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

Two of life's greatest pleasures by my reckoning are camping and reading, most gloriously, both at once.

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

August is by my estimation, the longest, hardest month of the year. It is when things in the South start to feel very dire.

It is miserably hot, and I try not to think about it too much. I try to survive, not thrive.

And this year, I was able to escape for a little bit, and you are going to see how it definitely influenced my reading.

So Jordan and I were able to take a trip to Maine this summer. It is not lost on us what a gift that is and how lucky we are that we got to do that and that we got to do so safely.

But because we took this trip to Maine, it gave me some time away from the hot, humid South, and it also deeply affected my reading.

I like to read books set in the locales where we are going or have visited. And so you're going to see, especially at the end of the month, the books that I read, very much influenced by our time in Maine.

And for all, a lot of nonfiction in August, and I'm not quite sure what that means, except I think I continue to struggle with literary fiction.

And as a result, I have been very content to spend a lot of time with nonfiction, which I'm actually pretty okay with.

I miss literary fiction, but I don't doubt that I will fall in love, and there was one literary fiction book that I read this month that I really liked.

I think I will go back to enjoying that genre that is most of the time my favorite, but it has been kind of a treat this month to, or last month, I guess, to read a little bit outside my comfort zone.

And yet I like nonfiction a lot. It's just as a bookseller, I don't make time to read it very much. It takes me longer to finish a nonfiction book, and I am typically trying to finish a lot of books.

And so I don't gravitate toward that genre as much, but it's been nice to look back in August and to realize, oh, I read a lot of nonfiction.

So can't wait to tell you about them. Here we go.

The first book I read in August, I finished it, I think, really toward the end of July, but I did not get to talk about it is tacky.

Love letters to the worst culture we have to offer by Rex King.

Look, that title alone should grab you. It certainly grabbed me. It's got this great little cover. This book does not come out until November 2nd.

So you do have some time, but it's going to be this little paperback. It's got this really great, funny, striking cover.

And it is Rex King, who some of you may know from other little essays she's written on the internet.

I think she's got a pretty large Twitter following that's not really my medium of choice anymore, but I think she does have quite the following there.

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