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The Currently Reading Podcast
Bookish Conversation Anywhere + Changing Our Opinion on Books (Season 8, Episode 45)
01:05:11
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- [00:00]
A
Foreigners. Welcome to the Currently Reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
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B
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a readerly deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go.
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A
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And cliched as it is, I'm reminded again that reading is the great connector.
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B
I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona, and books make the best gifts. This is episode number 45 of season eight of and We Are so glad you're here.
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A
All right, Katie, glad to get into it today. We've got a lot to talk about. I've got some great books to talk about. I'm sure you do too.
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B
I absolutely do. And we also have some mischief to manage here today. Meredith, as you know, we are preparing for one of our favorite episodes of the season. We have our listener press episode coming up soon. If y' all are listening in real time, it's time to go get in your closet and record us a little something something. So if you have been here a long time, then you know that for many years we used the end of the show to press a book into your hands. We even revisited that press list this season and talked about how full of gems it really is. Now it's your turn. In July of every year we have a whole episode dedicated to your presses, the books that you want to press into our hands, and the hands of 20,000 other people. And we need your help with it. During this next week, as in before June 21, 2026, we would love for you to record a short audio file, two to three minutes and email it to us with the subject. Listener Press 20:26 Meredith, what do they have to include in a listener press?
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A
They have to tell us who they are. They have to tell us where they're from. They have to give us some setup, right? Like let us know what it's about, enough that we know to be interested and then let us know what you thought, what you think about it. This is no joke. Our favorite episode of the year continuously listeners give us not only Katie and I, but so many other people their favorite reads of the year. I happen to think the more backlist the better. I mean, sure, an old book is great, but I happen to think that Backlist is even better than Front List. But if you've read something that you just absolutely think everyone else needs to read, this is the time to tell us for sure.
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B
Script it out and know that we will make you sound as fabulous as we possibly can. Always include the title and author in your book and double points if you include it at the beginning and the end.
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A
Triple points if you say here's the setup.
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Right? We love the phrase not everybody does, but we love the phrase here's the setup. Email it to us at our new email hellourrentlyreading podcast.com and write Listener Press 2026 in in the subject line and yes, we are asking for these now, but you can look for that episode in July and get your notebooks and your tbrs out and be ready because it is going to blow everything up in the best way possible.
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A
Yes. Love it, love it, love it. Favorite episode of the year.
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B
All right, that's our mischief managed for this episode.
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A
Meredith all right then, let's get into our bookish moments of the week. Katie, what have you got?
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B
Let's do it. We last night at my house had an end of season party for Levi's baseball team. They they were the champions of their division in his little we're very proud. His coach was exceptionally wonderful. So as a small token of our baseball appreciation, I decided to press into his hands my brand new copy of Banana Ball by Jesse Cole as featured on this month's Indie Press list from Shuler Books. You and I had a great conversation about that book, but even as soon as we finished that episode I said I know exactly where this copy is going. I couldn't wait to give it to Coach tj. He is a huge fan of the team and the founder Jesse Cole and baseball in general, but hadn't read the book yet. So we ended up having this wide ranging, two hour long conversation about baseball and business and entertainment and how to build a team that loves each other and all the ways that this book surprised and delighted me. He's so looking forward to it and he felt very like, seen and appreciated with this frankly, small token of appreciation for how much time and energy he put into these kids all season long. But it was, you know, of course me, I love to give a book and I was so happy that he loved to receive it and that one
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A
is a really, really good one. That's great for as we talked about on the ipl, it's great if you Love baseball, but it's also, I mean, I don't love baseball. I actively dislike baseball and yet loved the book. It's such a good business book. It's really, I think that's a really great token of affection because it's thoughtful. You really thought about it. You thought about it specifically for him. Coaches and teachers, every single day, I think they are doing the work of the angels. I mean, good lord, the way that they pour into our kids.
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B
Yes. So grateful. If you are a teacher, we hope you're having the best summer.
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A
Yes.
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B
You're a coach. Good job keeping those kids on the, on the straight and narrow and putting them on your team and loving them so. Well, all the love for sure.
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A
All right, good stuff. Okay. My bookish moment of the week is about the fact that, well, I love to get my hair cut. Like I love, I love to, I love to get my haircut. I love to get my hair washed. I love to get my hair blow dried. I love kind of all the things around that. I don't love small talk that goes with getting my haircut. Now my stylist is fantastic. We've gotten to know each other and so we really talk about things that are, you know, more connective. But last week I went and I was getting some, some summer highlights put into my hair. And so I had a different woman doing my highlights. And I was like, oh, no, it's not just going to be Gabby, who I'm really used to making small talk with for an hour. It's going to be someone I don't even know. But it turned out that I had my Kindle with me and my Kindle was open to my current read, which has become my entire personality, which is Crescent City, the first Crescent City book. And this woman whose name is Sloan, I love the name Sloan, she saw that. And all of us, we talked non stop for an hour while she did my highlights. And she sat there and talked with me even when I wasn't getting highlights put in. And we taught, we talked about Sarah J. Maas, we talked about fantasy, we talked about. That led into other conversation where she was sharing some other much deeper things that happened to her and how the books had really played into that part of her healing through that. And so all of a sudden I'm leaving and I'm like, got a new bookish friend. We're recommending books to each other. We both shared some pretty intense things about us. I never would have done that. Like, I am not a chatter. I will sit silently before I will randomly make small talk with somebody. Books brought that out in each of us. And again, this is so cliched. We all know that this is true, but every single time it happens out in the wild, it feels like brand new mag.
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B
I have lots to say about surprise and delight today.
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A
Yeah, I'm really.
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B
It's just.
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It always makes me. It always just delights me and surprises me how much, how quickly books will loosen our social anxiety. I guess that's what I have. I don't know. But anyway, it was really great. I loved it. Shout out to Sloan. See, she did my highlights. Kate, if you're on YouTube, you can see she did my highlights. And can you see that all my gray is gone for a little bit?
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B
Well, I just.
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A
It'll come back. It'll come back. I like. I like my gray. I have no problem with my gray. But it's like a nice little afterthought when you, when I get my summer highlights is for a few months. I don't have any gray.
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B
See?
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A
Yep. All right, Katie, let's talk about our current reads.
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B
All right, Meredith. I have a backlist gem, but it is not an under the radar gem. In fact, I'm willing to bet that everyone has heard of it. Oh, wow. Excited to tell you all about my experience of reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l' Engle to my kids. Okay. Because this was an experience. This is not just about the book. So first, some brief setup. I know y' all know this book. Meg Murray is a brilliant but misunderstood young girl who is missing her father who disappeared about a year ago. Alongside her brother Charles Wallace and her new friend Calvin o'. Keefe. Three middle grade children. These three middle grade children set off on a quest to find him and bring him home. They are aided in their efforts, or at least set upon their course by three otherworldly beings. Mrs. Wetzit. Mrs. Who? And Mrs. Witch. Those children must travel through both space and time using the tesseract and every bit of wits that they possess to not only find Mr. Murray, but to have everyone come home in one piece. This is a classic novel from 1962 and it's under 250 pages. And we all at least know about it because it was absolute forerunner, groundbreaker in the genre which we might call middle grade sci fi. But really this is a novel for every generation of readers. When I told my mom that I was reading it aloud to my kids, she said this was her favorite novel growing up in the 60s. Right. So quite some time ago, I was pressed to pick it up by my two oldest kids who had just finished watching the final season of Stranger Things with me. And there are a number of tie ins to the storyline nestled within that Netflix show. So even though they both had read and enjoyed the novel, and enjoyed the graphic novel adaptation and the newest movie version by Ava DuVernay, they still wanted another way to take it in and to kind of bring their siblings along for the ride. Ergo I, their dear mother was sacrificed on the altar of reading aloud. Because this was a sacrifice, y'. All. Madeleine l' Engle did not use her considerable writing powers to coddle her readers or the ones who are reading it aloud. While I had read this book on paper before in the past, it is a completely different experience to have to find within yourself. You have to gird your loins the gumption to read in multiple languages, create various voices for characters who are very clearly described as being distinctive, and then maintain them for 250 pages over a few weeks of reading aloud.
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A
That's a lot.
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When I say it was Greek, to me, there's literal Greek in these pages. I had the Spanish down. I can pull off some passable Italian. Where was I supposed to get French and Greek and Latin from? No idea. But while that presented a challenge for this reader alouder, I'm just going to keep making up words. It did not detract from my kids enjoyment of the novel at all. They loved the plot, they were able to follow the complex movements through time and space from planet to planet, and they really fell for the charact as individuals. They loved Meg, they loved Charles Wallace, and they loved Calvin. We had a wonderful time experiencing a classic novel together, which is. I mean, that's a challenge in itself. This is different types of language. This is asking a lot from the reader as well as the listener of the book. But even though I found myself a little bit worried about what I'd encounter to challenge myself every time I picked it up, I'm so glad that we got to play together within this entire universe. This is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l'. Engle.
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A
Very interesting that that book is going to come up twice in this episode. No way.
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B
What?
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A
Which now I'm realizing we've gotten this far through. I'm realizing we never told people what our deep dive was going to be.
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Oops.
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A
Now they're just going to have to wait.
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It's a surprise in a number of ways. It is, it is. All right.
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A
My first book today is very, very different than A wrinkle in time. My first book is the one that I really loved and it is called Brother by Ania Alborn. Trigger warnings for everything that I'm about to say. Because things are going to get really, really dark. So skip forward if this kind of thing bothers you When I talk about really dark stuff, here's a setup. Our story is set in 1981 in the remote hollows of West Virginia Appalachia. And it drops us right into the world of the Morrow family. And the word family here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Our lead is 19 year old Michael Morrow, who has spent his entire life under the thumb of the Morrow family. They are a deeply isolated, deeply violent household ruled by a cruel mother named Claudine and a Vietnam veteran father named Wade. Michael's older brother, Rebel or Reb as he calls him, is vicious, controlling, and Michael just cannot get out from under his thumb. Michael's always known in the way that you know these things when you're growing up, was that the life he's living is not the one that he was meant for. But knowing something and Michael doing something about them are two different things. What cracks his world open is a chance encounter with someone from the outside who makes him feel like escape might actually be possible. And that single thread of hope is what drives the tension and a lot of the violence throughout this book. The Morrow family has a code, and Michael has always followed it. Whether he can find the courage to stop following it is what the story is all about. All right. As I said, this book is dark. I ended up rating it 4.25. And I want to tell you again, right at the top. I have been conflicted about that rating ever since I finished it. What I kept coming back to is this author, Ania Alborn is not trying to shock your brain with the graphic nature of this book. That often is what we're getting when we read horror like this. And make no mistake, this is horror. She's trying to shock your heart. And that is a meaningful distinction here because it's the thing that makes this different from a lot else in the genre. This isn't darkness for the sake of sensation or gross out. It's not darkness for escapade. The relentlessness here is purposeful and the story underneath everything is about generational trauma and about how that violence reproduces itself across family lines, generation after generation, until it feels less like a choice and more like just the weather that's happening around us. That's a really, really amazing thing that Auburn accomplishes in this novel. And she does this really well. I believed every word of this book while I was in it. But there were a couple of things that I wrestled with because they matter for whether or not you might find this to be a book you want to pick up. There are a few characters, especially the. The parents, Wade and Claudine, who I felt were kind of one note. I kept wanting more of their backstory. But ellen, in our 666 book club, which is where I read it, she reframed something for me mid conversation that shifted this for my read. She was saying that the experience, this entire book, the entire world that we get here, is through Michael's perspective, our lead character. And Michael is only 19. And in other ways, he's emotionally stuck, even younger than that. So of course the adults around him look flat and but monstrous. He has no other frame of reference. And that reframe helped me here. Then there's Michael himself. I had a bias here. You've heard me talk about it before. I struggle with protagonists who don't take hold of the agency that's available to them. Michael, because of that, was a struggle for me. I felt so much sympathy for him. But also the judgy part of me kept thinking, couldn't you do something different here? And that tension was with me through the entire book. The reading pace matters here, too. This book is unflinchingly dark from the very beginning to the very end. There's no respite that you're going to find inside of it. There's no, like, base or like. Like, when you're playing tag. There's no, like, bass, where you can take a couple of breaths. And Ania Alborn is not trying to give us one. That I think is the right choice for the book. The story that she's telling here, but it means, at least for this reader, as I was reading it, I needed to read it fast because I think I wanted to get in and out of this world. But I read it slowly, in small pieces instead, kind of going the opposite direction. And that meant it took me a long time to get through the book. And so it kind of stayed in me. And that was. There was some cost to that because this book is so dark. But the thing I kept landing on was that I was interested the entire time. I never had to force myself through the book. And Reb, that terrifying, malevolent Reb, he had his own kind of charm. And there was a question of nature versus nurture. Nurture that ran through the whole book and was really interesting, especially through that character. And when a character lives in my head like that and I've thought about him and actually Michael too since then, I really, really think that that means that a book was worth my time. So I won't forget this story for a long time. I think if you want horror that digs into you and refuses to let go, then this would be one for you. This is quality literary horror. And if you've heard about Ania Alborn maybe through some of her other books, and you've always wanted to figure out where to start, I think this is a good place to start with her. I know that I intend to read more in her canon. This one is Brother by Ania Alborn.
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B
Okay, well, yeah, we know that there is a huge swath of our listenership that really loves those creepy under your skin books from you, Meredith.
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A
So yes, this is thrilled. This is Murderful with a capital M and all the underlines underneath.
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B
There you go. See, my next one this week is nonfiction because that's where this goes and it's very on brand for me. It's called Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler. This is the second book that I've read from Kate Bowler and I got pretty worried when the forward made me cry. I was like, oh no wait, I don't know. I don't know if I want to do this. But it was fine. I pushed through to read it alongside my reading partner and it turns out that despite the initial tears, we were joyful anyway. This book could primarily be categorized as memoir, but it leans a little bit toward that type of year in the life memoir that I really love. Like Gretchen Rubin or AJ Jacobs, Kate Bowler, as her readers know, was diagnosed with colon cancer as a young woman. She was, I think, 35. She was very young and as it would for most of us, it threw her life into disarray. She was shook, as we would be. The question that this book wrestles with is how joy is different from happiness and is it possible to harness it and find joy anyway, even in the midst of the hard things that life throws our way. No matter what those hard things are, it doesn't have to be what is potentially life threatening cancer. It could be any hard thing that you're going through. Kate has built a name for herself, especially with her Everything Happens podcast where she explores the intersections of suffering with happiness and success with failure, and what we can learn from where those two places meet in our lives. It's long form and conversational and this book feels like an extension of those conversations and the community that has sprung up around it. She includes really short chapters of lists where her in person community and her podcast community found unexpected joy. Little tiny items like taking my child to his first prom right or taking the photos right before he left for his first prom. Some chapters focus on her own wrestling with these topics through conversations with experts and other professors, and some are about her own seeking of joy in her life, which is why it gave me that sense of a year in the life. She tries things out to see if it's possible to manufacture joy, to make it happen. Unexpected activities to see if it's possible to bottle it and keep it like a like a favorite perfume. She talks about the times in her life when it bubbled out of her despite the inappropriateness of the moment, like at a funeral. And she mostly lands on the idea that joy comes when we least expect it and it's not possible to force or create it. It's the same way that we talk about how we love being surprised by a book or having our expectations subverted. But we can't make that happen. We can't go to the library and look for a surprise because then you've already ruined the surprise. Joy, by definition, contains that same element of surprised delight. It sneaks up on us and taps us on the shoulder mid cry. It holds our hand like a trusted friend when we thought we were doing that hard thing all alone. It's like a shaken up soda that accidentally explodes all over your best shirt. Joy is impossible to grasp with both hands, but worth holding onto for those few moments it's there, so we lean in. We know it's not going to stick around, but we cherish it while it's here. And we cultivate the spaces and the people that allow it to grow, allow it to show up and land every once in a while. Kate Bowler, with her gentle and professorial tone she is a professor at Duke, is the perfect companion on this road, reminding us of that fact. And while I don't feel like I came away from this book with a step by step guide about how to find joy in your life or cultivate it better, I also think that was kind of the point that we allow joy to find us when it can and we nod our hearts toward it instead of our heads in recognition, we allow it to overwhelm us and then to pass and be joyful. Anyway, this was comfort reading. Sweetness and light and a little bit teary, especially right at the beginning. I loved it. I gave it five stars. This is Joyful Anyway, by Kate Bowler.
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A
That sounds like a great emergency break glass book to have for sure.
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B
Definitely.
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A
Okay, my second one moves me forward in my desire to be an Agatha Christie completist. And Here I read Mrs. McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie. All right, here's the setup. At the very beginning of the book. We know, not just from the title, that Mrs. McGinty's dead. She is an elderly char woman, like a cleaning woman who scrubbed people's floors, and she mostly minded her own business and someone bashed her over the head in her own home for maybe a measly 30 bucks. 30 pounds. The police have already convicted the guy who was staying with her, her lodger, a sad, socially awkward young man named James Bentley. And he is awaiting execution for the crime. Except Superintendent Spence, the officer who worked the case, can't shake the feeling that something isn't right. Bentley, the guy who's waiting on death row, is pathetic, sure, but he just doesn't feel like a killer. So Spence does what any sensible person would do when they need a miracle. What I would do if I could, if I needed this miracle. Call Hercule Perrault. Perrault travels to the small village of Brodhenney, where he takes up residence in the most hilariously terrible guest house you can imagine. And he begins poking around in Mrs. McGinty's life so that he can get to the bottom of her death. All right, time to dip back into my good friend Hercule's company. After spending a few books with Miss Marple, which I am enjoying my read through of Miss Marple, but it felt really good to be back with Hercule. This one was written all the way back in 1952. And at this point in the series, Perrault has slowed down a bit, leaning into even he calls his semi retirement. But what struck me about this book and what I want to talk about first is that Agatha Christie was very clearly in a good mood when she wrote it. You can feel it on every page, especially if you've been spending the last several years reading her books as she's traveled through the decades. You can tell there is a. There is a difference in the mood that she's in here. There's a looseness and a playfulness that just made me smile all the way through. There are two really funny recurring bits that Christie weaves through this story, and they're not there to advance the plot. They exist because she's having fun. And when Agatha Christie's having fun, we are having fun. One of those bits involves Ariadne Oliver, who's become a recurring character in the Poirot books and is widely understood to be Christie's fictional stand in for herself. Ariadne is a successful mystery novelist, and there's a section in this book where she goes on an absolute terror about how much Ariadne hates the detective character that she has created, the one that she's now permanently stuck with because her readers love him. You have to feel for poor Agatha if she felt even a fraction of that frustration about Pierrot. But this section of the book is so meta and so funny, and it gives you a wonderful peek behind the curtain at what Christie might have really been feeling about her most famous creation. The other comedic gift in this book is a character who is, and I say this with great affection, one of the most frustrating human beings I've ever encountered in all of Agatha Christie. I won't say more about it or who it is, because discovering this person is part of the joy of this book. But even Poirot, our unflappable, perfectly composed detective, wants to come across the table and wring this person's neck. Every single interaction between them made me laugh out loud. Christy writes the dynamic with such precision that you can practically see Perrault's mustache twitching in irritation. Or his mustaches. And then this guest house he's staying in. Perrault is a foodie. We know this across all of his books. He loves good food and he loves fine dining. And this guest house is managed by the single worst housekeeper and cook that you could ever imagine. And the horrors that it visits on poor Hercule made me giggle every time. But beyond the humor, the mystery itself is classic Christie. It's well constructed, it's twisty, and of course, it's completely and thoroughly solved by our favorite Belgian detective right at the very end. This isn't one of Christie's novels where you feel like the solution comes out of nowhere. The clues are there if you're paying attention. And the resolution felt really right to me. I gave this one a solid four stars. And I think if you are doing a read through of Agatha Christie, you are going to really, really love this one. I know that I did. The energy here is contagious. This is Mrs. McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie.
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B
I have to say about the terrible guest house is that every once in a while when you're traveling, you end up in a place that was not to your expectations, right? And in the moment, it super sucks. But then afterwards, those are the best stories to be. To be like. And then it's all about the memory.
- [27:43]
A
Yep.
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B
Right, Exactly. We had a place that my. When my parents took me as a kid to Paris, the hotel room we stayed in, when the person above us showered, it would rain inside our bathroom. So. And we still talk about. Remember that bathroom in Paris where the. Where the shower above would rain in our bathroom? And I was like, yeah. At the time, we did not appreciate, you know, a wet toilet seat. But we still talk about it. It's been 25 years.
- [28:09]
A
Yeah, exactly. Does. And that makes it. What's funny here is no matter how gross something is, like, at one point there was, like, mold on something, but she was still going to serve it. And Hercule is so polite. Like, he's so polite by nature. Watching him try to get out of eating whatever it is that she's trying to serve him. It's just so funny. So, so, so funny. All right, what's your third book?
- [28:32]
B
Okay, well, in a big left turn from an author who was having so much fun and enjoying her life when she wrote things. I can't imagine that's true here I'm going to talk about the Hunger by Alma Katsu.
- [28:44]
A
Yeah, but this is a good one.
- [28:46]
B
It is a good one. So on episode 36 of season 8, we deep dived, or dove deep into the oldest books on our TBRs. And we made some judgment calls about what needs to stay and what has to go. This was one of my three books, and I decided to prioritize it. So now I get to tell y' all how that went for me. Anyone who's been around for a while knows about this book, which Meredith brought to the show quite some time ago. It's a novelized horror retelling of the 1846 Donner Party journey through Nevada into California. This story follows an intrepid group of pioneers as they're plagued by child disappearances, disease, and something even more sinister. The wagon train continues westward, and we're closely following their journey, especially through the witness of Tamson Donner, who is the wife of the leader and someone who's suspected of something more than just womanly wiles in the 1840s. You can probably guess what that might be. We've also all heard the story of the Donner Party and the ways that that journey went literally and figuratively downhill. So to be in the hands of Alma Katsu, who opted to add additional horror and supernatural elements, was a really fun treat for this reader. It was the right move. It added just Enough additional creepiness to the story to make it unput downable. Even give me an abandoned cabin in the woods with unexplained notes left on the table. And I don't even care about whether somebody's eyes are going to be eaten for dinner or not. I genuinely enjoyed this all the way through, but I also got curious as I prepped for the show as to why the reviews are only middling on this one. The most revealing one that I found was that the reviewer thought that adding these extra elements of supernatural and horror amakatsu makes the horrors here more external versus what we mostly find horrifying about the Donner Party, which is the fact that it's internal, that it's possible for regular humans to get to this point of depravity that we're talking about 170 years later. And we talk about Donner Pass, right? Everybody knows about the Donner Party because it's so terrifying that starvation could lead to such an awful choice, which is truly horror enough. But by making it external causes and questions, this specific reader reviewer felt it made it less scary than the true story. And I get that. But for me, it was not the case. It was a great blend of historical and fiction and really got into my head. I love letting it sweep me away in a manner that still allowed me to sleep at night. However, readers should know that there is more sex in here than I expected, so I would put it as my like, zero marker, like sex without being sexy on my reading tracker. But it's definitely in there. The final part about this that I really enjoyed is that I get to report back about that reader know thyself question that we asked all of you to consider both on the show and in volume five of the newsletter, and tell you that I was able to make the right call here and trust my reader gut from years ago in at least one of these three oldest TBR books. It still appealed all these years later, and it was the right time for me to read it and really, really enjoy it. It was tasty, if you will. This is the Hunger by Alma Katsu.
- [31:57]
A
Yeah, that is a really, really good one. You know what's weird is that I don't find cannibalism to be as scary or gross or whatever as I find other things in horror. But I know for a lot of people, cannibalism's like a really big. I don't know why I don't. I mean, I'm. It's not like I'm like looking to eat a Human. But I don't find it to be as horrible as some. As many other things that I could think of.
- [32:22]
B
Yeah, there's definitely things that can happen to and inside bodies, like insects coming out of a body that really bother me in a different way than like I got so hungry I had to eat that person's arm. Like, not that I'm on that train. I'm not going toward cannibalism, let's be clear. But like I. It seems more justifiable than some of the other things that happen in horror.
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A
Yeah, yeah, but it's been in the last couple of years, man, we've gotten, I mean, since that book came out a long time ago, but we've gotten a lot of books where cannibalism is at the. It's kind of the essence of it or.
- [33:00]
B
Yeah.
- [33:01]
A
All right, well, I have a absolute five star book that I want to talk about today that I read just a couple of days ago and I'm so excited to talk about it. And it is called Five by Ilona Bannister. Katie, have you read this one yet?
- [33:16]
B
No, but Carrie and I are going to read it because we talked about it on Her Boss my TBR segment and I peer pressured her into it.
- [33:23]
A
I really think that you're going to like. I think that you're going to like this one a lot. All right, here's the setup. Five strangers are standing on a train platform. The train will arrive in five minutes. One of these people will not be alive when it pulls in. That's the opening. That's the opening premise. That's the promise really of Alona Bannister's Five. You'll meet an abrasive elderly woman, a struggling gambler, a mother and her young son, and a polished businessman. And over the course of these five real time minutes on the platform, the book ducks back and forth into each character's history, showing you the choices and the small private disasters that brought every one of them to this exact spot at this exact moment. You're given a front row seat as the clock ticks down with each backstory, unspooling and unexpected connections surfacing between the strangers, all while you try to work out which one of the five is going to get hit by that train. All right, I almost skipped this one. Even though I will admit that multiple of my trusted resources had already told me that it was great. But the whole five strangers, one of them dies set up is normally a recipe for me to bounce out of a book in the first chapter because I have Very little patience with this kind of premise. I find it hard to relax into the writing because all I want to do is race to the end to find out who it is. And that is not a satisfying experience for me. But what changed my mind on this was actually my husband, Johnny. He picked this up from the library for me. I had put it on hold, but on his way home, he had to stop and grab Jackson. He had to wait for a couple of minutes, and he randomly picked this book up off the pile on the passenger seat of the car next to him. And by the time he got home, he said, by the way, I'm reading this one. You're gonna have to wait till I'm done because I'm gonna finish this. Now, he doesn't normally do that. So then imagine my further surprise. When he was done, he handed it to me and said, you are going to love this. This is significant intel because Johnny is not a thriller guy. In fact, he's not a plot guy at all. He only loves books that delve deep into character. So when he told me that this book that looks like a propulsive thriller is actually a deep character book in disguise, I plunged in. He was totally right. This book is smart in a way that I did not see coming. Yes, there's this driving through line, the train, and there's a question of who's going to get hit by the train. But that is not the point of this book at all. The point is that every single person on that subway platform has a story. And every story has its own twists and turns and small private dramas. And you might judge them or you might applaud the person and the way they're living their lives, but you're going to feel something. The setup, the premise is the frame, but the people are the picture. And that picture is fascinating. Ilona Bannister is so good at showing and not telling every section of this book. And they are very distinct. Separate sections is so well constructed. I loved the fourth wall break that she does. I loved the omniscient narrator and the winking, nodding, kind of Greek chorus quality of that voice running through it. The structure is doing a lot of the work and the writing is doing even more. I loved the entire thing. And a note on the mood, because I think this is key. This is a dark book. Not as dark as Brother, the book I talked about at the top of the show. But this book has edge. It's not light or bright at all. So if you are in a season where what you're craving is cozy and gentle. Save this one for when you're in a different reading mood. But if you're open to something that runs incisive and very close to the bone, you are going to be deeply rewarded. It's also not very long, which I appreciated. There is absolutely no fat in this one. This is a lean book. So five stars for me, a book I almost didn't read that has become one of my favorite reads of the year. And I owe that entirely to my husband randomly picking up this book and deciding that it suited his taste in literary fiction. This is Five by Ilona Bannister. I think you're gonna love it, Katie.
- [37:55]
B
I do too. And the more I hear about it, thankfully, the more I want to read it rather than what oftentimes happens where I'm like, well, not reading that ever. My. I do have a question. Just as a general structure. Are we meeting one person at a time or are they kind of layered on top of each other? First the mom and then the. I think you said attorney and then. Or is it like, let's go back to the train platform. It's minute four. Everybody's still alive. Now we're going to go do something else and meet everybody in a different period of their life. Like, is it more layered than that?
- [38:30]
A
So what I will say is that the structure is really, really important. The way that she's doing the structure is really important. And it's done in the way that is. That perfectly delivers the story to you. So it's. And that that piece of it is a huge piece of why it worked so well. Because we're both deep diving. But we're also being brought up to where we are in the moment. Never too much of either one. She just really held them in perfect balance all the through. It was just a really well done. I mean you could describe this book as a thriller. You could. But it also. I would hand it to any of my friends who are like, I would never pick up a thriller. And I really only read literary fiction. It's a. It's just one of those books that I think you could hand to a lot of people. We. And Jackson is reading it right now. Like you could really. My 14 year old. So you could really, really. This is a crowd pleaser amongst a lot of different disparate kinds of readers. Readers.
- [39:31]
B
I mean, I have it now in paper and on audio.
- [39:34]
A
Yeah.
- [39:34]
B
Which I don't know if audio will work for me because sometimes I need to be in it for a book like this.
- [39:40]
A
But yeah, I Did it on. I did it on paper. And I really. I have no idea. The audio might be fantastic. I just happen to have the library copy because I honestly wasn't going to read it. I was going to, like, dip into it and probably read the end just because I was like, oh, I just want to find out who gets hit with the train. Who gets hit by the train. But then I just. Man, I actually didn't read the ending first, which had totally been my plan.
- [40:03]
B
I think you told the listeners on All Things Murderful that you were.
- [40:07]
A
That's what I was going to do. And I was. But the way that it's written, you just all of a sudden have no desire to do that, because that's really. That fourth wall break, that omniscient narrator. Just really. You feel very much like. You know what? This is actually a ride that I feel totally comfortable being on. Yeah, it's a really good one.
- [40:26]
B
I'm excited. Summer break, here we come.
- [40:29]
A
Excellent. Okay, so our deep dive, which I did not tell you about at the beginning of the show because I forgot to do that, is about books that we tried, and for some reason, we either wrote them off or we bounced off of them. We DNF'd them, but now we're thinking they might actually deserve a second. A second chance, a retry. Right. Do you have any books that. That immediately, Katie, when we thought we got a question from Tiffany Wines, our bookish friend about this, asking us about this. Were there any books that just immediately came to mind for you? Because there was one that came to mind for me. I mean, I've.
- [41:05]
B
More.
- [41:05]
A
More than that, but one that came to mind immediately.
- [41:08]
B
I have, like, two sides to this coin, I think. One is that I picked up the book. It wasn't what I expecting, and I went through it anyway. And then I was mad, but really I was mad at me because I knew that it wasn't what I thought it was, and I went for it anyway. And then I was disappointed. Right. And then there's the books that either I read them anyway or I DNF'd them. And I did try them again later, and it turns out it made all the difference. Right. When I knew what to expect when I was going into it. That is what changed everything for me. And I think that's a big part of what we try to do with our current reads here on Currently Reading is give a good feel about. Here's the reason that this would work for you or that it wouldn't work for you. So that you're not going into a book thinking, well, for example, Tiffany talked and spoke in her email about the Sundown Motel. She thought it was going to be more horror and not a mystery. And instead it was more mystery and less horror. And for her, that didn't work at that time or the Secret History. She was not expecting a character driven, dark academia story. And so she got kind of bogged down in the details and it kind of ruined the reading experience for her. So that's a big part of what we're trying to mitigate here, I guess. I'm currently reading, right?
- [42:24]
A
Yeah. Yes, exactly. That. That is the whole thing that we're trying to. Is to give enough information in our current reads so that people can figure out, like, is, am I in the right mood for this? Does this meet the expectation of the moment?
- [42:39]
B
Mm. Mm. It's also almost the inverse of what we talked about last week, or the seedy underbelly of it. If you've got something about a book that makes you really willing to jump in with both feet, I don't even need to know anything else. Right. It has found family. It has a sentient house, it has something in it I'm willing to jump in. But then it doesn't pan out. What does that tell us about who we are as a reader? Is it that a sentient house isn't actually enough or. Or is it that it has to be paired with some kind of darkness instead of light? Like, what is it that you can add to your image of yourself as a reader? How can you know yourself better based on. Well, I thought that trope always worked for me, and instead now I'm like, off in Octopus Wonderland and that. Like, who even wanted to go here? Nobody. Right. So they kind of walk hand in hand, which is why I thought it might be fun to talk about this week. Right after we discussed that, like, going into a book. Blind idea and what works for us in those ways.
- [43:36]
A
Yeah. For me, when I thought about this and when I. When I deeply went through my reading journals and really, really, really examined this, for me, it's so much more often for me that I go into it. Yes. Possibly expecting it to be something different than what it actually is. But a lot of times it's that I went into it and once I figured out what it actually was, I wasn't in the mood or in the right headspace for that right then. So the reason I would like to revisit now, I know what the right headspace would be and I could better appreciate It. So the book that came up for me immediately, like the second that I saw this on the show rundown was the sentence by Louise Erdrich, let's put
- [44:19]
B
a Louise Erdrich on mine.
- [44:20]
A
Yeah, I don't really know what I expected it to be exactly. I think maybe I expected more. I'd never read Louise Erdrich before. And also I think I had expected more ghost or faster moving plot. And that's not what this book is, but what it is, it's more character driven, more issue driven and it's really good. And I really. It's one of those that I often think I should go back and reread that book because I think I missed a lot of what I as a reader today would really, really gain from it. I just, it's one of those books that I want to give it another. I want to give it another run.
- [45:08]
B
And that circumstance has played out well for me in the past when I have kind of nailed down, okay, that clearly wasn't the right time. And for that reason I did not appreciate this book. But even in the past year I have gotten some really great books that I went back and tried again but hit at the right moment for me. Like the Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Erasure by Percival Everett. These are books that I gave sometimes only two stars to the first time that I read them because I was like, eh, cranky about it. This is not what I was wanting. This is not what I thought I was getting when I picked up this book. But when I came to it with my brain open to the right circumstance, what I knew what I was going to get in there. Then they hit on exactly the right level for me. So the first one that came to mind for me is actually pretty weird. No, I'll go with the more standard one, which is the very first one that came up. But I've talked about it a lot, so I hate to bring it up again. It's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I love Gabrielle Zevin. I've loved books from her in the past. But this book has a love triangle and awful people in it. And those two things. There was no endearingness of A.J. fikry. There was no interesting political machinations like in Yang Jiangyeong. There were just. It was missing all the things that I knew that I loved about Gabrielle Zevin. But I just thought if I kept trying harder, I would be able to find them or make it work for me. And that's not how books work, right? Sometimes they are exactly what they told you they would be, and it's your expectations that are wrong.
- [46:50]
A
Yeah. The other book that I thought about kind of along those same lines, is that I just never really loved Wrinkle in Time. And I didn't read it as a child, and I read it as an adult. And I think I read it in not the best headspace for it. It's a book that I would like to give another try to and try to appreciate it on a deeper. Because I do love fantasy and I do love middle grade, and I feel like it should be a win for me. And so it's one of those that I was like, I need another run at that. Maybe through the lens of maybe one of my grandsons will be really into that kind. It was never Jackson's kind of reading milieu, so I didn't, you know, visit it with him. But that's one that is so beloved by so many people and brings so much joy. And, you know, even I know that Mrs. What and Mrs. Who and Mrs. What's it and, you know, all of those. I just feel like I'd like to revisit it and try to appreciate it more.
- [47:53]
B
Let's take a very specific mindset to it though, right? Like the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster,
- [48:01]
A
which I've tried multiple times, and I just can't get into that book.
- [48:04]
B
See, I read that one aloud and it did not work for me. My kids thought it was so funny, but I was like, I don't. I don't think I get it. You know, it has some of that satire element to it. And I was like, I feel like we're going around in circles with this book. And they thought it was fun and it was funny. But Wrinkle in Time is not that, but it has some of that same playing with language, playing with circumstances, playing with words in a way that you have to kind of be ready to like, okay, I'm just. Madeline l' Engle is gonna do what she's gonna do. It's not gonna be what I expect from like a classic middle grade sci fi novel with all the weight of those words. Right.
- [48:45]
A
I think maybe my expectation was too high going into it. And then when it kind of just left me cold, it was like even more of a disappointment than it should have been. I'd like to take another run at that as well as I was looking. So I was on what should I read Next back in 2016.
- [49:03]
B
16. Yeah, that's what I want to say.
- [49:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah, 2016. I think one of the earliest episodes of. What should I read next? Maybe episode eight, Five or eight. It's an early episode. And I really enjoyed my appearance. I was so fangirled to be on talking to Anne Vogel about books. Like, I just, you know, it was so fun to do. It was so fun to talk about books with her. One of the books she recommended to me was a book called Morningside Heights by Cheryl Mendelsohn. And I read it right on the heels of my appearance. Like, I read it really soon after I was on that show and I just. I read it and it was very like, meh. I feel like that's a book that if I read it again now, 10 years later, I think I would like it so much more. I think I'm a more mature reader. I think I'm a more mature human. It's a book about people who live in this one particular apartment building in New York City and the nuances between them, the relationships between them. It's. It's character driven. But I wouldn't describe it as being quiet because she was, you know, giving me a recommendation that would be good for my reading. But I just. That's one that I thought, man, I should reread that one because I think I would be bringing so much more to the table now that would enable me to really appreciate that one. When I appeared on the show, I was still really coming out of my baby, kind of like having Jackson, and he was still little. And it's kind of coming out of those years where I really wasn't reading very much at all. And so I was really looking for very plot driven, kind of like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so Morningside Heights just didn't. I wasn't ready for it, but I think I'm much more ready for it now. So that's one that I would put on my list to revisit.
- [50:56]
B
Yeah. The other one that I had that did eventually play out correctly was when I first picked up the Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. We had it on the indie press list and we pre read it in August of 2024. And, you know, we have an agreement. We're gonna at least read a little bit. We're gonna get a feel for it. And I knew it wasn't the right time. I could see it, like, I could see the gem inside there, but I was like, no, this book is so big. It's so. It's Arthurian. The language, everything about it is just not for me. Right. But I knew that there was something in there. It's just not for this reader right then. So when I finally picked it up In November of 2025, more than a year later, different season of the year was very important to me. We went from August, which here is like high summer. It's so hot, it's so muggy outside. Going to November, when we're like a family around the table using candles. Right. There's just a different vibe in the air, ready for a sweeping storyline. And it swept me and it took me away and it was everything I needed and I went in with the right expectations and I ended up loving it. But if I had tried to power through, like, oh, I can see that there's something good in here. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna try until I find it, I think I would have come to the show and said, you know, this is a two star book and
- [52:16]
A
I'm sorry, it didn't work for me. Yeah. I mean, that's why we always say please. If in doubt, please dnf, please step out of that book because it will find you later when it's supposed to. Or you can purposefully read it at a different time and you can be intentional about that, but don't try to force it because it's just never going to work out for you or for the book.
- [52:36]
B
Yeah.
- [52:37]
A
You know, but having a sense of what the book is about and having a proper expectation so that you can meet that, match that mood, that's really, that's, that's the goal. And like you said, that's what we're trying to do here. Any other books, Katie, that you feel like you want to make sure that we're talking about.
- [52:53]
B
Yeah, I've got one more kind of nonsense pick. But you can go into any genre with your expectations getting messed up. Right. So I will remind all those who listened quite some time ago about how I got so angry at the Kraken's sacrifice by Katie Robert. Which is the most boring tentacle based erotica you could ever imagine. It was worse than doing my own taxes. And I felt like the main character was doing his. He was so bored with the situations that he found himself in, despite his many tentacles and the very sexy woman that he had in his lair. I guess it was. I mean, this is monster erotica. And the Dragon's Bride blew us all out of the water. The Kraken's water especially. And I was just so. Was like, I don't understand what happened from one book to the next in the same series. She clearly knows what she's doing. My expectations had been flouted. And again, it can be a trope that you think you really love. Like, in my case, octopuses and tentacles that just don't work for some reason. And that expectation was unmet.
- [53:59]
A
No, I hate that. I hate it. I hate it when it happens. But sometimes it happens the opposite way. Like with Piranesi, where I went in not really knowing what it was about at all, but thinking it was some weird high fantasy, and it turns out it's a murder mystery that no one's telling you about.
- [54:14]
B
Everyone's so short and it's so easy to read.
- [54:17]
A
That's like the opposite. That's the. That's the fun expectation inverted, right? I love it.
- [54:24]
B
Yes, I love it.
- [54:25]
A
All right, as always, we want to know what are the books that you feel that you would like to take another run at? Either because now you. You have a better sense of what it's about or what mood you need to be in. Maybe you're a different reader now and you're like, oh, I just would be better reading this book now. Let us know. We'll do a social post about this, and we would love to know what your answers are on that. All right, Katie, before we go, we're going to talk about our bookish friend of the week. And this week, Katie, I don't have a specific bookish friend because I want to talk about the fact that we had one of those great things happen in the group where we had a controversial post to go live and there was big disagreement in the group about the thing that we were talking about. Absolutely nobody in the bookish friends group got disrespectful or stomped off in a huff or flamed anybody. People disagreed. They disagreed vehemently, but they stayed loving and respectful of each other. And every time, it doesn't happen very often, actually at all in our group, but it's so rare in the Internet world for a group of 3,000 people to be able to moderate themselves. For each individual to be able to moderate themselves. We never stepped in. We didn't slow comments down. We didn't anything. The group went in and you see people going, I see what you're saying. And I actually hadn't thought about it like that, but I really came to it like this. And it wasn't a big, like, it wasn't a big, dramatic thing that we were talking about. In fact, sitting here right now, I can't even really remember what the controversy was about. Like, it wasn't Some big dramatic thing. But there was disagreement. But it was the way it was handled, Katie. And it just gives me hope in the world that there still are big groups of people that can disagree but still walk away with respect and friendship for each other.
- [56:22]
B
Yes. And it's so easy to. And I have to put it in quotes, moderate our bookish friends because they don't need moderation. I don't get reported posts where people are like, excuse me, this is against the group rules. Because we all know them, we all accept them and we all care enough about each other to maintain that like culture. The bookish friends culture.
- [56:43]
A
Yeah. I absolutely love it. All right, what about you? What do you have before we go?
- [56:48]
B
All right. From our menu this week I have chosen a book that I DNF'd and why. So I actually chose this spur of the moment right before we started recording. And it's because I hadn't prepared all the way, which is my bad. But as I looked at that menu, it was like my heart sang out, Katie, this is the right move. And so I decided in the moment that I am dnfing my current read on my Kindle which is called Wench by Bryn Rivers. It is a retelling of Maid Marian's life from Robin Hood. It is a Fae romantasy. She lives in Nottingham. She was recently betrothed to the Sheriff of Nottingham. And then in trying to escape a not great situation, she ends up in Sherwood Forest where the Fae live. And that to me is a pretty good setup. There's witchiness, there's Fae, but there's like the tie ins to this story that I love. I do wish there were more foxes in it because it's Robin Hood and we all know about Robin Hood the fox, but it is not. This is one of those books that I have been reading I feel like for a month. I have been reading this book for so long and I'm at 30, 40% and I'm like, what is the point of this? What is the point of this book? So I have decided it is time to stop struggling with it every night and pick up something that actually makes me want to get into it and that moves a little faster for me. That's what I need on my Kindle right now. So I'm sorry to say that Winch by Bryn Rivers is not it.
- [58:18]
A
And that seems like it had a lot of potential too. Yeah.
- [58:21]
B
And it's. I mean it's a debut so I don't want. I hope somebody else picks it up and they say, Katie, you were just not in the right mood. It was just not what you were expecting. Or if you had made it to 43%, you would have seen this turn happen. And then maybe someday I'll go back to it, but for right now, it is not the book for me. And as we know, it's better to set it down than to hate myself when I'm reading it.
- [58:42]
A
So, yeah, no, again, you're not doing the book a favor if you do that. All right, Katie, last week we visited Fragrance Corner, and I got revisiting Fragrance Corner, only because I got dozens of DMs from people saying I loved Fragrance Corner. So I'm going to tell you that today I am wearing a very interesting scent. It is called. It's by the house for Sai, and it is called El Descanso. But what's interesting about this is that it is like nothing I have ever smelled before. When you spray it, it's very, like, the top note is very grassy, almost with, like, a hay situation. Now, this is not my. Like, I am very like Ambrette and white musk and white florals. Hay and green and grassy. These are not. But as soon as it dries down to the heart notes, it dries down to this very creamy, warm, unique scent. And I was like, what is that scent? I can't figure out what it is. It's kind of floral. It's very creamy. It is bran, Katie. Like bran cereal. It is. It is Ambrette, which is my. Like, my skin loves Ambrette in a base note. Like, it really, really, really loves it. But Ambrette mixed with bran, which is a grain, is reading really milky, creamy, delicious, kind of almost sweet and warm. And I very rarely do this. Normally when I get a decant, right? A little tiny 2 milliliter. And then if I really like it, I'm like, oh, I'll move up to the tin, which is like a travel spray, right? The, like, long, skinny travel spray. I bought an entire bottle. I got this one from Ode to Perfume, which I talked about. Again, not sponsored. They don't even know I exist. Except that I was a customer of theirs. But the House of Versailles was one that they recommended to me. I got the Discovery set, and El Descanso was in there. And the thing I love is that the more you do research on this kind of thing, the more you, like, learn these things. Like, oh, okay, normally a woody fragrance doesn't work for me. But make that wood grain instead of wood and make the grain bran and it's the perfect Meredith scent. So that's Fragrance Corner for today. El Descanso by the House of Forsail.
- [61:09]
B
I have a tiny little bonus thing to add, and only because it came up last week. But after we finished recording, I went and did a return at Kohl's, and then I needed more face wash. Right. So I stopped at Sephora within Kohl's. And because it was my birthday, right before that, they said, today you get a free gift. Which one would you like? And the glossier gift included three little decants and some blush. So I was like, well, that's the one I want.
- [61:33]
A
Did you try it?
- [61:34]
B
Yes. And I've been wearing all three of them this week, trying to figure out which one I like the best. I do like glossier you, which you actually mentioned last week on the show as a kind of a different comp to your musk. K by Ella K. I want to say that's right. If I rattled all of that off correctly. But I. Every time I open it up, I think about, oh, Meredith kind of, like, had a premonition about this exact thing happening to me without it at all. So I also got to play in Fragrance Corner last week.
- [62:03]
A
So I will tell you, because this is one of those things that I've learned. So glossier, you, obviously, this is a design, you know, it's available in Sephora. The Discovery set comes with two others. Those two others, you know, probably Fleur and maybe, like, Duo. Yeah, yeah. They're called flankers.
- [62:22]
B
Okay. Are you supposed to layer them?
- [62:24]
A
No. A lot of fragrances. No. You probably definitely don't want to do that. A lot of fragrances, when they're really popular, the OG version does really, really well. All of a sudden, you'll get a bunch of flankers around it. So it's like they kind of take the original, but then they, like, add maybe vanilla, or they'll add a floral element, or they'll add a rose element. Those are things that the. That the glossier U flankers do. But that's why all of a sudden, you'll go from having one scent to having, like, a whole Discovery set in this. Not every Discovery set is made up of flankers, but with glossier, that's what they're doing with that because you has done so, so well.
- [63:03]
B
Interesting.
- [63:04]
A
Little fun stuff, little bit of extra info. And again, so many of you DM'd me about this. That's why we're adding this here. But we're putting it right at the end of the show. Because anybody who's completely not interested, you can just jump out and you know you're not going to miss any bookish content at all. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me I'm Meredith, Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram and you can
- [63:28]
B
find me Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Puttivong Evans, and you can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's Reads Whole show notes.
- [63:39]
A
With the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps, you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and on our website@currentlyreadingpodcast.com you can
- [63:50]
B
also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram or email us with your listener press@hello, currentlyreading podcast.com if you head to our website or our substack, you can go find those reader know thyself newsletters like episode five that we talked about today, Volume five, which will help you hone in on exactly what works in your reading life. If you're interested in watching this episode and getting a blue check, he's been very active today for each one. You can also find us on YouTube where we're constantly adding new features.
- [64:19]
A
And if you want more content, then you can join us as a bookish friend for $5 a month. You get so many more hundreds of hours of content. You get a ton of really, really excellent community and you help us keep this show commercial free. You can also help us by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts and on Spotify and you can shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [64:47]
B
Yes, Bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [64:53]
A
Right until next week.
- [64:54]
B
May your coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [64:57]
A
Happy reading, Katie.
- [64:59]
B
Happy reading, Meredith Sam.