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

There was for me during this time a sense of being dazed, as though in a way I was not capable of taking in everything that was happening in this world.

Elizabeth Stroud, Lucy by the Sea.

I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm recapping the books I read in September.

I can hardly believe it, but we are fast approaching our 400th episode of From the Front porch.

Please picture the wide-eyed emoji here. From The Front porch has been plugging along since 2014, and thanks to listeners like you, the show has continued to grow and thrive.

We would love to continue to grow the show, and as a result, grow our indie books or in Thomasville, Georgia.

One way we can do that is by reaching new to us listeners, and the best way to do that is with reviews.

As of this recording, we are 832 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Here is one of my recent favorites from E.F. Girl.

I love listening to this podcast. I live in Thomasville, so I find the discussions about local events very helpful.

But I think anyone from the South, or even a small town, can identify with the topics discussed.

With each new episode, I add a few new books to my list to read based on the recommendations of Annie and her guests.

It feels like we're all just sitting around chatting with close friends.

This makes me so happy because for a long time, so many of our listeners were long distance, which was great, but I really love that we reach local and far away audiences, because that's what I want the bookshelf to do.

So that review made me very happy.

If you have not left a review, all you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for from the front porch, scroll down until you see right a review, and then tell us what you think.

We'd love to hear from you.

Now, hooray. Here is what I read in September.

September's been a good month. These episodes are a little bit odd, because I record them ever so slightly before the end of the month, not too much, because I don't want to cheat.

I really do want to tell you what I read this actual month. So the books I'm going to discuss here, I have read.

But I wind up recording a little bit before the month actually, and so I'm sitting here thinking, gosh, what was this month like?

It just feels like I blinked and it's all of a sudden October. I don't really know what happened. I feel like August and September blurs, honestly, and I don't quite know what to blame that on.

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