Welcome to From the Front porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.

Welcome to From the Front porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.

One of my favorite things, as a critic, was finding books by new writers who possessed a distinctive voice and vision, an inventive voice for storytelling.

I also loved immersing myself in works of nonfiction that taught me something about the world, that made the past come alive or shed light on hiding corners of history or the news.

I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week, I'm joined by Bookshelf Manager, Olivia Schaeffer, and online sales coordinator, Lucy Stelswiss.

Today, we're talking all about holiday book buying and sharing our favorite titles for gifting this season.

Hi guys, hello, we're at this week's episode that's running was recorded pre-election.

We're recording this Wednesday after election, but nothing has happened yet.

So I feel like all of our podcast episodes are going to be so weird in tone because we have no concept of when people will be listening to them, like what will be going on in the world.

So if you're listening to this and you're like, why are they having so much fun? Well, because we don't know what the future holds.

It's a good point to be at.

I just feel like I need to preface that because I recorded last week's episode and was like, oh, that's what people will listen to during election week.

That was pre-everything. Now we're in the middle of everything, but people won't listen to it until after everything. It's just a mess.

So there's my disclaimer, I guess.

We're going to do this round robin style, like we used to do new release Tuesday conversations on Patreon.

Lucy, why don't you kick us off with a holiday book you're recommending?

Okay, I'm going to come right out the gate with my favorite book.

I think of the year, which is Parastrica in Paris by Jean Smiley, who wrote a thousand acres, which I never read, but I want to now.

It is released, I think on December 1st, but you can pre-order it from us.

And it is just this sweet story.

The main characters are a horse, a German short hair pointer dog, two ducks, a raven, and two rats.

And there's also a little boy and like a very, very, very old woman, his great grandmother.

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