Episode 556 || Conquer a Classic 2026 Announcement
This week on From the Front Porch, we announce our Conquer a Classic book club selection for 2026! We’re excited to announce A Year With Flannery – a communal exploration of Georgia author Flannery O’Connor’s short stories (and novels). Listen to learn how to join our From the Front Porch Patreon Conquer a Classic book club (you’ll also find details below).
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 556) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Conquer a Classic 2026 Collection
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
This bundle includes
The Complete Stories
The Violent Bear it Away
Wise Blood
Mystery & Manners: Occasional Prose
Now is the perfect time to join the From the Front Porch Patreon community and our Conquer a Classic Book Club. One perk of being a Patreon member is being a part of our super-popular, year-long Conquer a Classic book club! Each year, Annie and Hunter select a classic book and read it with our Patreon community over the course of the year.
Our Conquer a Classic book club begins in January 2026. Your Conquer a Classic orders ship by Friday, December 12.
Join our Conquer a Classic book club:
Step 1. Join the Patreon here. You’ll unlock bonus episodes of the podcast where Annie and Hunter discuss Flannery’s works, plus discussion forums with other Conquer a Classic book club members.
Step 2. Buy your copy of THE COMPLETE STORIES or your Conquer a Classic bundle here. Your order will include an exclusive reading guide and bookmark. Your order will ship by Friday, December 12.
On Patreon, you can choose from two different tiers to join our Conquer a Classic book club:
For $5/month, you get:
Monthly Conquer a Classic recap episodes with Annie and Hunter for THE COMPLETE STORIES
Monthly Porch Visits on Zoom with Annie
For $20/month, you get:
Monthly Conquer a Classic recap episodes with Annie and Hunter for THE COMPLETE STORIES
Monthly Porch Visits on Zoom with Annie
Quarterly book club conversations about O’Connor’s books: WISE BLOOD, THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY, and MYSTERY AND MANNERS
Biannual movie recap episodes with Annie and Hunter: FLANNERY (2019) and WILDCAT (2023)
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]
“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood [as music fades out] 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.
[00:00:44] Since 2020, Hunter McClendon 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).
[00:01:48] So in 2020, we read Anna Karenina. In 2021, Middle March. 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 O'Connor's National Book Award-winning collection. All of our Patreon tiers: the $5, $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'll 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.
[00:03:13] 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 O'Connor's longer works. In February, I'll post a discussion guide of her novel, Wise Blood. In May, we'll post one for the novel The Violent Bear It 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.
[00:04:33] I'll also be recording a video intro to each work. These 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 accommodate that and to play around with the need for a book club format, but not really knowing how we're going to all meet on Zoom together, all of these book club conversations for Wise Blood, the Violent Bear It Away, and Mystery and Manners will all take place on Patreon in the comments together. I'll post the 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 O'Connor's work.
[00:05:49] 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. 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, 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.
[00:06:59] 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 printed 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 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. That's to conquer the classic. To conquer The Complete Stories, plus to read and discuss O'Connor's 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 O'Connor's works. That's The Complete Stories, Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, and Mystery and Manners, is available at a discounted price of $68 on The Bookshelf website. 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.
[00:08:23] All of this information, everything I've just said, can be found on our Patreon page. That's patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. 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 the deadline of December 2nd. So Keila 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/fromthefrontporch/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 the plan. That's the 2026 Conquer a Classic.
[00:09:29] 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 Conquer a Classic. We've tackled a tome since 2020 now. So how many books did I count at the beginning? What is that? One, two, three, four, five, six. 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 not necessarily running out of classic tomes to conquer together. But when you're trying to look for a 1,000-page book or an 800 to 1,000 page book, you are limited. And we've talked before about doing Jane Eyre or somehow 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.
[00:10:43] 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. I'm excited as a reader. 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 often read by the general public. And this is just my opinion as a bookseller. I'm selling books at The Bookshelf. I don't see a ton of short story collections sell.
[00:11:59] And even when I was talking to my mom, 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 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 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 is just so cool to me. 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 at Patreon, patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. 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.
[00:13:21] 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 Middle March 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 or hear. I hope you can hear how excited I am. 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 I still have the note in it from that professor. It 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 2021 is probably the last time 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 think this is going to be really fun. I think it's going to 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.
[00:14:58] This week I'm reading Whidbey by T. Kira Madden.
[00:15:08] 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. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us over on Patreon, where we have 3 levels of support - Front Porch Friends, Book Club Companions, and Bookshelf Benefactors. Each level has an amazing number of benefits like bonus content, access to live events, discounts, and giveaways. Just go to: patreon.com/fromthefrontporch
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.