Episode 527 || April Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in April. You get 10% off your books when you order your April Reading Recap. Each month, we offer a Reading Recap bundle, which features Annie’s favorite books she read that month.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 527), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst (releases 7/8)
Flashlight by Susan Choi (releases 6/3)
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (releases 5/20)
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
April Reading Recap Pairing - $50
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
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 Expecting Better by Emily Oster.
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]
“Facts alone couldn’t communicate the interior experience of being alone for so long in the blankness of the ocean, out of time, the only structure the rising and the setting of the sun.” - Sophie Elmbirst, A Marriage at Sea
[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 recapping the books I read in April. Before we get started, a thank you to everyone who’s left reviews for From the Front Porch. iTunes reviews and ratings are how new listeners can best find out about From the Front Porch and — as a result — find out about our indie bookstore, too.
Here’s a recent review from Laurie Ann: Great book suggestions A great resource for reading suggestions! Annie provides details to help every type of reader find new books to enjoy. And she's delightful to listen to!
Thank you for thinking so Laurie Ann. If you haven’t left a review, 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. Your reviews help us spread the word about not only our podcast, but about our small brick-and-mortar business, too.
[00:01:53] Now, back to the show. Okay, y'all, I was worried about April. I was worrying about April because it was the release of Ordinary Time into the world. I just wasn't sure how much bandwidth I would have for reading. And I didn't have much. I was about that. But what I did read, I really liked. And that's the good news. I mean, quantity wasn't bad, but we're going to mostly focus on quality today. Quality over quantity. So I kicked off the month-- actually ended March with A Marriage at Sea. This is the book that I led the episode with. It's by Sophie Elmhirst. This is a work of non-fiction that totally intrigued me when I was going through publisher catalogs. So this does not release until July 8th. This is a book that you'll need to preorder or request from your local library. But I think it's completely a summer book. So I do think that you should read it for summer. I saw this in the publisher catalog and immediately downloaded it to my Kindle because I thought this looks like something that would be really intriguing. I don't know that it fits the bar or fits the requirements of Shelf Subscription. I actually had another July book already picked for Shelf Subscriptions, so it wasn't priority book. But when I was cleaning off my Kindled, I came across it and I thought, well, let me give this a go. And I couldn't put it down. I absolutely loved it.
[00:03:28] So this is a work of nonfiction; a narrative nonfiction. It tells the story of Maurice and Marilyn, who in the 70s they fell in love, got married, they lived in England, and neither one was super content with maybe a "normal" average life. They were more unconventional. And so they began looking into what they could do. I think they even contemplated living on a farm or something like that. But they ultimately decided to buy and renovate a small yacht. Yacht is perhaps maybe too generous of a term. These were not particularly wealthy people is my understanding. Maurice and Marilyn saved a lot of money. They worked really hard because they wanted to ultimately live an unusual, unconventional life. So they worked really hard, they bought this yacht, they fixed it up, and their goal was to sail from their home in England down to New Zealand. And then they were going to start their life over in New Zealand, not necessarily live off the grid, but kind of. And this is not a spoiler in any way, shape, or form. But they leave on their journey and they are victims of a shipwreck. There's like a breaching whale that runs into their yacht and they're left stranded in a remote part of the open sea.
[00:05:03] This is such a fantastically told adventure story. I could not get over that it was all real, that it a true story. Certainly there's all kinds of interesting details about the boat itself, about life on the open sea. Even before there was a shipwreck component, it was a pretty interesting read to me because it was all about this marriage and living this out of the ordinary life. And so even before the shipwrecks, I was intrigued. And then after the shipwreck, the story becomes a survival story. And the reason I think the book would be appealing-- well, I loved it regardless, but I think it will be appealing to readers like me is because not only is it about the adventure survival of it all, but it is also about Maurice and Marilyn and their marriage. And what makes their marriage tick and what their marriage work and can their marriage survive a shipwreck? Will they be able to survive a Shipwreck. So I wish I had more background on why Sophie Elmhirst wrote about this. There's some hints of why toward the end of the book, but not much detail is given about how she found out about this story because it took place in the 70s. But gosh, it was such an out-of-the-box, out-of-the-norm reading experience for me.
[00:06:29] I like narrative nonfiction. I'm drawn to it. I don't always make time for it in my current reading life, but I was thrilled that I did. It felt just so serendipitous. I had really just thought the description sounded good, thought the cover was intriguing, and then really, really loved it and cannot wait for it to be hand sold this summer. If you liked-- and I'm going to talk about Amity Gage later, but if you liked Amity Gaige's The Sea Wife that came out, I believe, in 2020, I think it came out during the pandemic, I think you'll love this. Of course, if you love a survival story, Cast Away, you name it, I think you'll be intrigued. It's almost like a real life Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson or something like that. I highly recommend it, especially maybe even if non-fiction is not your typical genre, this is totally compelling and I think you'll really enjoy it. So that is A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst.
[00:07:30] I also read electronically, (and I was surprised I did read this electronically) I also read Flashlight. This is by Susan Choi. She wrote Trust Exercise. She's a prolific literary fiction author, beloved, award-winning. I had not had a ton of luck with her books. I do believe I finished Trust Exercise. Maybe even Hunter and I did a podcast episode about that book. I cannot remember, but I do think it was a book where he really liked it and I was just a little ambivalent about it. The reason I picked this one up-- and I'll talk about it too in an upcoming new release rundown episode. But the reason I picked it up was because the premise is rooted in a mystery. So one of our characters is Louisa. She's a young girl walking with her father along the coast of Japan. They're on vacation with her mother. So it's her two parents and Louisa. She is walking with dad kind of at dusk, watching the waves come in. And then the next morning, Louisa's body is found. She is alive, but barely, and her father is nowhere to be seen. And the book kind of unspools from there. And I really wanted to use that word because so much unravels and unspools as the novel progresses. And I felt like I was in the hands of a genius. I feel like I finally am seeing what everybody already knew, which is that Susan Choi is an extremely talented novelist and storyteller.
[00:09:07] And this book it's Louisa's book. We get to watch her grow up. Again, I'm using ear quotes, but like recover from the trauma of losing her father. We also get the mother's perspective. Her mother is an American and come to understand what attracted her to Louisa's father, why she got married, some of the things that make her tick. Her story is really interesting and takes a lot of turns. And then we also, and maybe even mostly, get the story of Louisa's father. And he is an ethnic-born Korean, but he lived in Japan, was raised in Japan. And when I say the book unspools, it starts and really continues to be what happened to Louisa's father. But it's also historical fiction about the history of North and South Korea, what it was like maybe during the Korean War a little bit, some history of Japan, things I really knew nothing about and wouldn't have said I was curious about. But as I kept reading, I was completely drawn in and very invested in not only the individual character stories, but also this overarching history. I loved this book. I felt like it contained so many different facets and so many elements, but they all tied together. I've said this before, or I say this sometimes when I'm talking about a book that has multiple viewpoints or multiple storylines or timeframes. But I was never confused. I completely trusted Susan Choi and was completely enmeshed in the story.
[00:11:03] And I'm a little surprised by that because literary fiction is one of my favorite genres, but ever since 2020, can be really hit or miss. And I think that has to do with just my own probably broken attention span. But beyond that, even though I have maybe come back to a love of some literary fiction, it's not always successful for me reading electronically. And Flashlight is a book that I normally would not have read electronically because it is longer and I tend to lose interest. The Kindle is really convenient, but it is not my favorite way to read. But I downloaded Flashlight because I thought, well, let me just give it a go. Maybe I'll start it and then finish it when the physical book comes out or maybe I'll ultimately get an ARC. And I never did. Anyway, I had no trouble. I read this in the car on the way to Chattanooga on a trip. I read it before bed every night. I was very hooked. I was very connected to the characters and very connected, to the storytelling. Maybe a comp could be The Many Daughters of Afong Mui. Perhaps also-- oh gosh, what was the name of that book? Let me think. Gosh, maybe it's Swift River by S.E. Chambers. That might be it. Just another novel where there's a missing father who kind of is at the core of the book. Also, one more comp for you. I think Angie Kim's novels could be listed here as well. So if any of those books are appealing to you or you've liked those, I think you will like Flashlight by Susan Choi. This book releases June 3rd. Don't be mad, you can pre-order, or go ahead and get on your library hold list.
[00:12:53] Then I read a book that is out now, and it is called Heartwood by Amity Gage. I mentioned her because she is the author of The Sea Wife. So Heartwood is her newest book. This is one that, let me think, Olivia, Erin, and I have all read. We all loved it. It's definitely in our Venn diagram where there's a mystery at the center, which is appealing to Olivia. And maybe even an adventure story, a survival story, but then there's also some real character-driven components. So we have three women at the heart of this book. Valerie, who is a hiker, who's gone missing on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Beverly, who's not necessarily a detective, but like a park ranger, somebody who works for the parks, who it is her responsibility to help find people who are missing. And then Lena, who is this lady in her late 70s, who lives in an assisted living facility and she kind of considers herself an armchair sleuth. So you have these three women. To me, Valerie and Beverly are the two most compelling voices that we hear from; though, Lena certainly plays an important role, but Valerie and Beverley were my favorites.
[00:14:13] I think Olivia frequently talks about books where there's a good detective versus she gets really tired of books where the detectives are not good at their jobs, particularly women detectives. Beverly is a great sleuth. She's a great detective. She's great park ranger. She adds so much to the book. And then Valerie, we just watch her story kind of unfold through diary entries as she is trying to survive while lost in the woods of Maine. I liked so many things about this book. I liked the trio of older protagonists. Valerie is the youngest, I think at 42. I loved the setting, the Appalachian Trail. Certainly, if you liked Cheryl Strayed's Wild, you will like this. If you liked and read Kimi Cunningham Grant, which you should try her if you've not, but her book, The Nature of Disappearing, if you like Peter Heller, all of those kinds of books where it's like great nature writing, matched with a really compelling story. Because you want to know what happened to Valerie and you want know if she's going to survive being lost in the main wilderness for this long.
[00:15:22] I have noticed that a lot of the books I'm gravitating toward right now are more adventuresome in nature, survival in nature. I think that's because I'm looking for something that's really compelling. Olivia always points out short chapters. This book had short chapters. I was hooked from the first page. In Amity Gaige's book, The Sea Wife, there is a survival element, there is if I'm not mistaken, almost like a book within a book component. This plays with some of those same themes where you've got Valerie's diary entries, you've maybe a little bit of poetry and then the story itself. I loved this. I think it's a great crossover title. So if you are an Olivia reader, I think you'll like this. If you're an Annie or Erin reader, I also think you'll like it. Great summer book, too. Yeah, really liked this one. It's Heartwood by Amity Gaige.
[00:16:16] Lots of survival stories this month. I don't know if that's reminiscent of me trying to survive or not. Okay. Then another book that I downloaded to my Kindle and I totally thought, until I was doing research for this episode, this book was out already. So that's my bad. It is Things in Nature Merely Grow. This is by Yiyun Li. I love Yiyun Li's Book of Goose, which came out a few years ago. One of my favorite books of the year, I think, when it released. This is her memoir and it releases on May 20th. So of the books I've mentioned, Heartwood is the one that is out right now. Things in Nature Merely Grow releases on May 20th. I believe I thought this was out already because there was a great lengthy excerpt in the New Yorker from this book. And that is what I would tell you to read. I'll put a link in the show notes. And the reason I want to do that is because I saw this book in the catalog. And I, of course, ordered it for the store, but I was hesitant about reading it myself. And that is because this is a memoir about the deaths of Yiyun Li's two sons. They both chose suicide. Vincent, her older son in 2017, and James, her younger son in 2024.
[00:17:35] In fact, I'm going to read for you a sentence that opens the book that I think sets the tone for the type of book that this is. "There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both. Vincent in 2017 at 16, James in 2024 at 19. Both chose suicide and both died not far from home." So when I came across this book in the catalog, I was curious about it. I like Yiyun Li. I ordered it for the store, but I did not know if I was going to read it. And then there was a piece in the New Yorker published at the end of March that was essentially an excerpt from the book. And I thought it was astoundingly beautiful, moving, stark, realistic. And so I downloaded the e-book to my Kindle and read it that way. And there is no denying the heaviness of this book. Certainly that sentence sets the tone. What I think you should do as a reader is read the New Yorker piece, if you'd like. And then if you love that as much as I did, then I do think the book would be worth reading.
[00:18:51] I believe Yiyun Li would not necessarily want this book included in the grief genre that I talk about so often here on the podcast. I don't know that she would want it compared to the Year of Magical Thinking or A Grief Observed or Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley. Certainly that is what it reminded me of, because as a bookseller, I'm constantly thinking of comp titles. But she writes a lot about how after her son Vincent's death, she wrote a book essentially for Vincent. And then after James's death, she struggled to know what to write. And this book is the result of that struggle. She talks a lot about obviously her personal life, her personal experiences with depression and suicidal ideation. She talks about her two sons with real love, with real motherhood in her voice. She talks about life after loss, and she writes a lot about classic literature, and her sons both sound brilliant. And so she talks about their various interests, weaves those into the narrative.
[00:20:09] But again, I don't know that she really wants this to be considered a grief book. I'll leave it up to you to decide where it fits, but I'm very glad I read it. It was brutal to read, but I really did love it. I think she's an incredibly gifted writer and I imagine this was an incredibly difficult book to write. You can almost sense that struggle with each page. This is not a book that sounds like it just flowed from her easily. So that is Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. I highlighted so many lines, paragraphs in this book. Again, I know she probably wouldn't want it to be considered a grief book, but I will say she also has a lot. There's a lot in this for those of us who might be accompanying others through their grief. There are some accidental lessons, I think, she puts in this books that I was really grateful to come across. So, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li out on May 20th.
[00:21:15] And then last but not least, I finished up John Green's Everything is Tuberculosis in audiobook format. I reviewed that book in the March episode. And then I downloaded Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. That book released earlier this month, but at the time I was listening to it as an ALC. That's an advanced listening copy by Libro.fm. The audiobook is narrated by Julia Whelan, as are all of Emily Henry's books. Here's the deal, every year I struggle to know should I wait until late April to read Emily Henry's books in print format or should I download the audiobook because then I get to listen to it before the book itself comes out? And it's a struggle every year, but for the past at least three years I have chosen to listen the audiobook. And would I prefer the physical format? Yes, I would. I like Julia Whelan. I think Julia Whelen does a fantastic job, particularly if you like more dramatization in your audiobooks, and she really does that well. And like I said, the past three years, it's almost like a tradition at this point, the struggle of knowing whether to do it or not, whether to listen to it or not, and then ultimately succumbing to temptation and going ahead and listening to it.
[00:22:27] So, anyway, I would prefer the physical book format, but I listened to this one. Our main character is Alice. Alice is, in my mind, a Zooey Deschanel, new girl type character, dresses really quirkily, '60s vibes. She's a journalist, she writes for, not a tabloid, I'm picturing like a People magazine kind of thing where she does like celebrity profiles and things like that. When we encounter Alice, she is in Little Crescent Island, Georgia, which I'm guessing here, I have not yet consumed any extraneous Emily Henry content, but it feels very Tybee Island coded. I immediately was like, oh my gosh, this is Tybee because it's supposedly off the coast of Savannah. Anyway, if you have been there, I think this book will immediately appeal to you because of the setting. And I do like that her books they're just fun to read spring, summer because of settings she chooses. This one's really fun. So kind of this Tybee Island stand-in called Little Crescent Island. She is there to try to interview Margaret Ives who is like this media mogul, the daughter of a media mogul. She married into this music royalty, he died, she became a recluse, like that kind of thing. And Alice has discovered that Margaret is living on Little Crescent Island and wants to do a story on her.
[00:23:57] Of course, while she is trying to do research and convince Margaret that she's the person to write her story, Hayden shows up and Hayden is a music reporter. He also is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Listen, Beach Read is one of my favorites of Emily Henry, so I immediately love these two writers competing. I love that element. This is up there for me. I really liked this book, and I felt like it covered a lot more territory than romance. I felt Emily Henry was exploring all kinds of character development and all types of characters. It wasn't just Hayden and Alice's story. It's very, very much Margaret's story. Which felt a little bit different, though I think you can see the writing on the wall in some of Emily Henry's previous books. I think I say this on an upcoming podcast episode, but I feel about Emily Henry like I do about Taylor Jenkins' read. I really just like her storytelling and it's a matter of ranking which ones I like better than the others, but she's kind of an auto-read for me and I think a lot of people feel that way. So I don't know yet where this one lands for me in terms of my Emily Henry rankings, but I really liked it. And I think we also get to see a little bit more of Emily Henry than the rom-com writer we all really love. So that is Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, listened to on audiobook, narrated by Julia Whelan.
[00:25:26] If you do listen to that one, I would love your thoughts on how we should be pronouncing and I'm going to spell it, the word C-R-O-I-S-S A-N-T. Okay? If you have opinions about that, you can message me on Instagram. Okay, those are the books I read in April. Now, we've been doing reading recap bundles with these episodes. For the reading recap episodes, we do these bundles. But for the last several months, because I've been reading so far in advance, including this month, a lot of these books don't come out for a couple of months. So this month the bundle is a pair. It's $50. It includes Heartwood and Great Big Beautiful Life. Actually, two really great books that I think you'd like to read in the physical format. You can find more details and the April pairing online through the link in our show notes, or go to bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number, that's 527 into the search bar.
[00:26:32] This week, I'm reading Expecting Better by Emily Oster.
[00:26:33] 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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