Episode 542 || From the Archives: Favorite Books of All Time

From the Front Porch

The Bookshelf Thomasville

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on From the Front Porch, it’s another episode From the Archives! In this series, we’re sharing some of our favorite past episodes of the show while Annie is on maternity leave. Enjoy today’s episode about Annie’s favorite books of all time from 2023. To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 542) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app: Libro.fm Bookshelf storefront Gilead by Marilynne Robinson A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee The Mothers by Brit Bennett The Road by Cormac McCarthy Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner Little Women by Louisa May Alcott An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott (unavailable to purchase) Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel Updated mentions since the podcast originally aired: Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout James by Percival Everett Matrix by Lauren Groff 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, Tiktok, and Facebook, 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. This week, Annie is reading The Eights by Joanna Miller. If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week. Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, and Amanda Whigham.

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.
0:40.3	We are in mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses, we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves,
0:47.9	as we were, as we are no longer, as we will one day not be at all.
0:53.0	Joan Didion, the year of magical thinking.
0:58.9	I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf and independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia.
1:00.4	And this week, we're going back into the From the Front Porch archives, a place not dissimilar
1:06.5	to the Disney Vault to bring you an episode featuring my favorite books of all time.
1:12.1	Before we get started, another reminder that Audible is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.
1:18.5	I would not have been fully aware of this fact were it not for my own work in the bookselling
1:22.9	world, which is why as both a consumer of audiobooks and as a bookstore owner, I'm eternally grateful
1:28.8	for Libro FM and the ways they partner with indie bookstores. If you're not familiar,
1:35.3	Libro FM makes it possible for you to buy audiobooks through your local bookstore. Head to
1:40.4	Libro.fm. Choose the bookstore you'd like to support, and that store will get a portion
1:46.0	of every purchase you make. Occasionally, I'll get asked if this actually makes a difference,
1:51.5	like if the proceeds or the profits matter, and I am here to assure you that they do. So if you're
1:57.1	ever wondering, is this worth it? Is this making a difference to your local indie or to our store?
2:04.7	I'm here to tell you, yes, this financially makes a huge difference for us.
2:09.0	You can buy audiobooks a la carte, or you can have a monthly membership,
2:13.3	just like other digital audiobook platforms.
2:16.1	I'm pretty sure that every bookshelf staff member
2:18.5	and member of my immediate family has a LibroFM membership at this point. Obviously, you can listen
2:24.2	to audiobooks in whatever ways are most convenient for you. Many of my friends use LibroFM as well as
	...

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