I'm putting together a book stack for a customer I'm not super familiar with, I wouldn't include a book like this. But I don't know about you but I, in my own personal life, I have encountered this more than usual in my reading life, not just in books, but in articles. I think we are seeing a rise in depression and anxiety and mental health and mental illness. And so I feel like I'm reading about Chat GPT and teenagers and suicide and social media. I feel like I'm reading about that so much more. And Things in Nature Merely Grow is not Yiyun Li trying to investigate the why. That is not what she is doing here. I do think it's important for us to read books like this to expand our empathy and our understanding of our fellow human and the griefs, the intense griefs that a lot of us are walking around with and so this isn't necessarily a book I just throw on the top of a book stack at The Bookshelf. I'd probably want to be pretty aware of what kind of customer I was giving this book to. It's worth a National Book Award, long list, short list. And I do highly recommend it. So again, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li.
[00:19:27] Then perhaps the most true non-fiction book on this list is Bone Valley by Gilbert King. I referenced this one a couple of weeks ago. I think it was in the reading recap episode for October. I listened to this one on audiobook. So this is another good audiobook recommendation. It's narrated by Gilbert king himself. Not all authors make good narrators, but Gregory Boyle and Gilbert King do. You might be more familiar with this one than I was. This is also the subject of a podcast. I was not familiar with the podcast, and I was no familiar with this particular case. So Gilbert King wrote Devil in the Grove, which was a book about Thurgood Marshall in Florida. He writes a lot about criminal justice and the civil rights movement and racism in our criminal justice system. And he reminds me a little bit of if you are reading books like Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. And you have not read Gilbert King, I do think you should try Gilbert King, particularly if you live in Florida. I do think Gilbert King should be read in Florida schools. In fact, I'm not sure why he's not. And maybe he is. But I would suggest strongly that high schools, colleges in Florida should be reading Gilbert King, hosting him on their campuses, et cetera.
[00:20:45] So that was where I was familiar with Gilbert King's work. I believe Devil in the Grove was a Pulitzer winner. This is his latest book, which is a little bit different. Part of the reason it's different is because Leo Schofield, who's the man at the center of this story, is a white man. He is a poor white man from Polk County, Florida. And he was accused and found guilty of murdering his wife in the 1980s. And so he was sitting on Florida's death row. He always claimed his innocence. And I did think this-- listen, maybe it's because of my work with the Florida Bar back in the day, which the older I get, the more those years feel far away. But I did work for the Florida bar and maybe it was because of work there and my education I received about the Innocence Project and even the work that Jordan still does, but I'm far more aware of what's going on in Florida than I am of what going on Georgia, which is probably to my own detriment. But anyway, Jordan deals with or used to deal with in his line of work claims bills and people who have been wronged by the justice system in Florida and are trying to seek compensation for that.
[00:22:01] Anyway, the worlds around which Gilbert King is investigating I am vaguely familiar with, but I had not heard of the Leo Schofield case and I was intrigued by it. I was intrigued by it in part because the book opens with Gilbert King's encounter. He's at a conference selling and schlepping his books. He's talking about his books, he had a conference in Florida, and a sitting judge approaches him with a business card that basically says something like Leo Schofield should not be in jail or in prison. Or Leo Schofield is innocent, something like that. It sounded so cryptic and weird and fictional. It sounded like something that could not possibly have happened, but it did happen. And Gilbert King writes about the fallout from that business card exchange. I am not finished with this one yet. As of this recording, by the time this comes out, I probably will be done with it. But I love what I've read so far. Like I said, this is the more traditional non-fiction pick on this list. I do believe I could hand sell this to almost anybody. My dad bought it before I could even buy it for him. Could extend to true crime readers, but I also think journalistic narrative non-fiction readers will like this one. So that is Bone Valley by Gilbert King.
[00:23:14] Last but not least, a book that I read earlier this year, but it just released in August, so it's only been out a couple months, is Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo. I saw this book while going through a publisher catalog for, I assume, summer or fall. And I promptly downloaded it to my Kindle because Alexis Okeowo is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. She's a journalist, she's a writer living in New York, but she is originally from Alabama. And so she could not help but notice while living in New York people's reactions when she said she was from Alabama. I'm sure they gave her those reactions because she's the daughter of immigrants, because she is a black woman. I will say, and Jordan used to talk about this, that when he did part of his law school education at a school in Georgia, and when he said he was from Alabama, he said the disdain with which his classmates treated him, partly in jest, but partly in reality. And he's always said that Southerners have like a weird pride and hierarchy, like Georgia is better than Alabama. Alabama thinks it's better than Mississippi, et cetera. And, of course, I say that I love Mississippi. We have dear friends that live there. I think their book festival is better than almost any festival I've ever been to, though I haven't been to very many.
[00:24:32] Anyway, but this bizarre inferiority complex that the Southern states have with each other is really interesting. But when you do reference Alabama and Georgia, you do get looks. You do get looks. So it's not Jordan's imagination. It's certainly not Alexis Okeowoo's imagination. And so because of those varying reactions and the looks that she got or the questions that she received when she talked about growing up there, she has now written this book that is definitely part memoir, but it is really a history about a complicated state and a complicated part of the country. I sent this out as my Shelf Subscription for August. It was an outlier for me. I'm not sure what all of my subscribers thought of it. But the reason I sent it out was because I knew people wouldn't read it unless I put it in their hands. And that is what Shelf Subscriptions are for. I was force reading people. But really it's a book that probably a lot of Southerners-- well, I don't know if a lot of Southerners will read, but they should. A lot of Southerners should read it. But it's book that will probably find its way in a lot Southern bookstores, but it might not be in your California bookstore or your Minnesota bookstore. And so I wanted to use the opportunity of my shell subscriptions to put this in people's hands who might otherwise miss it through no fault of their own.
[00:25:43] So I think even if you live outside the South, there is something in this book for you, partly because it's her memoir, but also because I like learning about other states and their histories and their complicated pasts. And what Alexis Okeowo does a great job about is she is talking about their past, but she's also talking about the state's future. And she is taking about the immigration crisis through the lens not only of her parents, but the large farming population in Alabama. And so she writes about that really well. It had been a long time since a work of historical nonfiction had hooked me. And it also, I think, lends itself to pick up and put down a bull reading because the chapters do feel like connected essays, maybe more than a full through line. But if you live in the South or you want to understand more about why so many people stay or the history of the South, I think Alexis Okeowo does a fantastic job of analyzing a variety of issues. And again, through her personal lens on issues like immigration, the civil rights movement, prison reform, and more, but also providing a deep historical perspective. This is a fascinating book to me because it doesn't really fit soundly in one genre. I would not put this in humor memoir. I would shelve it in nonfiction, but it equally could find its home in history politics if we're talking in terms of The Bookshelf. I really liked this. If you've read it, I'd love to know because I haven't seen it a ton of places, but it is very worth your time and that's why I would include it on this list.
[00:27:15] So, Cherished Belonging by Gregory Boyle, Awake by Jen Hatmaker, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li, Bone Valley by Gilbert King, and Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo. That would be my stack that I would hand you for Nonfiction November.
[00:27:37] This week, I'm reading The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne.
[00:27:38] Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website:
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at:
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 friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Gene Queens, Beth, Jammie Treadwell…
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins
Annie Jones: 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 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.
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