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

An observer to my marriage would think I have made no effort to be a good or better wife, or, seeing me that night, that I must have set out to be this way and achieved it after years of concentrated effort.

They could not tell that for most of my adult life and all of my marriage, I have been trying to become the opposite of myself.

Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss

I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf and independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and today I'm recapping the books I read in January.

If you are wondering what books I read in December, they are the lost books of 2020.

I read actually so many books I really did love in December, but I did not do a December reading recap episode.

Instead, you are welcome to search the hashtag Annie reads 2020 and you can see all the books I read in 2020 and my star ratings for them and that includes the books I read in December.

I ended 2020 with about 118 books I think because I weirdly never publicly reviewed B-Tread, which is a bummer because that book is great.

And I'm pleased with that number, though I had no intention of reaching that number.

And it's funny to me a couple years ago if you've been a longtime listener of the podcast, you know I tried to read 100 books one year and it was pretty disastrous and then 2020 happened.

And I don't know and I don't know what will happen in 2021, but I will tell you my January was filled with really good reading and it felt like perhaps maybe more in-depth reading.

I did read a couple of books that I absolutely flew through and we'll talk about those, but I wound up reading a lot of nonfiction or what felt like a lot of nonfiction for me, which is one of my reading intentions for 2021.

So that feels good. All in all, a really nice reading month and I can't wait to share them with you.

First on my January list, the very first book that I believe I read, I don't know, January second maybe was people we meet on vacation by Emily Henry speaking of B-Tread.

Here we go. People we meet on vacation is Emily Henry's next much anticipated book. It comes out later this year.

I believe on May 11th and I had seen this one already kind of popping up under I think maybe Carrie Winfrey or some other authors I follow.

And I had an arc and I had no intention of reading it because as we have discussed I like reading seasonally and this book definitely looks like a summer book.

But I don't know about you guys, but my 2020 just ended. It just felt like I was crawling like a zombie toward the end of a finish line and I just needed something fun.

And I think I saw Carrie Winfrey post. I saw Kate who used to work at the bookshelf and now is manager at bookmarks, a bookstore in North Carolina.

She posted about it and so I thought, okay, I think I need something fun. And so I picked up my ARC of people we meet on vacation.

This is definitely a win Harry Met Sally influenced book. It stars for lack of a better term features, maybe two people who really have always been friends, but very rarely have they felt maybe a romantic spark between them.

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