Annie Jones reflects on her decision to remain in her small town. She discusses running a bookstore, nurturing long-term relationships, and embracing a faith that has evolved with time. Her writing is warm, relatable, and often humorous. And she invites readers to find meaning in the everyday moments that define our lives.

Annie B Jones was already a gift to the bookish community in so many ways -- adding an actual book to her resume was just icing on the cake. Her voice is so strong and her writing feels like talking to an old friend. If I could be best friends with Annie, I'd move to Thomasville in a heartbeat. This book is emotional, funny, and feel so true to herself.

I absolutely loved Annie's book. I've been a long time follower of her and The Bookshelf and was so glad to hear more of her words. We are similar people and it's always fun to find a kindred spirit out in the wild.

A beautifully reflective book on the act of staying. I appreciated the tension Annie holds between wanting to leave but choosing to stay near her hometown. This is a book that I will return to over and over again.

I loved this so much. I think it gets better as it goes on, with the opening essays easily being the least strong in the collection. This book is signature Annie, if you're a podcast listener, but also has a level of depth and vulnerability you don't get there.

ORDINARY TIME by Annie B. Jones is subtitled "Lessons Learned While Staying Put." Reading this collection of story essays made me feel as though Annie Sue Butterworth Jones was a dear friend sharing her wise observations on life. Readers will learn that she is a talented writer and the owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. One of my book group members also says she "meets with her weekly" since Jones hosts From the Front Porch, a regular podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. In ORDINARY TIME, she writes about family, her dreams, marriage, best friends and so much else (the only section which seems to be oversharing is about religion and her crisis of faith). She offers numerous self-reflective insights: "playing was silencing the perfectionist inside me" or "I am a finisher. But life requires a lot of opening. And I am not so good with the opening, the starting of something new." Jones herself describes ORDINARY TIME as "a collection of stories about a life rooted in place, the blooming of possibility that can happen there, but also the hardship, the loneliness, the longing for more." I especially liked her comments on childhood, "our childhood obsessions like basketball or The Baby-Sitters Club can save us. They can remind us of who we were before anything mattered, ... before everything felt heavy and hard. When life is overwhelming and challenging and our joy is stolen or hard to find, I think the things we once loved can bring us back, center us, make us whole."

**4.5 stars overall **

Her sections on books and reading are well worth re-reading and I wanted to note a couple of other quotes since those looking at this review are likely avid readers themselves:
"I wonder if this is why I love books. I can dip my toe into other lives without entirely changing my own." and
"I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I'll never get to go. I read books because they are an easy point of entry to relationship." and
"A love of books is the through line of my life, a hobby I can trace back to my earliest childhood memories and immediately weave through my middle school and high school selves ..."

As a long-time fan of Annie and From the Front Porch, I was thrilled to get an early copy of this book. Ordinary Time is perfect for the millennial reader who doesn’t quite know what life stage they’re in.

If you are a fan of Annie B. Jones, you will love this book. It is just as delightful and charming as she is. Even if you are not familiar with her, I would recommend this book. There is so much pressure to be extraordinary, and Annie focuses on the everyday and ordinary joys of living a quiet life. She makes it clear that an ordinary life is not a bad life, and that much joy can come from the ordinary. The book is broken up into parts that range in topic from family, relationships, and faith. Annie's insights are refreshing and soul-filling, and I loved learning more about her life, the choices she's made, and how they have impacted her.

I read a lot of glowing reviews for Ordinary Time and between those and the synopsis, I was definitely intrigued. This book is a series of essays from writer and bookstore owner, Annie Jones, on lessons she learned while staying put. Annie found herself staying local while friends and family members moved elsewhere to pursue new careers, homes, adventures, etc.

I did enjoy this, though maybe not as much as much as I expected to. Some essays resonated a lot and some, less. I appreciated the reflections Annie provided on enjoying the ordinary and quieter moments in life. Recognizing Ordinary Time is somewhat of a memoir, I understand staying has been a theme in Annie’s life – Loving where you live is, I believe, one of the most important choices you make as an adult and staying certainly isn’t for everyone.

My favorite chapter was “A Life Lived with Books” – Why Annie loves them, why she reads, and what books offer. I found this very relatable.

I enjoyed hearing about The Bookshop, a store I would be happy to visit someday, though, I hadn’t listened to her podcast, “From the Front Porch” and think Ordinary Time will resonate even more with readers already familiar with Annie and the show. I did listen to an episode this weekend after finishing the book and enjoyed it — 3.5 stars

4.5 stars rounded up.

Congratulations to Annie B. Jones for publishing her debut essay collection Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put. What a joy it must be to stock and sell it in her bookstore.

As a loyal listener to the author’s From the Front Porch podcast and a faithful reader of The Bookshelf enewsletter, I was concerned I’d be already familiar with most of the essay topics. Thankfully that was not the case, and I really enjoyed these thoughts on family, friendship, marriage, faith, entrepreneurship, and of course, books.

I appreciate the candor of Annie’s writing, sharing deeply personal topics with honesty and humor. I especially connected with her thoughts on faith and on having a brother as her only sibling. An overall theme could be “Bloom where you’re planted.”

The title is very meaningful; I’m confident it comes from Annie’s love for the liturgical church (a lifelong passion of mine). In the church year, “ordinary time” describes the long season between Pentecost (7 weeks after Easter) through Advent (four Sundays before December 25). This season contains no major festivals/holidays; rather, the church focuses on Jesus’ adult life and ministry. It’s viewed as a season of growth (represented by the color green) which makes it a powerful ‘label’ for these chapters in the author’s life.

Thank you to HarperOne for the review copies of this interesting and insightful collection.

This was fine? There didn't really seem to be a clear through-line of a theme to this and a lot of the essays left me shrugging my shoulders. From other reviews it seems like the audiobook may be the best medium for this, but maybe it just wasn't for me (despite by all appearances of the description and content making me think it would be the perfect book for me).

Maybe a 3.5, but nudged up to 4? A star rating seems kind of irrelevant here. Like many, I love Annie B. Jones's podcast, From the Front Porch, and could listen to her wisdom all day. My favorites are the bibliotherapy episodes where she offers creative and actually useful answers to her readers' dilemmas.

As an essay collection, this book has her trademark wisdom, although here it is aimed at her choice to stay in a small town, own a bookshop, and live a short drive from where she grew up. None of those are my life choices, but the essays resonated nevertheless - even when she talked about church.

At the same time, the essays feel just a little thin. They are each very short, and I found they lent themselves to reading one a day rather than in long stretches. I'd like to have seen them a little more fleshed out and with a bit less repetition.

I won't complain that it's not the book I wanted - i.e., one that is partly about running a bookstore in a small town, but also with more of her insight into readers and books more generally. I can just send good thoughts out to the universe that maybe her next one will have some of those elements.

I loved this collection of essays that made me reflect on the beauty and growth found in ordinary and mundane moments and reminded me how even in the midst of the everyday things we are taking for granted, there is purpose and joy and uniqueness to be found

I’ve never listened to her From the Front Porch podcast, but I’ve been following Annie, who owns an independent bookstore in small-town Georgia, on Instagram for the past few years (her “things I learned this month” series is a particular favourite), and when she announced she had a book coming out, I knew I wanted to read it. I got a chance to read it in advance of its recent publication and it was exactly what I needed. Through a collection of essays that are themselves organised into sections, Annie interrogates a life lived staying put, a quiet life lived in a small town, and finds beauty, blessings, and lessons. Born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida, Annie always imagined herself chasing dreams in the big city, like her beloved Nora Ephron protagonists. The universe had other ideas. From going to college in a small Southern town, to returning to Tallahassee, to moving down the road to run an independent bookstore in Thomasville with her husband Jordan whom she met at college. And yet, this book isn’t all about staying. It’s also about leaving what you’ve outgrown, what no longer fits, what is holding you back, including something as major as faith—“sometimes, to stay, you have to leave. It might be the best, hardest thing you ever do.” As with any collection, some chapters resonated more deeply than others, and I feel like either you’ll enjoy this or you won’t. I was in the former camp. “Good stories are anywhere you are. Your ordinary life matters, and the place you're living it matters too.”

This is one of my most anticipated books of the spring ever since Annie announced the publishing of her book. Those of us who follow Annie B. Jones in her From the Front Porch podcast and as owner of The Bookshelf will not be surprised that her debut is written in the same spirit: extremely thoughtful, open, and honest. I both laughed out loud and teared up in parts of the book. I love how she writes about challenging moments in her life, not in a "woe-is-me" way, but in an introspective way of what she learned from each event.
I also loved reading more in-depth about some topics that she's spoken about in the past - her faith, her family, her move to Thomasville, GA - which sheds so much light into the woman she has become. I admire her ability to write her intimate thoughts in a way that made it so relatable to me.

I tried to read Ordinary Time slowly to savor it. But once I started, I couldn't stop reading. I know that I will return to read it again!
I highly recommend this to all types of readers; I know that everyone will find lovely nuggets in this book to reflect on.

Received this as an ARC from NetGalley and wow did I devour every word from this book. Each chapter was wrote around a thought that I think everyone has had at one point in their lives, that you might be too afraid to say out loud. I loved that this author took you through stages of life where people are always coming and going and what happens when you aren’t the one moving and how you sit with that. She posed the question that if everyone is leaving or doing different things with their lives and you’re staying put, does that mean you aren’t living or that you’re any less happy? Every chapter was so thought provoking and I loved that in her life she was content opening a small indie book store, in a very small southern town and how fulfilled she has felt in doing that. Especially when others in her life took other paths. This was such a wonderful read and so unexpectedly inspiring.

There were two immediate reasons I wanted to request an egalley of this memoir in essays. 1) it’s *the* Annie B.Jones!!! I’ve been listening to the From The Front Porch podcast since 2021. 2) Ive always preferred small town stories over the big city ones.

Annie is the owner of The Bookshelf in the sleepy little town of Thomasville, Georgia, host of From The Front Porch podcast, and, now, first time author.

Jones and I are about the same age, and yet I can’t point to any similarities between her upbringing and mine, nor do we have any interests (besides reading of course) in common. Yet It was fascinating to learn about her religious background and journey to find a new church and community. I’m not religious myself, but I never found her essays on this topic to feel preachy pt ostracizing.

It was also very interesting to read about her journey to becoming a bookstore owner. Any fan of her podcast will appreciate the essays around The Bookshelf.

Her taste in books rarely overlaps with mine, but that’s never mattered to me because I listen for the comfort and predictability that she and her co-hosts provide. And just like her show, she can also be described (and does describe herself) as predictable, reliable, and grounded. These are her superpowers, even if they’re not flashy traits. Her essays are more or less a list of the different ways she has stayed consistently herself. Although I think some of the essays are a bit of a stretch in trying to stay within the theme, I think her collection and her writing are solid.

I’ve always loved the quieter, character driven literary novels, so it makes sense that I would also enjoy what is basically the nonfiction version of that. However, I do think that it was still surface level and she could’ve dug deeper.

It was definitely an easy and relaxing read. I think it’ll be a fantastic audiobook option since she narrates that herself. I’d wait for that.

I really liked the premise of this book - sort of the antithesis of those cliche millenial graphics about quitting your job and starting over on the other side of the world. A clean slate sounds good in theory (or on Pinterest), and can absolutely be the right course of action for some, but leaving is not the only path toward fulfillment. Annie clearly struggles with this in her memoir, conflicted by the desire to grow, while feeling stifled by expectations.

The strongest parts for me were when she talked about her people; from her close-knit circle, to the regulars at her bookshop. This section reminded me a lot of my grandpa who was a teacher in a small town for many years. He had so much pride for his city that when my soccer team played against one in his city, he unashamedly rooted for them. "They're the best. Sorry, they can't be beat." His funeral was full of former students, local restaurant owners, and neighbors. A testament to the fact that you can make a big impact by putting down roots and investing in your community.

In this memoir, there were times where it felt like the author was holding back, still hyper-aware of the people she knows will be reading. I think those are the parts that fell flat for me; there were numerous chapters referring to her leaving her church, but no specificities. I understand that inclination to be vague, but there was something missing there.
She has an interesting perspective and a unique voice - I finished this book hoping that only good things happen to her.

What a delightful reading experience! Annie Jones is a gifted storyteller and I love this book from start to finish. Each essay was a satisfying balance of reflectively serious and pleasantly entertaining. I found her exploration of what it means to "stay put" to be not only interesting but heartfelt. I hope she writes another book, this one was a pleasure.

I’ve long been a fan of Annie Jones’ podcast, From the Front Porch, and have lived vicariously through her for years. She’s an independent bookstore owner…in the South. Swoon! Visiting The Bookshelf in Thomasville, GA is on my bookstore bucket list.

Her debut book is a mash-up of 75% memoir and 25% essay collection. I could relate to parts of it, and I think anyone reading it could find themselves somewhere in the pages. It’s thoughtful, reflective, reminiscent, and nostalgic.

The beginning essays fulfilled what her book title suggests: learning to live and appreciate the small things in life. To find happiness and contentment when you have or choose to stay where you are. To stay connected to your roots and the people that shaped you. To bloom where you’re planted. It was really resonating with me, and I loved reading about her path to owning The Bookshelf.

At one point, however, the book goes off course, and just becomes her life story; including old memories and tales about her relatives. It felt as if the author suddenly forgot what direction the book was supposed to be going in mid-writing it.

Overall, it was relatively interesting, but not exactly what the description and title promises it will be.

*Thank you @netgalley and @harperonebooks for this advanced reader copy. Ordinary Time is out on shelves now.