Episode 566 || January 2026 Reading Recap

From the Front Porch

The Bookshelf Thomasville

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

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in January. You get 10% off your books when you order your January Reading Recap bundle. Each month, we offer a Reading Recap bundle, which features Annie’s favorite books she read that month. To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 566), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman Vigil by George Saunders This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block January Reading Recap Bundle The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block Vigil by George Saunders 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 Whidbey by T. Kira Madden 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...Ashley Ferrell, Beth, Cammy Tidwell, Gene Queens, Jammie Treadwell, Joseph Shorter IV, Kimberly, Linda Lee Drozt, Nicole Marsee, Stephanie Dean, and Wendi Jenkins.

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. Is the idea of healing to get you back to the way you used to be or to turn you into something new?
0:32.6	Ben Markovitz, the rest of our lives.
0:37.3	I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf, an independent
0:40.3	bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm recapping the books I read
0:45.9	in January. If you like my book reviews here on the podcast, you might be interested in joining
0:51.4	my private Instagram account Annie's five-star books. For $50 a year,
0:56.3	you can become a part of my bookish community online. Through the private Instagram account,
1:01.0	you'll get access to my book reviews, backlist, and front list titles. I host monthly Instagram
1:05.9	story Q&As and share about the books I start, but never finish. If you follow me personally online, you've seen my reviews for years, and of course,
1:14.7	from the front porch listeners will always have access to these free monthly reading recap
1:18.7	episodes.
1:20.0	The private Instagram is simply a place separate from the bookshelf, where I get to be more
1:24.0	detailed with my reviews, and five-star book club members can also choose if they want to order my five-star reads each month from the store. There's a quarterly
1:32.3	newsletter option for the social media averse, too. For more information or to sign up for
1:37.7	the 2026 group, it's never too late, visit anniebjoneswrites.com forward slash five-star dash book dash club. There's a link in the show notes.
1:47.9	Now, back to the show. Every month, I like to give short reviews of the books I read that month.
1:54.1	And since we haven't done these in a while, I'm going to share some of my December reviews too.
1:59.2	I'm still going to try to keep this episode
2:01.0	tight, but I did quite a bit of reading in December and did not cover it here on the podcast.
2:06.2	So I want to recap a couple of those books that I still think would be worthy of your TBR lists.
2:11.6	And then I'll move into the books that I read in January. So first off, in December, I wound up going on like a little Booker spree.
2:19.9	I don't typically align a ton with Booker that I'm referring to the Booker Awards. I don't
	...

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