Episode 582 || Into the Backlist: The Great Believers

From the Front Porch

The Bookshelf Thomasville

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

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on From the Front Porch, it’s a new episode of Into the Backlist! Today, Annie changes her focus from new releases to dive into the backlist: the books that came out years ago, the books that didn’t get enough attention, the books you may stumble upon while browsing in an indie bookstore like The Bookshelf. To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 582) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai In Memoriam by Alice Winn Heart the Lover by Lily King Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by MK Czerwiec How to Survive a Plague by David France A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts Just Kids by Patti Smith Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder Four Squares by Bobby Finger 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 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 listenting to Go Gentle by Maria Semple. 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.

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. We'd been through something our parents hadn't.
0:26.6	The war made us older than our parents.
0:29.6	And when you're older than your parents, what are you going to do?
0:33.6	Who's going to show you how to live?
0:41.2	Rebecca Mackay, The Great Believers.
0:47.2	I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week we're back with an installment of our podcast series
0:51.9	Into the Backlist.
0:55.8	Have you ever wondered what the bookshelf actually looks like? You can consider following us over on Instagram at Bookshelf Teaville.
1:01.8	There we post behind the scenes pictures and give important updates on store hours, events,
1:06.7	and special promotions. We'd love to see you there. Now, back to the show. Because from the front porch
1:14.6	is a podcast very much wrapped up in the comings and goings of our indie bookstore, many of the books we
1:19.8	feature are new. Or, there are many times not even yet released books, which means backlist
1:25.3	titles, books published more than a year ago, can get
1:28.2	lost or overlooked. We launched the podcast series into the backlist back in 2024, after I got to
1:35.7	thinking about the magic of indie bookstores and how we try to replicate that in-store magic
1:40.6	for you, our long-distance customer and podcast listener.
1:49.7	One of the most magical things to me about shopping in an indie bookstore is the serendipitous nature of it, how you might stumble upon a book you've never seen before and be inspired to
1:54.8	read it or buy it because of an in-store recommendation, or simply because the book begs
1:59.4	to be read from the shelf.
2:02.0	Now, don't get me wrong,
2:07.7	I get that serendipitous feeling from new titles too, but it seems to especially come from an unsung book, the book that's been out for a while, or the book that only that particular store
2:13.3	seems to know about. So now, every so often, I dig through the imaginary bookshelf vault
	...

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