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

Hi, it's Annie. While I am on a little break for the start of 2022, we are still releasing some special episodes each week, and this week we're taking a look back at the best moments from our literary therapy episodes.

If you are a new listener and you aren't familiar with these episodes, it's where I do my best Frazier Crane Impression and answer listener questions, specifically bookish kind of literary dilemmas.

If you would like your own literary question answered, all you have to do is visit fromthefrontportchpodcast.com forward slash contact.

And if you scroll to the middle of the page, you will see an orange button that says start recording, and you can leave me a voicemail. No microphone needed, no headphones even really needed, just your phone or your computer.

You can hit start record, leave us your name, where you're from, and your literary dilemma, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode of literary therapy.

Now, onto some of our very best moments from those episodes.

Hi friends, I am very excited about this edition of literary therapy. This is one of my new favorite shows that we do, and so I'm excited to get to dispense a little bit of advice and wisdom.

I feel like if you are like me, the pandemic has kind of gone in these ebbs and flows, and some weeks are better than others, and last week for all kinds of reasons was a hard week.

And so I think this is coming at a good time for me to kind of think about other people outside myself, and to try to offer a little bit of light and guidance as you all navigate literary quantities, which may in the grand scheme feel small.

But we all I think have been turning to literature to help inform us to help comfort us. And so in that sense, literary therapy matters. So we're going to get started.

First up, let's give it a listen.

Hi, Annie. This is Tana. I'm from Cleet, Texas. I just finished Transcendent Kingdom, and I loved it. I picked up four books on hold from the library today.

Which one do you think I should follow it up with? House Lessons by Erica Bauer, Master, Friends and Strangers by Jake Courtney Salman.

This must be the place, Maggie O'Farrell, or the new Marilyn Robinson Jack. Please tell me one of these are worth pushing past the first chapter because that has been a bit of a problem for me lately. Thank you so much.

Hi, Tana. Okay. I am so curious to know if you wound up just diving in because you sent it your recording. And obviously this is not an immediate response situation. I am not really phrase your crane on a radio show.

So we've had a few days now where I'm curious if you went ahead and tried to read one of these, but Transcendent Kingdom, which I led with a quote from at the top of the episode, is such a beautiful book.

And it is hard to follow up. And I think some of my biggest reading routes have been created by beautiful life changing earth shattering gorgeous books that it just then is really hard to follow them up.

Hey, Annie, it's Kelly from Brandon, Mississippi. I am a busy mom, wife and teacher. So I have to carve out time and be very intentional with my reading life. Here's my book is to live them when I have time to read. I only want to read fluff all the thrillers, all the page turners.

However, I feel like I should be reading more important books to be a well read reader, you know, all the books you say people reading on Instagram, the important people.

What do I do help?

First of all, Kelly, I got the biggest grant on my face, listing share message. I understand that Southern accents are different depending on your state.

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