Pop Culture

A Rose for Emily: A Reading List for Those in Love with S-Town

Obsessed with the S-Town podcast? These books are for you.

Elizabeth Allen Apr 10, 2017

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Elizabeth Allen

Staff Writer

Lifelong book lover, Elizabeth Allen managed to get a degree in something completely unrelated that she never intends to use. She’s a proud Connecticut native who lives in a picturesque small town with her black olive-obsessed toddler daughter, her prom date-turned-husband, and her two dim-witted cats Penny Lane and Gretchen Wieners. She spends her days trying to find a way to be paid to read while drinking copious amounts of coffee, watching episodes of Gilmore girls until the DVDs fail, waiting for her husband to feed her, and being obnoxiously vain about her hair. Elizabeth’s work can be found at www.blackwhitereadbooks.com, where she is currently reading and reviewing all of the books referenced in Gilmore girls. She is also the cohost of two podcasts discussing the work of Amy Sherman-Palladino (“Under the Floorboards” and “Stumbling Ballerinas”). Basically, her entire goal in life is to be a bookish Lorelai Gilmore. She clearly dreams big. Twitter: @BWRBooks

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[Spoiler alert: This post gives some hints as to the major plot twists in S-Town. So please proceed with caution.]

I recently read a few reviews of Serial’s breakout hit, S-Town. These reviews lamented the fact that the podcast’s subjects seemed to be “all over the place.”

Personally, that is exactly what I loved about Brian Reed’s S-Town. There was so much to unpack. The story begins and appears to be about a suspected murder in a small, broken town in Alabama. And then that story morphs into so much more. A titillating murder mystery became the least interesting aspect of John B. McLemore’s story and Reed, in a move that displayed utter artistry, followed the unexpected mystery… who is John B. McLemore? And as with any life lived well in some respects, full of missed opportunities and regrets in others… the story of his life was “all over the place.” Our lives defy order. They embrace chaos. And Brian Reed’s reporting not only acknowledged that, but wielded it as an expert’s tool in sharing this tale with the world.

When trying to recommend this podcast to others, I find that I have a hard time describing exactly what it is about. How do you summarize an entire messy, beautiful life into an elevator pitch? There are just so many aspects of this story that defined John B. and the town of Woodstock, Alabama. So while people may have been turned off by the fact that Reed’s story evolved into something completely unexpected, or that so many subjects were introduced into his narrative… these reasons are exactly what had me (and many others) so invested in the life and times of this complicated man.

Since it’s hard to find any one (or five) books that could give a reader the same experience they had listening to S-Town, I’m going to give non-fiction/memoir recommendations for many of the varied topics discussed in this seven episode podcast.

So many of these topics are painfully universal. Which is why John B. McLemore’s life was at once both fascinating and relatable… we have all had moments where we didn’t understand quite understand the role we played in the very world we detested. The real tragedy of John B. is that he didn’t realize he was OF Shit Town.

[Note: Some of these recommendations will naturally overlap topics. And some of these topics have very limited recommendations available (see: antiquarian horology). I did my best, I swear.]

Murder in a small town