Front Porch Book Club

Four sisters, one lonely boy. Sounds like Little Women , right? Ann Napolitano thought so, too, when she was about 100 pages into writing what would become her bestselling novel, Hello Beautiful . She realized the similarities and decided to mold the story into a modern-day retelling of the classic. Napolitano's version is set in Chicago and there are enough variations to make this book, Little Wo...

Memoirist Ileen Dunivent regales us with stories of her mischievous childhood in Colorado and then Missouri, meeting her great love, Orville, and her amazing ability to make friends and create a full and well-lived life. At 87 years of age, Ileen decided to write the story of her life, longhand on lined notebook paper. The task took 14 months with the result being book ( Stories for My Kids: Learn...

We're leaning into Mother's Day month with Stories for My Kids: Learning to Yodel and Other Life Lessons , by first time author Ileen Dunivent. This charming and warm memoir tracks Ileen's life from a mischievous Rocky Mountain tomboy to a crazy in love teenager to a mom and grandma in Missouri. Ileen has a gift for storytelling and she manages to find humor and joy, as well as convey deep wisdom,...

We learn about mental skills athletes use to compete at the highest levels. Dr. Jennifer Cumming, former competitive athlete and now sports psychologist and professor, describes techniques for building mental skills. She trains professional and recreational athletes, and applies her work in other fields such as medicine, law enforcement, and the military, as well as working with youth who are expe...

Carrie Soto is Back , by best-selling novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid, plunges us into the world of professional tennis. We meet retired phenom, Carrie, who decides to return to the circuit to defend her Grand Slam titles record. Carrie's singular focus on her tennis legacy has Linny and Nancy talking legacy, what it means, and why it matters.

We take an incredible journey through Spain's 20th century, the setting of this month's book, The Shadow of the Wind , with our guest Sara Brenneis, an Amherst professor specializing in this era. Delving more deeply into Spain's social, political, religious, and economic context opened up this book in ways we never expected. Linny has a new admiration for the women in the book. Nancy is amazed by...

In post-civil war Spain, young Daniel is cast into danger when he refuses to sell his rare copy of a Julian Carax novel to a mysterious cloaked man intent on destroying all copies of the author's books. Over a ten-year period, Daniel uncovers old resentments, past loves, deadly lies, and true love as he learns the secrets of the mysterious man and of the author who has disappeared. The Shadow of t...

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures , has become a word-of-mouth bestseller. No surprise, since this warm and generous novel introduces three very different characters all facing their own "stuckness": a grieving widow, an aquarium-confined octopus, and a struggling young man. Shelby joins us on the front porch to talk about her journey as a first-time author, these remarkab...

Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus, has lived most of his life in the Sowell Bay Aquarium but yearns for the ocean's currents while he watches the humans who pass his tank with disdain. That is, until Tova, the night janitor saves him from dying on one of his nighttime expeditions. They form a sort of friendship that will change their lives and the lives of those around them, including Ethan the s...

We delve into the research-based side of talent development with Dr. Kenneth Kiewra, an educational psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who is an expert in talent development. We learn about talent development in children and adults, along with Ken's other fascinating research on learning in and teaching of children, young people, scholars, and older adults. We are astounded...

In his latest book, The Real Work , Adam Gopnik undertakes a George Plimpton-esque journey to master skills as diverse as boxing and drawing, bread baking and driving, dancing and overcoming a mental health illness. Gopnik, along the way, shares three themes of mastery and seven mysteries of mastery. Gopnik has called this book a “self-help book that doesn’t help” because it does not prescribe ste...

Linny and Nancy look back at 2023 and share some of their favorite books, moments, surprises, and behind-the-scenes mix-ups. Looking forward to 2024, they announce the first three book selections for 2024.

It's children's book month and our 2023 is a gem: Marshmallow Clouds , written by Ted Kooser and Connie Wanek and illustrated by Richard Jones. The book features 30 poems that celebrate finding wonder through imagination and are loosely categorized by the four classical elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. These are poems to be savored and enjoyed over and over.

James Ker-Lindsay introduces us to the beautiful and complex island of Cyprus, the setting of Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees . Ker-Lindsay is a scholar whose research focuses on conflict, and peace and security in South East Europe. He tells us about the history of the Cyprus conflict and describes barriers to reunification. We also hear about his personal connection to Cyprus and his e...

In The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, young lovers Defne and Kostas are torn apart by the Cyprus war in the 1970s. When they meet again, 25 years later, Defne has become part of a team dedicated to finding graves of war victims and Kostas has become a scholar who focuses on trees. Their career paths mirror the emotional journeys they have taken since they were separated. Defne has buried...

Was sexism in the STEM workplace really as bad as that faced by Elizabeth Zott in Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry ? Cultural historian Julie Des Jardins leads us through the experiences of women in the workforce in the 20th-century. Let’s just say, most women scientists faced a lot of barriers! We also learn about Julie’s current work to increase diversity in STEM fields at the Center for Quan...

In this laugh out loud funny novel, Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant chemist who just wants to do her research, but it's the 1960s and none of the men in her field quite know what to do with this determined woman, so mostly they attempt to ruin her. Except for Calvin Evans, the renowned but awkward chemist who is as dazzled by her mind as her beauty. He wants to marry her, which she refuses on the ba...

In Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch , Blandine is obsessed by Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century abbess. We wanted to learn more about this German theologian, composer, and botanist, so asked Dr. Jennifer Bain to join us. She is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen and professor of Musicology and Gender and Women's Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Th...

In the New York Times bestselling novel, The Rabbit Hutch , Tess Gunty introduces us to Vacca Vale, Indiana, a dying city clinging to its past automobile manufacturing glory days. After decades of economic disintegration brought on by the closing of Zorn Automotive Manufacturing, we meet the residents of an affordable housing building, particularly the brilliant but lost 17-year-old, Blandine, who...

Intrigue abounds as we learn how 16th century Italian courts schemed and fought to maintain their power, as we read about in Maggie O'Farrell's latest historical novel, The Marriage Portrait . In the swirl of wars and murder, we talk about how women in different courts distinguished themselves and the roles they played. We also talk about some of the finer things in Renaissance life, such as art,...

The Marriage Portrait, a riveting historical fiction novel, plunges us into the 16th-century world of Lucrezia de’ Medici whose parents have forced her to wed Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. He has taken her to his isolated hunting lodge and she becomes aware of the fact that he means to murder her there. As the novel skips around in chronology we learn about Lucrezia’s conception, birth, and childhood...

Today we interview Joe Starita about his book, I Am A Man . The narrative non-fiction book describes the real life story of Ponca Chief Standing Bear. He was a man who just wanted to live peaceably, with his tribe, on their ancestral homeland that was deeded to them by the U.S. government in a treaty. However, government mistakes, prejudice, and people following orders from their superiors led to...

I Am a Man by Joe Starita documents the heartbreaking exile of Chief Standing Bear from his homeland to his journey to establishing the personhood of Native Americans in US courts. Chief Standing Bear promised his dying teenage son that he would bury him in the ancestral graveyard back along the Niobrara River in northeast Nebraska. On his journey home with his son’s body, he was jailed for leavin...

Dr. Margaret Jacobs joins us on the front porch to investigate how the US has forcibly removed children from their parents, a policy expanded in Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts . In Our Missing Hearts , a Choctaw grandmother reminds Noah’s mom that taking children away from their parents is not unprecedented in US history and she alludes to indigenous child removal, as well as the separation of ch...

To what lengths would you go to protect your child? In Our Missing Hearts , Celeste Ng introduces us to Bird, a 12-year-old boy whose mother has left him and his father years earlier. His father disavows her and her poetry that is being used by resisters standing up against an authoritarian government in the United States. When Bird receives a mysterious letter, he goes on a journey to find his mo...