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

In Books, In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.

I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to and what I might

dare to dream about my world and myself. More powerfully and persuasively

than from the shout-knots of the Ten Commandments, I learned the difference between good and evil,

right and wrong. A wrinkle in time described that evil, that wrong, existing in a different

dimension from our own. But I felt that I too existed much of the time in a different dimension from our own. But I felt that I, too, existed much of the time,

in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping,

and then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently

did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer

but was never really a stranger. My real true world. My perfect island. Anna Quindlin,

how reading changed my life. I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf, an independent bookstore

in beautiful downtown

Thomasville, Georgia, and this week it's time for an episode of Literary Therapy.

If you are a new or newish listener, you might not realize that from the front porch is a production

of the bookshelf, a small independently owned bookstore in rural South Georgia.

By listening to our show and recommending it to your

friends, you're helping keep our indie bookstore in business. And if you like what you hear,

one way you can financially support us is through Patreon. Last year, we read the classic work

Don Quixote together, and this year we're switching gears a bit to read the complete stories by Flannery O'Connor.

For $5 a month, you can access our monthly Conquer-A-Classic Recaps, as well as our porch visits,

monthly Zoom Q&A's where we talk about everything from pop culture to nail polish to what books

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