Episode 583 || May 2026 Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in May. You get 10% off your books when you order your May Reading Recap bundle. 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 583), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
May Reading Recap Bundle - $71
Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2nd, 2026)
Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel
The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand
Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2nd, 2026)
Go Gentle by Maria Semple
Anywhere Else by Rachel Knox
The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor
Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel
Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand
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 listenting to The Other Florida by Gloria Jahoda (unavailable to order).
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.
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]
“I like where I sit, even if I can't explain why. My faith is in this place itself, its sacredness, something like a natural divinity.”
Rachel Knox, Anywhere Else.
[as music fades out]
[00:00:40] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Book Shelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm recapping the books I read in May. 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 for the year, you can become a part of my bookish community online. Through the private Instagram account, you'll get access to my book reviews, 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, then you've seen my reviews for years, and of course, From the Front Porch listeners will always have access to these free monthly Reading Recap episodes. The private Instagram is simply a place separate from tThe 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 a quarterly newsletter option for the social media-averse too. For more information or to sign up for the 2026 group, it's never too late, visit anniebjoneswrites.com/fivestar-book-club. There's a link in the show notes too.
[00:01:54] Every month here on From the Front Porch, I like to give short reviews of the books I read, and so I am back with my May reviews. I had such a great reading year Q1, and Q2 hasn't been bad. You can just see that my life gets a little more complicated starting in Q2. I signed Isaac up for, I was going to say weekly, but no, my friends, in fact, they are daily swim lessons in a neighboring city and that has really messed with my reading mojo. And I naively thought, "Well, I'll read during his swim lessons." But, oh no, my child is not actually, eight years old. He's 11 months old, and these are 10-minute lessons, and he screams the whole time. So it's not actually a conducive reading atmosphere. So I have been listening to some audiobooks. We'll get to that. But I had a decent May in terms of my reading life. Maybe I read some fewer books than I did in definitely in March. But overall not a bad month, especially considering the chaos that is May. So I'm going to kick us off with a book that I think a lot of us are probably anticipating, and that is Whistler by Ann Patchett. This book came out on June 2nd, so if you haven't gotten your copy, you still got plenty of time. Saying I'm an Ann Patchett fan feels like saying I like M&M's or something that is universally beloved or appreciated. But I really do like Ann Patchett, patron saint of bookstores. I fell in love with her nonfiction, as I have stated here on the podcast many times, and it wasn't until Commonwealth and The Dutch House that I really fell in love with her fiction. And since that era, I have bought in. I have some podcast listeners who I know are kind of the reverse, and they prefer the Bel Canto era of Ann Patchett fiction, maybe State of Wonder Ann Patchett.
[00:03:52] And so I think it depends on what era of Ann you prefer as to whether you will like Whistler or not. I loved it. It is most similar to Tom Lake in terms of tone and sensibility, at least to me. It feels very similar to that type of quiet storytelling. Our main character is Daphne. She and her husband are meandering through The MET one afternoon when her husband whispers to her that someone is following them or somebody is watching her. And so they kind of joke like a married couple would, but really, this man keeps following them through The MET and eventually Daphne's husband approaches him, and it turns out his name is Eddie Triplett, great character name, and Eddie was Daphne's stepfather for a brief period when Daphne was a little girl.
[00:04:40] And I'll be honest, at first, I kept waiting for something nefarious to happen, forgetting that I was in the middle of an Ann Patchett novel. I don't know, I just kept waiting for some kind of bribe or deep, dark family secret, and that is not the story of Whistler. That is not what is happening here at all, in a good way, and I mean that complimentary. I just kept waiting for another shoe to drop, which is kind of who I am as a person, and that is not this kind of book. This book is hopeful and thoughtful. Sweet feels like it's doing the book a disservice, and it probably is. So I won't say sweet. I'll say tender. And it is all about Daphne and Eddie, and the relationship that they had when Daphne was a little girl. And then now that Daphne is an adult and Eddie is in the winter of his life, they reconnect. The book has this beautiful painting of a horse on the cover. This is not a horse book. This is not Perestroika in Paris. This is not something like that. Now, there is a horse story that I will not spoil for you, and the cover totally makes sense, but I admit that I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a horse book." No, this is not Black Beauty. This is not something like that. This is a stepfather-daughter story? A father-daughter story. And it is about reconnecting with our past selves, and maybe uncovering our family stories, even when our family stories aren't that dark or complicated.
[00:06:07] Families still have stories to tell even if they're not deep, dark, and twisted. I loved this one. I really did. I think I gave it four and a half stars, and that feels right to me still, weeks later, as I'm reviewing it to you. Again, very similar in tone to Tom Lake, to me, where you've got kind of a couple of different generations looking back on the past. You have people unpacking their stories, telling their stories. So that's what I kept seeing here, and I loved Tom Lake. I really did love that one. So if you loved Tom Lake, I suspect you will love Whistler. It's just Ann Patchett, as reliable as she is. When I say she's like M&M's, it's not meant in a derogatory way. It's meant in that she is consistently great. She is consistently good at what she does, in all manner of storytelling. I mean, she's done it all, right? She's done children's books, she's done essay collections, she's done novels, and she does them all quite well. And this is no exception to that. I think it is a very summer book, in that it starts in this great scene at The MET. So it would be very fun to read if you've got a trip to New York later this summer. I loved this one. It is Whistler by Ann Patchett. Well worth the praise it will undoubtedly receive.
[00:07:20] Then while I was reading Whistler in its physical format, I was listening to Go Gentle by Maria Semple. This was narrated by Saskia Maarleveld. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Excellently narrated, I might add. This is a great audiobook. You will recognize Maria Semple's name from Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, which came out really in my earliest days of The Bookshelf, and so it is very familiar to me for that reason. It's still a book I reference. I loved that book. Go Gentle is a perimenopausal fever dream, and I mean that. There is so much going on in Go Gentle. It was Oprah's pick, which I need to go listen. I think Oprah interviewed Maria Semple, and I still need to go listen to that interview because I'm so curious. I mean, Oprah is one of those celebrities whose picks I can never guess. I feel like she just diversifies her selections so well that I cannot predict accurately what she's going to choose. So she picked Go Gentle as her book club selection, and it is a book that is romance, art heist, very much upper middle class New York story, rich people behaving badly, Me Too story, comedy story. There's so much going on here that there were moments when I paused the audiobook and I was like, "What am I reading?" And yet I was hooked. I was hooked from the moment the book began. The story opens with this very-- my mouth is watering. This very beautiful depiction of a sandwich. The food writing is stellar. There's not a lot of food writing in this book, but it opens with this very memorable scene. The main character is Adora Hazard. Again, great character name. Adora is a great character name, and also does hint to that what is about to take place is not to be taken 100% seriously.
[00:09:14] I think you need to go into Go Gentle knowing it's a little bit satirical. It's meant to be funny because it is a wild ride. Not all of it worked for me. This is a four-star read for me, so I liked it, but not everything was firing on all cylinders. Not every element was great. But I think if you go into it reminding yourself, "Oh, right, this character's name is Adora Hazard, this is supposed to be fun." I think if you go in remembering this is supposed to be fun, then you'll enjoy it more. So Adora Hazard is a middle-aged philosopher, and she's a tutor to these young, wealthy kids. She's a stoic, and she teaches them philosophy and stoic philosophy. To me, one of the best parts of the book is this idea that Adora is in her mid to late 40s, maybe early 50s, I can't quite remember, but she's divorced, living in this apartment complex in New York with her daughter, this apartment building, and as apartments come available, she kind of fills them with her friends. She makes sure that her friends get their applications in quickly, and she is essentially filling this building with her single lady friends so that they can all age together, and the concept is something she calls the coven. If the whole book had been about this apartment building and these women, middle-aged, aging together, leading each other into their latter years, I would have loved that. The book does not stay there. The book then goes into kind of the wacky realm. We get an art heist type of story. Believe it or not, at some point, this book goes to Paris.
[00:10:56] We get a lot of mother-daughter drama, like teenage daughter interacting with middle-aged mom. We also get a slight romantic storyline. We get flashbacks to Adora as a young comedy writer, and that's where the kind of Me Too story element comes in. If you're listening to me describe this and you're like, "Annie, what?" Correct. And yet somehow a lot of it works. Not all of it, but a lot of it works. I had a great time. Go into it knowing it's funny. Listen to the audiobook, or the physical copy, I will say, has a really great cover that I wish I had on my shelf. So it's also one that I think you'd be very satisfied reading in print, and you might even be able to keep up with the storylines better if you're reading it in print. I loved it. The Estonia apartment building, I think, will live in my head for a little while at least. We frequently get requested on From the Front Porch stories about aging women or older women or whatever, and however you define that term. I guess as I get older I define it differently. But I really do think this is a book about middle age. That, to me, is what is happening here. There was a moment when I was messaging my friend, and I said, "Is this this a menopausal fever dream?" Because that is what it felt like. But I had a great time, and I think you might, too, especially if you're a woman of a certain age. And by that I mean 40 to 60. I think that age bracket will especially enjoy this one, though I don't think you have to be in that age bracket to enjoy this one. The writing is great. Maria Semple is a really great writer. She's a former television writer, and I think that shows particularly in the comedy. She does a better job of writing a comedy show, I think, than Curtis Sittenfeld did. Hot take. Okay, Go Gentle by Maria Semple. I really liked it, four stars.
[00:12:35] Then, this is so fun to me because I've said often before on From the Front Porch that I don't always get to read serendipitously anymore. I'm often reading quite purposefully. What advance listener copies are available from Libro. What print ARCs did I receive that I need to read for Shelf Subscriptions? What e-galleys did I download that I need to read before the month is out? But I was in my email inbox, and I got this email from Wildsam, which is a publisher of these very attractive little travel books. Maybe you've seen them. You probably have. They're not just at bookstores. In fact, you more likely are to have seen them at something like Anthropologie. So, they're these small travel guides. And I guess I get their newsletter. I don't know. What newsletters do we not get? So, I get the Wildsam newsletter. I never read it. But sorry, Wildsam, I never read it. The subject line of this one caught my eye. It was something about their favorite recommended reads recently, and that was intriguing to me. That's not normally what their newsletter is about. So I clicked the link, and it took me to a listing of a handful of books where if you want to travel this summer but you can't go anywhere, here are some books you could read about these places. And I scrolled, and nothing really caught my eye except it recommended a book about Florida called Anywhere Else by Rachel Knox. This is a University of Florida Press book, and I immediately thought, "Okay, let me see if I can get that at the Bookshelf." But then the next day... No, it might have been that morning. That morning, I went to Word of South to work the Word of South Festival in Tallahassee, and the Bookshelf booth was located two booths down from the University of Florida Press booth. And so I bebopped on over there, and there they had a copy of Anywhere Else, which is this paperback book with a shell on the cover. It's by Rachel Knox. She's actually a bookseller down in, I think, the Tampa area.
[00:14:21] This is her essay collection all about Florida, and I loved it. Do you have to be a Florida native to enjoy this book? No. In fact, I'd almost wish people outside of Florida would read it, so then they would stop talking about Florida as if we are the United States of America's redheaded stepchild, like as if it's Florida's fault. I'm sorry. As if it's Florida's fault? No. It's like blaming the South. So this is a great book kind of written with a cheerful chip on its shoulder about the beauty that is Florida, the complications that are Florida. It's a very eclectic collection. The writing does remind me a little bit of C.J. Houser, whose work I love. You'll recognize their work from The Crane Wife. Rachel writes with a lot of love, but also critique towards her home state. The essays are really unique in that, for example, one essay is about the drug opioid crisis in Florida, but it's really about Rachel's relationship with a high school classmate and friend. There's an essay about the ecology of Florida, but it's rooted in an episode of the X-Files. So definitely I think a millennial Floridian will especially appreciate this book, but the writing is so stellar. I was ripping and underlining. I actually loaned a copy to a friend, and then it's going to go to another friend because I think the writing is so good. I was really jealous, quite frankly, of some of the paragraphs where I just thought, "Oh my gosh, I wish I had written that." So great if you are from Florida, but honestly, if you have visited Florida or if you've ever thought to yourself, "My state is better than Florida," if you've ever thought that, then I think you should read this. I think you should read this. But in all seriousness, my friends who live particularly in Central Florida, she writes mostly about what I would call kind of Central Florida. But certainly as somebody from Tallahassee, I found a lot to appreciate here. It's just excellent. It's really excellent, and because it is from a smaller university press, I'm not sure it will get the attention it deserves, though maybe it will for the Florida Book Awards or something like that. But highly, highly recommend Anywhere Else by Rachel Knox. Fantastic paperback original essay collection about the state of Florida.
[00:16:39] As I am recapping these books, I'm realizing that May was actually a great reading month. I don't know what I'm talking about. These are great books. I felt like I was kind of tepid in my introduction, and that was a mistake. These are really good books. So next I read The Violent Bear It Away. This is by Flannery O'Connor. I did not remember if I had read this before or not. I had definitely read Wise Blood before, but I think this might have been my first time with The Violent Bear It Away. Though I don't know. College was a long time ago, my friends. Anyway, I picked up The Violent Bear It Away because that is the book our $20 a month patrons are reading in May. And so I needed to read it and do my video recap of it, and then type up my discussion questions. And I'm so glad I'm doing this. This has been really fun. The $20 a month patrons are kind of getting this Flannery O'Connor curriculum. So maybe $5 a month patrons, they're doing the typical Conquer a Classic. We're reading the complete stories together. But if you want a little bit more, we've been diving deeper at the $20 a month level. Hunter and I are going to watch a movie, and then do a recap of a movie about Flannery O'Connor. So there's a lot going on at the $20 a month level. And I had to read this. I had to read The Violent Bear It Away so that I could familiarize myself with the text and write the questions, et cetera. So I did, and I loved it. I can't decide if I liked it more than Wise Blood or not. I mean, even if they were not written by the same person, these books would belong beside each other on the shelf because they're dealing with the same themes of religion, faith, blind faith, prophets. There's a lot going on here, but I liked all of it. I liked all of it. So our main character at first seems to be Mason Tarwater. He is a self-proclaimed prophet. He's living with I believe his nephew, whose name is Francis. And no spoilers, but almost immediately in the narrative, Mason dies eating at the breakfast table, and his last request had been to Francis that he would bury Mason, that he would give Mason a burial.
[00:18:44] And in fact, he almost kind of prophesied that he would receive a Christian burial. And Francis gets a little drunk, gets a little tipsy, and next thing you know, the house is on fire. And he believes his uncle is being burned up, and so the prophecy did not come true, and this sends Francis, who already was questioning his uncle's expertise, his uncle's belief in his own prophetic abilities, he was already questioning that. So Francis decides to go visit his-- I think it's his cousin. Listen, it's the South. The family dynamics are all really, really messy. But Mason, the elder Tarwater, had an estranged nephew. I think that's what it is- nephew. And then Francis is his great nephew. So Mason had an estranged nephew named Raybern, who has kind of disavowed the faith and has turned his nose up at the Christian faith, and he is raising a child of his own. When Francis arrives, he realizes that his uncle had prophesied that he would have to baptize Rayburn's child. And then I'm not going to keep going. If I were to explain it, the narrative would be confusing. I did not find the book confusing, which is a testament to Flannery O'Connor's powers. Again, if you do not like themes of Gothic faith, where she's kind of making fun or poking fun or poking holes. She really wants you to see, I think, the inconsistencies, but the equal inconsistencies. The character of Mason Tarwater could border on caricature, but then so could Rayburn, where Rayburn has put all of his faith into what he can see and into the world he inhabits. There's a lot to unpack in a book club setting. I think that's why I like reading this kind of thing in a group. But I loved the book. I flew through it. The writing is outstanding. And it's Southern Gothic literature with an intense focus on religiosity and Christian faith, and I loved it. So that is The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor.
[00:20:43] Then I began listening to Enormous Wings. This is by Laurie Frankel. This was excellently narrated by Becky Ann Baker. But because I wanted to read this book as fast as I could, I wound up listening to half, and then reading half. So I will recommend either one of those experiences to you. I really liked this book. Laurie Frankel, of course, wrote This Is How It Always Is. She also wrote Family, Family. Both books I really liked. To me, she's like Amy Poeppel meets Jodi Picoult, because she's writing these very quirky, verging on dysfunctional families, but they all really love each other. And then she's also kind of taking these headlines, kind of ripped from the headlines stories, but making them so personal. So This Is How It Always Is features a trans child. And so the story about this family and how they respond to their child's needs is really, I think, so delicately told. And then that came out years ago. And then Family, Family deals with the idea of adoption, and the complications, and some of the trauma that is rooted in adoption and adoption experiences. And then this book is dealing with 77-- I think she's in her latter 70s, 76, 77-year-old Pepper Mills. What is up with these characters? Every character name I have mentioned so far, the Tarwaters, Pepper Mill... These are such good character names. Anyway, Pepper Mills is our narrator and our main character. She is in her late 70s. She is traveling the Texas highways, and gets pulled over by a car, by a cop. I forget what she has done, but she has broken kind of a minor traffic law. And she gets pulled over, and when her kids, her adult children, find out she's been pulled over, they take away her keys, her license, and they move her into a retirement community in Texas. And what you need to know is much like the Maria Simple book, this book is so wickedly funny to me. And I could have spent my whole time in this retirement community.
[00:22:52] Like the book that Olivia and I read during the pandemic that we really liked called Big Finish. This starts to feel like, oh, look at all these quirky characters that Pepper is meeting at this retirement community. But then Pepper gets pregnant, and that is the whole premise of this book. That is not a spoiler. The cover of the book has a pregnant belly on the front. Like, that is what this book is about. Yes, you have to suspend disbelief, and I think having to suspend that disbelief is preventing people from reading this book, which it's a real shame. Because obviously Laurie Frankel is trying to, and I think is succeeding at, looking at the inconsistencies that exist in the arguments around abortion, women's healthcare, bodily autonomy. She is clearly trying to say something, and I think she says it very well in this book. The characters so easily could become cartoonish, and they do not. They never do. You believe 100% in Pepper's humanity. You believe that she is pregnant, even though it defies all logic. How Laurie Frankel gets there, I think she... if you don't go deep diving actual research, I think you'll be fine. I think you'll be able to believe her explanation for how Pepper is pregnant. And then there's the Texas of it all. I think I went in a little worried that this was going to be a book that just, again, kind of treats... maybe I have a chip on my shoulder about how people talk about the South, talk about Florida. And so I'm not from Texas, but I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a book that really digs and pokes fun at Texas." It doesn't. Pepper and her family are really happy in Texas, and some of Pepper's dearest friends in the retirement community are from Texas. Does it poke fun at some of Texas's laws? Yes. But does it do so I think in a nuanced and interesting way? Yes.
[00:24:42] And while you have all that going on, really what I think this book is about aging and how we treat the elderly in our communities and in our country, which is to say not well. We're not even being allowed to age anymore at normal rates. A conversation for another day. A conversation that I have with my friends all the time. And so Pepper and her friends talk a lot about how invisible they feel, and I thought that was just as resonant as the arguments Laurie Frankel is making about and for bodily autonomy for women. So anyway, Enormous Wings covers a lot of territory. It is a fast-paced read. You will not be able to put it down. I loved everybody in this book. There might have been one exception or two, but generally, I loved every character in this book. I was hooked from the very first page. And I thought, yes, is this book a little bit wacky? It actually would be a great companion book to Go Gentle. Yeah, it's a little bit wacky, but I really liked it. I think it'd be great for fans of The Road to Tinder Hearts or Big Finish, like I already named. I loved this one. It is Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel. Audiobook is great, too, narrated by Becky Ann Baker.
[00:25:51] Then it felt like it was time for a thriller. I hadn't done a thriller in a long time. Olivia and Tim at The Bookshelf had been raving about Her Last Breath. This is by Taylor Adams, who has written some other suspense novels that I have not read. Her Last Breath Came at the perfect time because Jordan and I had just finished watching The Dark Wizard on HBO, which is a documentary series about a base jumper and a free solo climber. So I was kind of into this extreme sporting world. At least that's where my head was at. And so Her Last Breath is about caving and cave diving. Tess and Ally are best friends. Ally is this adventure influencer. Tess is kind of the more demure friend. Ally begs Tess to go with her to do this cave exploration, and they go and they immediately encounter this-- it's every woman's nightmare, right? They immediately on this remote hike as they're about to enter the cave, they encounter this big, burly, nefarious man who leers at them, and they keep going on their journey, but then ultimately realize they're being followed. And the book goes back and forth between Ally and Tess's experiences in the cave to Tess giving her statement to an older female detective in a hospital room. And so you get this back-and-forth narrative. Here's what I loved about this. I loved reading about caving and cave diving. I thought that was fascinating. I liked the older female detective. I actually wish we'd gotten a little bit more of her. She reminded me of the detective in Hartwood by Amity Gaige. The nature writing in this book is good. It's not overtly flowery or anything like that, but the depictions of the cave, all of that I thought was very realistic.
[00:27:40] Did I see some of the twists and turns coming? Yes. Olivia and I discussed this, and we both did. But it felt like the book totally worked. So even though maybe I saw some of the plot twists and changes, I'm not sure they were meant to be these, like, gasp, Gone Girl-esque flips of the switch. But instead, I was very invested. So I kept reading the story even though I thought, "Oh, I think I figured part of this out." So even though I felt like I had maybe figured part of the plot out, I kept reading because I really was invested in Ally and Tess and their story. Tim had mentioned this book at a staff meeting and said he read it while breathless, and you do feel that way. It's very kind of claustrophobic feeling. You feel like you're in the cave with these women. It was reminiscent to me of Drowning by T.J. Newman. So if you liked that book, I think you will like this one. It did exactly what I needed it to do. I read it in less than 24 hours. I read it overnight. And that's right, I read it into the night and then woke up the next morning and finished it. I didn't pull an all-nighter to read Her Last Breath. But I really like this one. Solid four stars, Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams.
[00:28:46] Then I picked up-- and I'd been waiting, I didn't get an advance copy and I refused to read it on my Kindle-- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout. I love Elizabeth Strout. I am not a completionist on her works just yet, but I love her, and probably for the last handful of years, I have read her books as soon as they have come out. This is a standalone novel about Artie Dam. Artie is a high school teacher living in Massachusetts. He is in a season of his life when he is struggling, I think, with depression. He isn't quite sure he wants to keep living. The book is about his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his son. Honestly, it's just about Artie and his relationships with a whole lot of different people, members of his community, friends, students. I loved this book. Now, it was four and a half stars for me because, to me, Elizabeth Strout's books are timeless, and this one felt timely, and that is okay. I really liked this book a lot, but sometimes the timeliness of it, the references to politics in particular, felt a little on the nose. It didn't quite feel subtle enough maybe to be a timeless book. But I think what she was saying about our current situation felt accurate. My brother is a high school teacher, so I thought a lot about him and how he interacts with his students. It's also very much a father-son story about Artie and his son, and so I finished it and immediately told my dad he needed to read it. It's a short, quiet book about, once again, what she does best. She writes about ordinary people with pretty ordinary problems. I mean, every family's got their stuff, and so Artie's family is no different. I loved this one. It isn't where I would start with Elizabeth Strout. I still, perhaps unbelievably, would start with Olive Again, which might make no sense to some of you because you're like, "Annie, that's literally a sequel. It's literally called Again. It's in the title." But if you are new to Olive Kitteridge and her life, if you are new to Elizabeth Strout, I personally would start with Olive again. You can disagree with me and that is fine. I would not start here, but if you like Elizabeth Strout, if you've come to love her work like I have, much like Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout is just out here doing her thing consistently and excellently, and I really loved this book. That is The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
[00:31:07] Then I was listening... do you see how much listening I got done this month? Then I was listening to Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune. This is narrated by AJ Bridell and Jack Copeland. Kyndall Loved this book. I had issues with it. Now, if I'm going to read a romance, I love Annabel Monaghan, I love Carrie Winfrey. Here's what Carley Fortune does I think better than almost anybody else. Her settings. Her settings are stellar. Everywhere she writes about, I want to go. I think her best book for me and my sensibilities-- and again, reading is subjective, you don't have to like what I like. But her best book for me was the one that released last year called One Golden Summer. That's been my favorite of hers. The others have been fine. I have liked them to varying degrees, but I always like the settings. She's got a great book that's set on Prince Edward Island that I really liked. I wonder if she's a foodie. I don't know enough about Carley Fortune to know, but her main character in this book is a chef, and I think she has written about... I just remember some lobster scenes from one of her books. I feel like she writes about food a lot. So maybe she's a foodie, maybe she's a chef. The food writing is great. So the food and the setting, the sense of place in her books, can't be beat. I really think she and Emily Henry are, like, neck and neck, because Emily Henry also makes me want to go to Michigan and eat a cherry.
[00:32:26] So I think they both set the stage really well. The main characters in this book are George and Frankie. They have been best friends forever. This book is very-- and she's very clear, this is Jo and Laurie. It's not a Little Women retelling, but it definitely is an homage to the Jo and Laurie story, which you would think I would just eat up with a spoon. But this is interesting. I could suspend disbelief about a 77-year-old pregnant woman, but where I drew the line was that George and Frankie had each other's names tattooed on their ribs, and they were going to go marry other people. That made no sense to me whatsoever. I had a really hard time suspending disbelief that these people were not already in love. And so the very premise of this one I struggled with. The setting of Tofino is excellent. Frankie is about to get married, and no spoilers, but the night of her wedding, her fiancé leaves, and she's essentially kind of left at the altar. Over the next few weeks, she tries to recover, and eventually her best friend George shows up and says, "Let's go on your honeymoon," because of course. So they go on a honeymoon together to Tofino, which is this kind of rugged island I think off the coast of British Columbia. I don't have a map in front of me, but I think that's right. Setting is great. Food writing is good. I really did struggle with the romance plot line here, and then I also struggled with the audiobook. So I cannot stress this enough. Well, again, this is personal. Here's what I will say. I think you should read the physical copy of this. I think you should get this, put it in your beach bag. That's how summer books are meant to be read anyway. I think you should buy the physical copy of this. Get it from your local library, whatever. The audiobook, I had never encountered this before. Now, maybe that's because I don't listen to enough fiction audiobooks, but this book is narrated by Frankie, first-person narrative, female perspective, woman's perspective, Frankie's perspective.
[00:34:26] And then, in the audiobook, I just told you it's narrated by two voices. So I kept thinking, "Oh, well this is going to be Frankie's perspective and George's perspective." No. The whole book, I cannot stress this enough, the whole book is Frankie's perspective. But in the middle, whenever George talks, there's a male voice literally saying, "Hey, Frankie." And then the female narrator says, "Says George." Like, it's the weirdest... It is spliced in. I cannot comprehend it. It was so jarring. I don't know why I kept listening because for sure this definitely affected my appreciation of the book. I don't think it would've been for me anyway. Kyndall loved it, and it got starred reviews, I think, in both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, or at least one of those. So a lot of people love this book. If you love Carley Fortune, if you are a Carley Fortune fan, you will love this. If you have been in and out on Carley Fortune, then you might fall more with where I sit. But the audiobook, to me, was a distraction. Again, I've described it for you. Maybe you are listening thinking, "That sounds awesome." Great. Go give it a listen. But not for me. It was not for me. So that is Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune. I think it's already on the New York Times bestseller list. So what do I know?
[00:35:39] Okay, and then last but not least, I read The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand. If you have been here for a hot minute, last summer I became a Hilderbabe. I think that's what they call ... Deja, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting that that's what they call us. So I became a Hilderbabe, and I read at least three, I think, Elin Hilderbrand books, maybe four. I don't remember. Anyway, that's what I did last summer in my postpartum state, and everyone kept telling me The Blue Bistro is the best one. But I was checking these out slowly, one at a time, from the Thomas County Public Library. And so I just thought, "Well, when The Blue Bistro becomes available, that is when I will read it," and it never became available. And so then my friend Erin sent me a copy, so shout out to Erin. Not Erin at The Bookshelf, different Erin. Thank you, Erin. And I liked this a lot. Do I think it's her best one? No. It's one of her earlier books. It came out in 2005. There's a reference, I kid you not, into the fact that tech billionaires don't exist anymore, so talk about suspending disbelief. Talk about having to suspend disbelief. Anyway, the main character is Adrienne. She's down on her luck. She's a former hotel concierge. She's been scammed by an ex-boyfriend, so she moves to Nantucket to start over. She gets a job as a hostess at this restaurant called The Blue Bistro, where a man named Thatcher works with his business partner and best friend, Fiona. Fiona is the chef. Thatcher kind of runs everything else. He's the manager, and he hires Adrienne to be his assistant manager. Food writing in this book, outstanding. Nantucket setting, outstanding. Restaurant life, great. For fans of The Reservation or The Bear, loved all of it. Loved the restaurant. Loved all of it.
[00:37:11] The romantic plot line could not possibly have cared less. Could not possibly have cared less. I'm pretty sure there's a James Patterson blurb on this cover talking about how it's a great love story. Sure. If you're a Nicholas Sparks fan, you will eat this up. I loved the restaurant stuff. Honestly, Fiona and Thatcher were more interesting and complicated and nuanced than George and Frankie, if we're doing comparisons. But I liked The Blue Bistro. It was four stars. To me, not Elin Hilderbrand's best work that I've read, but totally enjoyable. Again, great paperback to throw in your beach bag. I'm including it, spoiler, in the reading recap bundle because I think it's great summer reading, and it's a paperback original-- not a paperback original. It's out in paperback because it released in 2005. So those are the books I read in May. As usual with our reading recap episodes, we're offering a reading recap bundle for this month. The May reading recap bundle is $71, and it includes Whistler by Anne Patchett, Enormous Wings by Lori Frankel, and, as I stated, The Blue Bistro. Because it's a paperback, throw it in your beach bag and go. You can find more details in the May bundle online through the link in our show notes, or go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number, that's 583, into the search bar. And don't forget to come on Instagram and maybe tell me what you read in May.
[00:38:29] This week, I'm continuing my Florida reads, and I'm reading The Other Florida by Gloria Jahoda.
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:
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