Episode 563 || What Would Jane Austen Read?
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie shares the modern books she would recommend to Jane Austen, in honor of Jane’s recent 250th birthday. Listen to find out what books Annie would put in Jane’s hands if she walked into The Bookshelf.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 563) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs by Heather Lende
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
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, Tiktok, 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 Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser.
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:
260108_FTFP_Episode 563_What Would Jane Austen Read_.mp3
[squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South. [music plays out]
How strange, she thinks, belief has grown upon her. Perhaps, she thinks, it is something like a mold. -Lauren Groff, Matrix.
[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 kicking off a new podcast series where I imagine what books I might hand sell to our favorite authors and fictional characters. First up, Jane Austen. If you like my book reviews here on the podcast, you might be interested in joining my private Instagram account, Annie's Five Star Books. For $50 a year, you can become a part of my bookish community online. Through the private Instagram account you'll get access to my book review, backlist, and frontlist titles. I host monthly Instagram story Q&As and share about the books I start but never finish. If you follow me personally online, you've seen my reviews for years. And of course, From the Front Porch listeners will always have access to free monthly reading recap episodes. The private Instagram is just a place, separate from The Bookshelf, where I get to be more detailed with my reviews, and five-star book club members can also choose if they want to order my five-star reads each month from the store. There's now a quarterly newsletter option for the social media averse as well. For more information or to sign up for 2026, visit annibjoneswrites.com/fivestar-book-club. There's a link in the show notes too. Now back to the show.
[00:01:59] A few months ago, during one of our Patreon porch visits, there's a plug for you for Patreon, podcast listener Courtney asked me what books I would recommend to my beloved March sisters. I loved that question and the resulting thought exercise so much. I decided I needed to try my hand at selecting books for other fictional characters and authors I love. And since we just wrapped up the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, she immediately came to mind. Last year, Rebecca Romney released Jane Austens' Bookshelf, which detailed the books and authors who actually inspired Jane Austen. But what would Jane read now in 2026? If she walked into The Bookshelf, what books would I put into her hands? Dysfunctional family lit? Theological Treatises? Good old-fashioned romance novels? How would a front-list regency romance hold up under scrutiny to someone who actually lived it? So here's what I came up with.
[00:03:02] First book on the stack for Jane would be Matrix by Lauren Groff. This book released in 2021. It's about 12th century poet and mystic Marie de France. And this would be historical fiction, even for Jane, which is part of the reason I picked it. It's a timeless novel to me, but I liked that Jane would not-- it wouldn't be too much of a thought exercise for Jane. This would be a historical fiction. It'd be something she already thought about, maybe even a history she knew about. It is feminist. It is about leadership, ambition, and communal life. Of course, there is a convent and lots of nuns. I think that appealed to me. Something that people maybe often forget about Jane Austen is that her father was an Anglican priest and faith was important to Jane. It makes its way into her novels. She's also not afraid to kind of stick her-- not stick her thumb at it. What's the word I'm trying to find? She's not afraid of make fun of it either. She likes to poke fun at clergy and things like that in her fiction. And so I thought this would be a great book to start her off. It's a female woman author, so I thought she would really like Lauren Groff and it's historical fiction, even for Jane, who is in some sense, historical fiction in her own right, although she is a real person. You know what I'm saying. So this would be the first book I would put on the stack.
[00:04:25] The second book I'd sell to Jane Austen or try to sell to Jane Austen is Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey. This is kind of an extension of the Annie Recommends podcast episodes where I give a book stack to customers based on a particular genre. To me, this the same exercise, only we're selling to a person instead of we're a genre or a stack. This is selling to Jane. And so I don't know a ton about Jane Austen. I'm not some kind of expert. I'm not a podcast listener, Kristen May, our resident English major. But what I know about Jane and what I have read about her works, I do think she would be interested in Christianity. And because Sarah Bessey is Canadian, there is a maybe a Commonwealth connection between Sarah and Jane. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but at least that's what I was thinking when I was about, okay, what would I hand her? Would I handle her Henry Nowen, Barbara Brown Taylor? Like who would I put in her stack? And I just thought, well, Sarah Bessey has this beautiful book that released, I want to say in 2019 or 2020. It is very Barbara Brown Taylor-esque and it is deeply memoir. And I would be curious Jane Austen's thoughts on memoir. Sarah Besey has written a lot about theology and Christianity, but this one is deeply personal. It was written after an accident and after a health scare and she really was grappling, I think, with not only her faith, but her body. And writing a little bit more about her body and her spirituality. There is a scene in this book that still sticks out in my mind. I'm pretty sure I have the hard back of this book, but there is a seen where Sarah and her husband visit the Pope. I think at that time it was Pope Francis, I believe. But there's this scene where she is realizing that maybe, as I recall, there's a graciousness with which she handles Catholic faith in a way that she hasn't previously. I think meeting the Pope made her realize, oh, these rituals that people partake in, they are deeply meaningful. They have a deeper purpose behind them. And so she is reckoning with that because her own faith is more in the maybe holiness tradition, Pentecostal tradition. So, anyway, I really loved that. That scene stuck out to me so much. And I would be curious for Jane's perspective on not only memoir, but spiritual memoir. And then how Christianity maybe has changed or not changed since her time on earth. And I do think this would compare well or sit on a shelf well with Matrix. So, Matrix is first on the stack, then Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey.
[00:07:17] Would I, for one shining moment, be tempted to hand sell my book, Ordinary Time, to Jane Austen? Yes, I would. Would I do that? No, I wouldn't. Do you know why I would not? I'm not sure how well I would handle Jane Austen's scrutiny. I'm just not. Let's be real. I'm proud of Ordinary Time. I have read sentences from the book-- well, no, I haven't. I haven't read the book since I published it. But when I have attended book clubs, some people have read a sentence or two to me and I have thought, oh, that's better than I thought. Or, oh, that's good. But would I feel comfortable taking my work and putting it into Jane Austen's hands? Absolutely not. But you know what I would want? I do think she'd like an essay collection. And so I would want to hand sell her an essay connection. And so, I think I would be brave enough to sell Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs by Heather Lende. I'm pretty sure I've talked about this deep backlist cut before. This was released in 2011, 2012. For a while, it was one of the few books I had multiple copies of. I think I've since given them away. But this is the book that I read and I thought, well, I could write something like that. An Ordinary Time to me is a comp title to take good care of the gardens and the dogs. Heather Lende is a writer and journalist living in small town Alaska. These are the essays she wrote about small town Alaska life as an obituary writer for the small town newspaper. So all the things that Annie B. Jones loves, but I also think things that Jane Austen might love. She writes a lot about small town village life. I think this would be just fun to give her a look at what rural America is like, something that I think she could not have begun to comprehend in her time on earth. And so each chapter is about Heather Lende's life. It's about the characters, the people that she interacts with in her small town community. It's about the landmarks and the places in her community. I'd like to think Jane Austen would like Ordinary Time, but I'd be too scared to find out. And so, instead, I would hand her Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. I do think she would like it. Again, very curious to know what she might think of the personal memoir. Like, would she be turned off by the personal nature of these essays? I don't know. Would she find them too vulnerable? I'm not sure. But do I think she would appreciate the small town rhythms almost like something like All Creatures Great and Small? I think there's overlap between All Creatures Great and Small and Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. Also that sentence-- well, I think it's a great book title, first of all, but that sentence, take good care of the garden and the dogs, I think that would make sense to Jane. That you take care of what's right in front of you. You take care your family, you take of your people and you take care of your places. And so, anyway, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs by Heather Lende would be the third on the stack.
[00:10:07] Now, remember, I believe that Jane Austen took her faith very seriously. And so I think, like me, she would be intrigued by faith in fiction. Even though, again, she just kind of maybe danced around it or made references to it as just part of life. At first, I was going to put Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in her hands, but instead I'm going to go with Transcendent Kingdom. Part of the reason for this is because of Jane's relationship with her siblings. So she had a sister, Cassandra, who she was very close with. We'll talk about sisters in a second. But she also had several brothers, including a brother, I believe, named Henry. Who she was particularly close with. And so I have always said that Homegoing is Yaa Gyasi's kind of epic macro novel, and Transcendent Kingdom is kind of her quieter micro novel. It's a look at a brother and sister, Nana and Gifty. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I did not listen to this audio book. I read the physical book and so it's spelled N-A-N-A, but now I'm like, is it Nana? Anyway, the book is about this brother-sister dynamic. Particularly Gifty who is this scientific brain, immigrant kid living in Alabama, and she loses her brother to the opioid crisis or the opioid epidemic. And so she is grieving and kind of helping her mother deal with her grief, but she also has her own to hold. And the book is a beautiful-- there are to me rarely books about brother-sister relationships. But this is a lovely book about brother-sister relationships. It's also a really lovely book about science versus faith. And so Gifty is this really intelligent scientist. She has high expectations of herself. And yet, as she dives deeper into her collegiate experience, her career, she finds that she cannot shake off the faith of her childhood, no matter how hard she tries and that her faith kind of keeps infiltrating her scientific life. I loved this book. As I recall, I think it got really good reviews when it released, but it wasn't quite the smash hit that Homegoing was. And I think that's a real shame. I think it's just because sometimes you're either a sweeping novel person or a quiet novel person. And Yaa Gyasi I think wrote both. And so it's a matter of what kind of reader you are as to which you'll enjoy more. I think Jane's works are actually quite micro. They're quiet books. What is that famous Twitter post or meme where it's like all of Jane Austen's books are just people walking around? Like, it's just people going from house to house. And so that's why I wanted to recommend this quieter book just about a family dynamic, a brother-sister dynamic. And I would love to know her thoughts on it. I think she would really like it. So that is Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
[00:13:04] While we're on the subject of science and faith, I really think this would be the winner. The goal of a bookseller is we're going to give you a stack of books and sure, would we like you to buy the whole stack? Yes, of course, we would. Of course, we'd like for you to buy the full stack of the books. But if just one of those books is a win, then we will have done our jobs. And I think if Jane Austen walked into The Bookshelf and I handed her the stack; I think that this is the one she'd walk away with. And that is the Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. This book released in 2017, it has a gorgeous hardback cover. I do not know if the paperback is the same, but to me the hardback was a work of art. This is set in London and Essex in 1893. I felt like it was time that I hand sold a book to Jane that would be recognizable to her. The World of 1893, I think, would be fairly recognizable to Jane. It might be a little future thinking, but I think she would recognize London and Essex and the voice of Sarah Perry. This is a book about Cora and William. Cora is, I believe, a widow. Yes, I think she's a widow with a young son. And she's living in London, but maybe after the death of her husband, she decides to move to Essex, to the coast. And she moves to this town that is currently reeling because they think they are seeing a serpent, like almost like a Loch Ness monster type figure off the coast. And this is a very atmospheric novel. Picture Darcy stomping through the field with his shirt half unbuttoned kind of thing. That is the vibe. It is very foggy, it's atmospheric. And so Cora is a scientific mind, like Gifty in Transcendent Kingdom. So Cora is a naturalist, very much somebody who believes that what we see is what there is, all there is. And so she is a little turned off by these villagers who she thinks have kind of made up this fairy tale, this folklore about this monster in the swamp kind of thing, this monster in the water. And she winds up befriending the town rector, vicar. I believe he was played by Tom Holland. There is a TV adaptation of this that I actually really like. I think the book is better, but maybe I'll re-watch the Essex Serpent this winter. It feels very wintery. Anyway, she befriends the rector, the village priest, whose name is William. William and his wife have an interesting relationship, but William and Cora develop this really lovely friendship. And it's a beautiful kind of platonic relationship because he is a man of faith and she is a woman of science. And they have these really interesting conversations, kind of reminiscent of Francis and Bernard, you know my love for that book. So they develop this friendship, in part because despite one of them being a person of science, one of the being a personal faith, they both don't want the villagers to succumb to hysteria over this thing that may or may not exist. And they kind of debate whether this thing exists or not, but what they can agree upon is that they don't the village to lose its head over this folktale. And so I adore this book. It's a chonker, as I recall. Is that a word? It's big. It's thick. And I think Jane would appreciate that. I actually think she would be more comfortable with a long novel than the rest of us would be. And if I had to guess what the winner of the stack is, I believe it would be The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.
[00:16:43] Nevertheless, I would persist and I would stick two more books on this stack. One is Tom Lake by Anne Patchett. Released in 2024, this is a mother-daughter story. And my notes say sisters with an exclamation point. Because when I did my Jane Austen year a few years ago, what I was struck by in particular by the book Sense and Sensibility is how much these books are about sisterhood. And it is perhaps why sometimes Austen is hard for me. I do not have sisters. I don't know what that relationship is like. I observe it in my cousins. I observe in my mother. There's a part of me that is almost jealous of that relationship. It looks so different. Oh my gosh, it looks so different from brother sister dynamics. You think it's fresh on my brain because we're coming off the Christmas season, but think sisters with in White Christmas with Rosemary Clooney. I just feel like I will never fully understand the sister dynamic, but books have often shown me what that looks like. And I think Anne Patchett does a beautiful job of exploring the sister relationship and the sister dynamics in Tom Lake. Here's a couple of reasons I'd want to include this book in the stack. First of all, she'd get a glimpse of our town. She'd get a glimpse of at that play, which I think she'd really love. I also think she writes Mrs. Bennet is such an interesting character and almost like a caricature, particularly as she is portrayed in film and TV adaptations. But honestly, she's a bit of a caricature in the book itself. And so I would love to know what Jane Austen might think of this matriarch looking back on her romances and her life and telling them to her daughters. I also would love to know somebody from the 1800s, what they might think of pandemic life. And this book is a little bit about pandemics or about the pandemic for us the 2020 pandemic. But it's a lot about, or at least in part about the natural world. One of the things I remember most about Tom Lake is its exploration of Michigan and how I finished that book and immediately looked at Jordan and said, "We got to go to Michigan and pick cherries." Like we have to go, it's on my bucket list now. I have to eat a fresh cherry in Michigan. And so I think Jane, who in my imagination spends a lot of time traipsing around, I think she would like this book in which the women traipse around and pick cherries and sit around talking. And, again, in her books, most of the people are just traipsing around and then sitting and talking. And that is what Tom Lake is. That is Tom Lake absolutely is. So Tom Lake by Ann Patchett would for sure go on this stack.
[00:19:27] And then what kind of bookseller would I be? What kind of Bookshelf bookseller would I be? If I did not also walk by the Conquer a Classic in cap and say, "Oh Jane, you know who I really think you'd like? I think you like the American novelist and short story writer, Flannery O'Connor." And I do, I have often thought it's part of the reason that honestly, personal moment alert, I was hesitant to have children because so many of the women writers who I love and respect were single or childless. And I wondered about that. I wondered about that in relationship to creativity. I felt a deep kinship with writers for a really long time, with a lot of these writers for really long time, and I wondered if I would be forfeiting that connection if I had kids. End of personal moment. So I do think Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor exist on a similar plane in my brain because these both were women who were single, they both died younger than they should have, and yet in the short amount of time they were on the earth they put out so much work. So much work. Jane Austen was 41 when she died, Flannery O'Connor was 39 when she died. Both of them, their faith certainly played a role in their work. I think about Jane Austen and her father being a rector and the faith that she carried throughout her life. And then, of course, Flanery O' Connor deeply Catholic and that infiltrated her work as well, perhaps more overtly than Jane's did. But these are women who I think would have a lot to sit around and talk about. And so Would I want Jane Austen to read The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor with us and then listen to me and Hunter talk about it and weigh in? Yes, I would. I think I'd be brave enough. I would not be brave to hand sell her Ordinary Time, but I do think I would be brave enough to say, hey, listen to me and my friend talk about Flannery O'Connor and talk about this book together. I also would love to know what Jane Austen would think of the short story and what she would think about that format. I think she'd like it. I think she'd be a little envious and I think might try her hand at it if she were to read Flannery O'Connor. I think she might read it and think, well, I can do this. I also think she be in awe of how dark Flannery O'Connor goes. And I think she might, I don't know, be intrigued by how women writers have changed and evolved since her time. And so I would love to get her thoughts on that. And so, I would to hand sell her. The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, and then have her come back into the store and tell me all of her thoughts and opinions because I know she'd have them. I just bet that Jane was a relatively opinionated person. I think you can sense it. I think you can sense in her work. And I feel like she would come back and tell exactly what she thought about the Complete Stories. And I don't think she'd like all of them, by the way. I don't think she would like all them. But I think there's definitely an overlap in the Venn diagram between Flannery O'Connor and Jane Austen. And it would be wild to see her get to read that work. Like I have a big grin on my face just thinking about it.
[00:22:38] Unintentionally, when I put together the stack, so I typed up this list yesterday in preparation for recording today. And I typed this list without a second thought. These are like my gut-- because that's what hand-selling books is like. You don't have time to research. Now, did I research these? Sure. But I made the list quickly. And I did that because I'm trying to stay true to the format of the show, which is, this is not a very scripted podcast. This is really what it's like to hand sell books is a customer comes into the store and then you've kind of got to run around and put together a stack. I literally did that. I haven't gotten to do that a ton in the last year, but over the holiday season, I certainly did it. And it's one of my favorite things to put together a stack and to kind of try to find the next book that somebody's going to read. So when I typed up this list and put together the stack, I did not intentionally do only women authors, but I think that that worked out really well because I think Jane and her writing have had an impact on all of these writers. There's no way she couldn't have had an impact on these writers, and so to put Lauren Groff, Sarah Bessey, Heather Lende, Yaa Gyasi, Sarah Perry, Ann Patchett, Flannery O'Connor in a stack together, those authors, and to put them in the hands of the woman who perhaps never knew what an inspiration she would be or how her literary legacy would have such a lasting impact. I don't think Austen knew, Jane knew that that was possible. Who could? How would you know? But I think female authors have a real, they owe something to the writers who went before. And so I like the idea that even accidentally I put together all of these women writers who undoubtedly were impacted by Jane.
[00:24:30] So, Matrix by Lauren Groff, again, feminist set a little bit in the-- not necessarily the wilderness, but certainly there's a natural element to this book. There's a nature writing element to the book. It's historical fiction, would even be historical fiction to Jane about the 12th century poet and mystic. Dealing with faith, leadership, ambition, communal life, I particularly loved what Matrix had to say about female and feminine ambition. I think we often think it looks drastically different from male ambition, and I'm not sure it always does. So, anyway, Matrix by Lauren Groff. Then Miracles and Other Reasonable Things. We're going to try our hand at memoir. We're going to see what Jane thinks about a spiritual memoir, see what she has to think about Christianity across the pond. Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs by Heather Lende. We're going to give Jane Austen a taste of small town, rural life, which I think looks the same as the small town rural life that she lived, only maybe a little bit different, but perhaps not as different as we think. Then Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi where Jane gets to read about the exploration of science and faith and a brother-sister dynamic that might remind her of her own. Then we're going to do the Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, where Jane will perhaps feel most at home in this work because of the length of it, because of atmosphere and the setting. London and Essex, 1893, not too far off from the time period in which Jane actually lived.
[00:26:02] I think she will fall in love with Cora and William. She might be a little scandalized by William, but I would love-- again, that relationship mostly stays, as I recall, and I'm conflating it a little bit with the TV show, but I believe in the book, that relationship stays platonic. So I'd be interested to see what she thought of the portrayal of clergy because of her own portrayal of clergy. And then Tom Lake by Anne Patchett. We have to put Anne in there somewhere, don't we? And I think of Anne's books, I think I would want Jane's opinion on Tom Lake and the mother-daughter of it all. Plus, I'd want her to get a glimpse and kind of a snippet of our town. And then last but not least, again, because I'm doing my job as a Bookshelf bookseller, The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, where I get to see Jane's opinion of Southern Gothic lit, but I also get to try to sell her a Patreon membership where we see what Jane thinks about another woman writer who lived under similar circumstances to her own, honestly. I certainly think those writers have something in common and I think it would be fun to get to them read each other's work.
[00:27:08] So that would be my book stack for Jane Austen. Am I an English major? No, I am not. Are these the books that actually influence Jane? No, they are not. You can read Rebecca Romney's Jane Austen's Bookshelf for that. This is an imaginative exercise where I'm really thinking, what would I hand sell them in 2026? What would I hand sell my favorite fictional characters? What would hand sell my favorite writers if time travel existed? What book stack would Jane Austen take home from The Bookshelf. And I'd like to think these are some good picks. If you want to share what you might recommend for Jane Austen, please come over and comment on our Instagram post at Bookshelftville. I'd love to hear what books you might recommend for Jane. Yeah, I'm excited to explore this series.
[00:27:57] This week, I'm reading Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schlesser.
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:
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