Episode 349 || Best Books of the Year

From the Front Porch

The Bookshelf Thomasville

Fiction, Society & Culture, Books, Arts:books, Arts

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

December is a great time to look back on your reading year. In this episode of From the Front Porch, Annie, Lucy, and Olivia are talking about their favorite books of 2021. The books mentioned in this episode can be purchased from The Bookshelf: Annie’s List Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann Matrix by Lauren Groff Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout Brood by Jackie Polzin Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney Bewilderment by Richard Powers The Guncle by Steven Rowley Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner Lucy’s List A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness by Gregory Boyle Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe Zorrie by Laird Hunt (back-ordered) Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain A Ghost in the Throat by Dioreann Ní Ghríofa (not available) Olivia’s List Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better by Benjamin Wood Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby Pony by R.J. Palacio Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker Hell of a Book by Jason Mott The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams by Mindy Thompson 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 at @bookshelftville, 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 here. 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. Thank you again to this week’s sponsor, Visit Thomasville. Whether you live close by or are passing through, I hope you'll visit beautiful Thomasville, Georgia: www.thomasvillega.com. This week, Annie is reading Anastasia’s Chosen Career by Lois Lowry. (not available) Lucy is reading Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk. Olivia is reading The Maid by Nita Prose. If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon, where you can hear our staff’s weekly New Release Tuesday conversations, read full book reviews in our monthly Shelf Life newsletter and follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week. Libro.FM: Libro.fm lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore (Like The Bookshelf). You can pick from more than 215,000 audiobooks, and you'll get the same audiobooks at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name). But you’ll be part of a different story -- one that supports the community. All you need is a smartphone and the free Libro.fm app. Right now, if you sign up for a new membership, you will get 2 audiobooks for the price of one. All you have to do is enter FRONTPORCH at checkout or follow this link: libro.fm/redeem/FRONTPORCH Flodesk: Do you receive a weekly or monthly newsletter from one of your favorite brands? Like maybe From the Front Porch (Or The Bookshelf)... Did you ever wonder, ‘how do they make such gorgeous emails?’ Flodesk is an email marketing service provider that's built for creators, by creators, and it’s easy to use. We’ve been using it for

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to From the Front porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
0:09.0	Some occasions were magical, like that, and some occasions were the opposite of magical, whatever that is.
0:32.0	I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week, Olivia, Lucy, and I are talking about our top 10 books of the year.
0:56.0	Buckle up, folks, because we've got a lot of territory to cover. Hi.
1:04.0	So we each have a top 10. When we did this last year, did we do five top five?
1:10.0	Yes. I think we might have, yeah.
1:12.0	So I expanded it, which I think is to the benefit of each of us trying to come up with our list, but now we're going to have to do this rapid fire.
1:23.0	It's a lot of books. I got to say, I don't really believe in us.
1:29.0	I'm excited. I think I have to do this.
1:33.0	So our goal, we're aiming for 45 minutes. If you're a listener, who knows what the actual episode minute total is, we'll see.
1:41.0	But that's what we're shooting for. But before we get started, I really did want to talk about top 10 in general, because I do think different people have different criteria for this.
1:52.0	So Lucy, why don't you start and tell us what is your criteria when developing like your top 10, your best books list of the year?
2:00.0	Okay. So mine is a mix of nonfiction and fiction.
2:05.0	And it's pretty eccentric as my reading tastes tend to be.
2:11.0	So it's hard for me to think about exactly what I what I require for a top 10 book, but it looks like it has to be thought provoking weather fiction or nonfiction.
2:24.0	So something that's really going to grab my attention and make me think and make me want to talk about it with other people.
2:32.0	It has to have something to do with like the human experience.
2:37.0	And I really do require beautiful or interesting writing in nonfiction.
2:43.0	It doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful, although I have a couple of those, but definitely compelling for nonfiction.
2:50.0	So those are my criteria. Olivia, what about you?
2:54.0	Well, I'm laughing because the any gram one in me was like surely all three of us have the same criteria.
3:01.0	Surely this is not subjective in any way.
	...

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