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The Currently Reading Podcast
Currently Reading Made Me Read It + Utilizing The Library Well (S8E47)
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Foreign.
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Hey, readers, 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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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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I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I've realized there's one part of a book that I always read out loud.
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And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona, and my bookish friendships overfloweth. This is episode number 47 of season eight, and we are so glad you're here.
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All right. Yes, you have a lot of bookish good bookish friends, Katie.
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I do, and I love it when they go from online to in real life, which I'm excited to talk about today.
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That is the absolute best. Okay. All right, so we are going to get into that and we are going to get into all of our current reads. But first we are going to tell you that our deep dive today is going to be some things about working with your library and how can you get that bookish serendipity that we talk a lot about on the show. How can you get it going at your library? So we're going to get into the weeds on that a little bit later. But first, our bookish moments of the week. Katie, what have you got?
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All right, Meredith, when I recorded with Mary, I hinted at this last week in our episode, but this week I got to go to Changing Hands bookstore in Phoenix and meet up with one of our longest running bookish friends, Sidra. You've heard about her on the show before. She's sent in great presses for all things Murderful, behind the Paywall. She's a great reader. It was very fun to finally get to meet her in person. We walked the bookstore shelves for at least an hour, filled up my arms and hers with bookish delights, and made sure all the kiddos were covered because between the two of us, we've got six of them. We had wide ranging conversations over genres and life events, and then we went to lunch and we talked even more. I came home with my cup totally overflowing with bookish goodness. And it was so nice that Citra planned way in advance. She sent me an Email, I think, in April asking if I would be available that week. And we made it happen. It was delightful.
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That is excellent. I know you both had a really, really good time doing that.
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We did, we did. Tell me about your bookish moment. What is this thing you read aloud?
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All right, so I was listening this week to Sarah's bookshelves Live, of course. You know, we talk about all the time that we love that podcast. And behind their paywall, they have a show that they do that's called Unscripted. And this particular episode they were doing, they were talking about first lines. One of the things that Chriss, who is one of their guests, one of their hosts does is she does kind of an Instagram feature often where she features. She's like a graphic where she features first lines of whatever it is that she's reading. And so then over time, they've been talking more and more about first lines and why first lines matter. So then they just did this unscripted episode that was completely devoted to this concept of what makes a great first line. What makes a not great first line? What are our preferences? How does the first line of the book set up or make a difference in your experience of a book? If it does or it doesn't, it was a really, really interesting conversation. And I realized that for me, I very much will fall for a good first line. I oftentimes will read the first paragraph of a book before or instead of reading what's on the flap.
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Right.
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Or the, like, the inside or the back of the book, whatever, because I think first lines tell you so much. And when I start a book, I will, if I'm in any position to be able to do that. And most often I am, because I prefer to start a book where I'm someplace quiet and alone so I can concentrate. Because I want to start a book well. Right. I will often. Probably 90% of the time, I will read the first few sentences out loud. I just feel like first lines read out loud helped me to sink into a book. So I highly recommend always listening to Sarah's bookshelves live. Highly recommend their Patreon content. I pay it with my own cash dollars. I absolutely love supporting them, and their unscripted episodes, especially this one, are some of my favorite.
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They are so good over there, and I love the conversational dynamic between Sarah and all her hosts and the ways that they're able to draw each other out and get into things that really matter for each of them. So very fun.
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B
Great bookish conversation. All right, Katie, let's get into our thing that we're known for, which is talking about what we are currently reading. What's your first book for us?
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Yes, my first book this week is called the White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell, and everybody just rolled their eyes. I don't care. I can't wait to tell you all about this. No one is surprised when I bring a book with octopus in the title, which is why not one but two of my favorite books sellers made sure to put this specific book on my radar. I was intrigued by the COVID but I did put it on my shelf to simmer, and I finally picked it up this month. Here's the setup as our story begins, Eve Shaw, who is an art appraiser, is meeting an elderly man named Max Everly in her office. She feels a spark of recognition, especially when she shakes his hand. And it's probably not only because he shares the name with her favorite composer, who was born at the turn of the 20th century when more than 100 years ago. But she's never met him before, and the meeting is a little strange. He leaves her the small glass octopus. It's nearly completely white except for the tip of one tentacle dipped in black, like a quill into ink. Even more oddly, it exactly matches the octopus tattoo that she has on her body, the one that moves and changes shape and goes from her back to her thigh to her arm, depending on how she's feeling and what's happening around her. Eve's curiosity is piqued. As I would be as an art appraiser, she decides to pursue this. She's curious about the provenance and starts investigating this tiny little glass sculpture, only to find that there's a mystery beneath it. There exists in the Swiss Alps a white octopus Hotel. That's the title of the hotel, but you cannot go there unless you know where it is. The room keys are prized possessions, and there are some doors that lead not to rooms, but to different eras. The hotel stationery is rumored to grant someone a single wish, but since it closed a long time ago, nobody can find any more pieces of it. Eve knows exactly what she would ask for a death to be reversed in her past, the weight she's been carrying since she was child to be removed from her shoulders. She would fix it, if only she could. So begins her quest to find the White Octopus Hotel and rewrite her family's past and her own future. This setup, this book, it has so many pieces that immediately work for me. It's got the octopus, of course, not just as part of the hotel name. But it's a tattoo like mine, except it's one that travels across her body. The dream that I could have a tattoo that would move. Very cool. It's so cool. It also has this hotel with magical rooms. We love a magic room here at currently reading. It has time travel via those hotel rooms. It's basically a recipe for Katie goes into a book with only a few tropes and comes out with five stars. However, the mystery elements within and the ways that the time travel elements wrap back over and onto themselves get a little bit muddled in the execution. It felt like there were too many moving parts to deal with. As we tried to determine how the old man and the hotel and the trauma from Eve's past were all connected, I did find myself enjoying the ride, but also kind of looking around like, how did we get here and where are we going next? When I finished, I found the note from Ashley at Book Tenders in West Virginia from when she had mailed me the hard copy that I had. It was also put on my mental radar by Elizabeth at Fabled. So I had already reached out to her about it and said, thank you for sending this to me. I'm getting started with it now. Ashley and I agreed that the plot elements got a bit confusing as she tried to make everything work together. But the setting of this hotel on the Alps with beautiful hand carved keys and doors that open to different times was so tangible that we wanted to use those book pages and the words to travel there ourselves. So I loved the setup and I loved the tropes in this one. The way the recipe came together didn't quite work for me in the way that I hoped. I ended up giving it four stars and I think it will also work for any readers who are willing to go for vibes over plot because that's where this one really shines. This is the White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell.
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Alexandra Bell Sounds familiar. Beyond just the Alexander Bell, I feel like maybe I've even read something by her. But that premise of that book sounds really magical. Like I would absolutely be sucked in by that premise even if it didn't have octopi or octopuses involved. That's a beautiful cover.
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It's like Great Gatsby time frame.
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Yeah, but purple and purple.
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Purple. And I love purple. Of course it's a galley, so it's only white on the spine. There's no spines in my house.
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I'll bet you that it's going to be purple when it comes out.
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It's Out. I just waited too long. It came out in October of 2025, so thankfully, I'm not ruining anybody's reading life by telling y' all about it now.
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Got it.
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Okay.
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All right. Well, my first book is a book that is going. I needed to bring it to this episode because we won't have any normal episodes before our break after this one. So I wanted to talk about Country People by Daniel Mason. This comes out on July 7th. Here's the setup. Our lead character is Miles, and he is a devoted husband. He is a doting father, and he is known for his wildly inventive bedtime stories. He's also the owner of a truffle hunting dog named Giuseppe, who lives in a land with absolutely no truffles. He's also, if we're really being honest, poor Miles, our devoted dad, is a little bit lost. He's 12 years late finishing his PhD, which is on Russian Folk tales. And he has a growing sense that he's become a disappointment to his family, to his wife. And so when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college tucked into the forests of Vermont, Miles decides this is it. This is the year he's finally going to get his act together. But Miles is what Kate would call a man with a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere. And no sooner has the family landed in their new life than he finds himself tangled up with a cast of small town characters who are colorful and strange. It's all very charming, very distracting, and not at all conducive to Miles finishing his dissertation. And then Miles stumbles onto a bizarre local legend, one that everyone around him seems to take surprisingly seriously. And he starts to suspect that it might just be a legend after all. All right. I was such a fool for Daniel Mason's north woods that when this one popped up in that galley and I got a copy of it, I jumped into it pretty immediately. As I said, it doesn't come out till July 7. Normally, I would have held off because I read this a couple of months ago, I would have held off until closer to time. But I kept circling around it Kindle like it was actually calling to me. It's got a completely gorgeous cover, just like north woods did. But that is where the similarities between the two books end. I went into this book blind. I didn't even read the blurb. I think going in knowing nothing about it was a great way to tackle this book, and I loved it. But here's what's interesting. For the longest time, as I was reading this book, I couldn't tell you why I was enjoying it so much. It was just good, right? Like, I just wanted to be reading it. I wanted to be with these people and with country people. I kept reading it and going, what is it that is pulling me so magnetically forward? Wasn't the plot. I want to be really clear about this. It is not the plot. This is a very prosaic slice of life, kind of over the course of a year with a family. A few things happen here and there, as I talked about in the setup. But none of these are the things that would lead you to believe that it's like a mystery or literary suspense, because that is not what we have here. This is literally just you being grabbed by the hand by the narrator and watching the life of a couple and a family who are peopled by a group of characters that are really nice and normal, and you're just seeing what happens to them. That's it. So what was it that I loved so much? And I've had weeks, months now to think about it. I've thought about it on 10 different levels, and I think I finally figured out that at least one part of it is the narration itself. The book is written in third person, but with this really interesting twist. Mason is using a third person omniscient narrator who occasionally steps forward and addresses the reader using that we, as in we have seen kind of construction. It's something I recognize, of course, from 19th century literary fiction, because Dickens does this a lot. The narrator becomes almost a character in their own right, a kind of knowing guide who is leading you through the story. It creates this sense of intimacy for me, even though it's technically in the third person. And I've discovered, reader, know thyself, that this is a narrative device that I absolutely love. It makes me feel like I'm being let in on something, like the narrator has chosen me to share this family story with. And then there's Miles. This lead character, I will say, would make me absolutely crazy if I was married to him. He's the ultimate enneagram 9 and I. I cannot. But he's also very sweet, and he makes a great lead character because you just don't know what he's going to fall into next. He's the kind of guy who's so open to everything and everyone that you're constantly a little bit worried about him and a little bit charmed by him at the same time. His wife had the same experience. I loved the kids. I loved the relationship between Miles and Kate. Their marriage was really realistically done, but there's a lot of love there. Mason writes family dynamics with this warmth and specificity that just gets you right in the chest. Now, this is all very, very different than what we in north woods, which was about a house and a place much more than it was about the people in that place. This is all about the people. This ended up being a solid five star read for me. I think if you love beautiful, immersive writing and you don't or you're not looking for that thriller paced plot, this is going to be a gift. I also think if you loved north woods, but you come in knowing this is a very different book, what stays the same is Mason's ability to make you feel like you're living inside this world that he's built. I think you'd love it too. I will go absolutely anywhere with Daniel Mason as my guide. This is Country People by Daniel Mason.
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I like that and I like Vermont. So works out great.
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Yes, I'm of course, everyone knows that I do too, but that was an extra benefit watching them make their lives in this house that they're renting in Vermont. It was really excellent.
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So good. I'm so glad you loved it that it was like a good follow up for you.
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I did. I really did.
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Okay. For my second book this week, I have nature nonfiction, because it's what I do. Actually, this episode is full of a lot of things that Katie does. So my second book this week is Sharks Don't Sink by Jasmine Graham. Hello. Would we like to learn about sharks today, friends? Yes. Yes, we would.
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Yes.
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Beavers were the most fun to learn about. That will be a prize for the entire year. This book, however, was sent to me in every format by the publisher before it came out in July of 2024. Because some people know their audiences and I am the audience for sciencey memoir. Y Goodness. The subtitle of this nonfiction science memoir is Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. Yes, please and thank you. Jasmine Graham grew up along the water. She was fishing with her dad, usually to put food on their table. As she grew up and continued her school education, she became more and more interested in marine science and pursued a bachelor's and then an advanced degree that allowed her to be on the water, capturing and tagging various species in the waters around where she lived and then worldwide. Her specialty and interest lies in bonnethead sharks and sawfish, both of which I ended up googling during the time I read this book because I knew nothing about them. Jasmine Balances her discussion of her work with these fascinating creatures with her own personal experiences being a black woman in academia and specifically ocean science. From microaggressions about her hair to a professor who blatantly stole her data and work, Jasmine's experiences lead to severe burnout and seeking ways outside of the traditional academic route to continue to do the marine research that really lights her up inside without having to go all the way to a PhD. This book is easy reading and includes black and white photos inserted into the text throughout to really flesh out her story, which was helpful for me. If I had just flipped to the next page, maybe I would have seen a bonnethead shark and understood that they're like cute little hammerheads that look like they have a little bonnet on their head. Instead, they're adorable, softish, so interesting and gigantic. I loved seeing the pictures of her on the boat and doing all kinds of things with the cohort of researchers that she built relationships with. And that's key in this one. For readers who are interested in this type of science book, we need to know that this one is pretty balanced between memoir and science, maybe leaning slightly toward memoir. And as I read it, I found out about myself as a reader. I knew myself better that when I pick up a book that mentions an animal on the COVID I want to learn about that animal. I want to lean in the science direction. I'm absolutely in for a peppering of personal story throughout. And y' all know I love a true memoir that is very much my wheelhouse. It was the blend of this one that didn't really work for me. Too much sugar, not enough cinnamon in the cinnamon spice blend. That won't stop me from admitting that I loved what I learned about bonnetheads and sawfish. Both creatures are fascinating and I would love to dive deeper into marine science in my next book about science. Y Fun, which Mary actually asked about last week on her currently Curious About Science section. So there's already recs coming into the bookish friends group about this very topic. I wanted more sharkiness in this one and instead it was the adventures leaning on Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, which was good. This was Sharks Don't Sink by Jasmine Graham.
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That is a perfect reader know thyself thing that you figured out, right?
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And I had no idea, right.
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That you needed to be focused on the animal. You don't. I mean, I do the same thing with sometimes there will be like part true crime, part memoir and I'll be like, I've realized that that doesn't work for me because I'm there for the crime, not for stories about how you decided to become a whatever. Let's actually talk about the crime itself. So knowing that is really important. Yes, that's a great.
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Because I do. I like memoir a lot. I love reading a good memoir and I love reading science books. So it seems like they should work well together for me. It was an interesting finding myself moment.
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B
Good to know, though. All right. My second book, very, very not what I've been reading recently, but brought me to such a nostalgic place in my reading because I read Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree by Nancy Atherton. Now, I love this series. Aunt Dimity. The Aunt Dimity books are my favorite cozy mysteries, period, hands down, end of story. I hadn't read one in the series in a really long time. Here's the setup of Aunt Zimity and the Family tree. It's the 16th book in Nancy Atherton's long running cozy mystery series and it brings us back to where we love to be. The charming, wonderful English Cotswold village of Finch. Our lead character is Laurie Shepard. She's an American who lives in England and her secret weapon that nobody knows about, but really we all know about is Aunt Dimity, who is her dead family friend, who she called Aunt Dimity, whose spirit communicates with Laurie through a blue journal. So every time Laurie opens up the journal, Aunt Dimity is there and like her writing appears and then they have conversations that way. It's one of the most delightful conceits in the cozy genre of which, as you may or may not know, I've read only cozy mysteries for an entire decade, so I am somewhat of an expert. And I can say that this is one of the most beautiful little delightful conceits that you could ever find. The journal. In this particular book, Laurie is, well, her father in law, William Willis Senior, who I love, he's a great character, has just purchased Fairworth House, which is a 10 acre estate right near where Laurie and her husband and their twin sons live. And William Willis Senior plans to renovate it and to raise sheep. It sounds idyllic. It's definitely not idyllic. Almost immediately, Fairworth starts giving off really strange vibes. During renovations, a peculiar painting of a family tree turns up in the attic and Laurie takes on the task of overseeing its restoration. Meanwhile, William is doing his best to navigate a village full of unmarried older ladies who have very strong feelings about his bachelor status. And also, he's just hired a new couple to help him on this large 10 acre estate. And there definitely is something off about this couple. And then strange sounds start happening. And that's when Laurie does what she does best. She calls on Aunt Dimity to help figure out what or who is haunting Fairworth House. All right, like I said, it had been a long time since I'd read any Aunt Dimity. More than a decade, maybe 15 years. The kind of gap that makes me wonder a little bit whether the thing I loved is actually as good as I remembered. So I kind of went into this, like, with my looking between my fingers, because, like, what if it wasn't as great as I remembered it being? But the good news is, I still love this series. Even 16 books in, not one single thing has changed. And I mean that as the highest possible compliment, because delight is my word. This series, all of it, not just this book, brings the reader uncomplicated, wholehearted joy that I genuinely need at this time of my life as a reader. I love Laurie. She's plucky, she's devoted to her family. She's very human. I love the family that I've watched grow up over 15 books. And I love the town of Finch that's tucked into the Cotswolds. And I love it even more, of course, now that I got a chance to see the Cotswolds myself and to see just how right Nancy Atherton gets it. Those honey colored stone cottages, the impossibly green hedgerows. Stepping back into Laurie's little corner of that world felt exactly like going home. And then there's the small pleasures every Aunt Dimity book weaves in. Something about baked goods. And at the end, there's a recipe. I've never once actually baked one of these recipes, but the fact that it's sitting there at the back of the book waiting for me is genuinely comforting to me. Now you know I'm going to say it. This is not great literature. I'm not going to pretend that it is. And I suspect that Nancy Atherton herself would agree that that is not what she's doing here. These books are short. They always end happily and by the last page, our faith in the basic goodness of human beings has been confirmed every single time. And that is exactly what I was in the market for. This is Aunt Dippity and the Family Tree by Nancy Atherton. And again, I cannot recommend this series highly enough. And I do recommend that you read them in order, starting way, way back at the beginning with book number one, which is Aunt Dimity's death.
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I love it when you talk about these books. It's my own 90s nostalgia and loving the show Ghostwriter on PBS because it gives me that same idea. It's the same like a notebook, a magic pen, something that this ghost helps solve mysteries. And so even though I still have not read one, which I feel like by now I should have, they make me very happy to hear the. To hear you talk about them.
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They're just total escapist reading. And every once in a while I just need that, like unmitigated comfort reading.
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Yes, I love that. Okay, my third one this week is not comforting. It is called the Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehman.
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B
I'm interested in this one.
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Good. I'm so excited. This had to be my final book of the regular season for two reasons. One, I just finished it yesterday and it booted the final book that I had prepped for this episode. Two, I talked about Henry Tudor Must Die by Gillian Lane last week and it felt like a really great pairing with that one. So buckle up for those historical fiction lovers that want a little bit of magic and witchiness with their stories. Here we are back in the Tudor court with the Beheading game. As we start our story, Anne Boleyn wakes up in a box. She cannot open her eyes because there's fabric covering them. Her mouth is so dry that her lips are stuck together and she can draw a deep breath, but it doesn't feel like it's coming in through her nose. That's because she has been beheaded and she has awoken in a box where her body was thrown detached from her head, which is tucked behind her knees. Anne pushes the lid off the box and sets off through the streets of London to find a way to reattach her head to her neck. Next on the agenda, find her ex husband, Henry VIII and kill him before he can marry Jane Seymour. She has been reviled by the courts throughout England, especially the King's advisor, Thomas Cromwell. And a mere 24 hours after her death, the King's engagement has already been announced to Jane Seymour. If Anne cannot stop the wheel of time, she's sure that Jane will give birth to a male heir, which will prevent her own daughter, Elizabeth from being able to stake her claim to the throne. She seeks vengeance, not just for herself, but for her sweet baby girl. Anne is on a quest. And that's what this is. An adventure through London. During the Tudor era, the Thames runs with sewage and the heads of traders. Anne hears rumors about the dead Queen Anne, her own self, wherever she roams. And the real world Outside the tower walls has a lot to teach her. This episode has turned a little bit into tropes that Katie will always give a chance. And this book includes another feminist historical fiction that rewrites the women of history and allows them to tell their own stories, especially if it's one of the six queens of Henry viii. This did not disappoint, even though I thought the ending went a little off the rails and I am talking the final seven pages of this book. I will be interested to hear what others think about this one, but if you are willing to suspend disbelief quite a bit. She's wandering around London and even re entering the tower and very few people recognize her. What she was the Queen. This is still a fun romp through the history of 1500s England. It could have been a little more bloodthirsty for my taste. The ending could have been slightly different, but I wasn't mad about reading it for a single second. And it was so fun to do these as a kind of flight and continue my historical fiction. Rabbit hole into the Tudor Court and especially Anne Boleyn, everyone's favorite Queen. This is the Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehman, her debut.
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B
That book just has such a great premise. It's such a banger premise. I love it.
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A
So good. And I love the COVID is a picture of Anne Boleyn, but the title goes straight across her neck. So it's like where she had to cover this hideous scar in the book because she's like can't see and is sewing on her own head with somebody else's sewing kit. There's great side characters. Alice. Everybody will love Alice. I really loved this.
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B
Right. Well, my third book is also very, very much in my wheelhouse. Although these three books I've brought today a literary fiction, a cozy mystery, and now a very, very dark mystery. That pretty much sums up everything about my reading. Right? This book is called Bad Kids by Zejian Chen. Here's the setup again. This is a book with a killer premise, Katie. And you are best served by knowing only this when you go in. This is a book where they give way too much setup. Everywhere you see a publisher's blurb, here's what you need to know. On a sunny day in present day China, a man is taking a picture of his in laws who are sitting at a lookout point. All of a sudden and for no discernible reason, the man pushes his in laws backwards and they fall to their deaths. Was it the perfect crime? It seems so. But not so much. All right, if you're a fan of Japanese mysteries like Confessions by Kane Minato or the Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. You are going to want to clear your calendar for this one. Bad Kids was my first Chinese mystery, and it has that same spare, unsettlingly calm vibe that I love so much that also appears in the Japanese form of the genre. The prose is very straightforward, but all these nutty things are happening on the page. That juxtaposition is so satisfying and so different from the American form of the genre. I was delighted by this entire experience. This came to me as a recommendation from Holly of Holly's Literary Magic, and it was a great recommendation. She knew exactly whose hands to put it into. I did it on audio and it was so good that I read the whole thing in a single day of food prep, meal prep that I've been doing on Sundays. By the end of it, I was like, wow, it looks like I have enough food to sell to people. I've made so much food in the time that I listened to this book, but I didn't even think about it because I was just drawn into this mystery. The setup I gave you was short, but this book is best served up with as little backstory as possible because part of the genius is letting the story kind of spill out on its own because it goes in all sorts of directions without you having any idea of where things are headed. So I'm not going to say much more about what's actually on the page. What I will say is that this is a perfect example of a cat and mouse mystery, and figuring out who was going to come out on top was my favorite thing. The pacing is exactly right, the characters are nuanced even when they're doing absolutely nutty things. And I found myself feeling for many of them even when at the beginning I did not expect to. That's not easy to pull off. The ending was super satisfying for me too. It's a great summer read. If your reading taste runs anywhere near mine when it comes to really, really well written literary mysteries with a slightly off kilter sensibility, you're going to love this one. This is Bad Kids by Zejin Chin.
- [32:03]
A
Sounds good.
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B
Oh yeah, this is really, really good.
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A
So fun. You said clear your calendars. Is. Is that one a forthcoming release?
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B
No, no, it's out now.
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A
Oh, it's out already?
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Like, I guess what I should have said is like, make room on your tbr.
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A
Gotcha. Okay. Wasn't sure if that meant we all had to wait. Okay.
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B
All right. Katie we are going to do our deep dive today on libraries and bookish serendipity and how the twain shall meet. We got a question from bookish friend Janet, who says, I support our public library and I believe that we should all visit often. What's the best way to browse the shelves and to leave with a nice selection of books? I often get overwhelmed. And also, serendipity, how does it work? Is it the browsing or is it the random grab off an end cap that turns into your favorite read? Let's each think, Katie, about how we manage this issue of the overwhelm of the library. And how do you come home with books that may surprise you but end up being some of your favorites?
- [33:12]
A
Librarians are magicians, first of all. We can all just agree on that.
- [33:17]
B
Yes.
- [33:18]
A
But, yeah, this, I mean, I get why this could be a little bit intimidating. Like, do you just spin around in a circle and play pin the tail on the donkey in a certain section of shelves? Like, what? How does serendipity actually work? We do know, and it has to be said again here, that if you ever are walking through the library and you knock a book off the shelf or a bookstore, you have to take that book home. Yeah, Right.
- [33:43]
B
If you knock a book off, it's
- [33:44]
A
especially true in the library. It's free.
- [33:45]
B
Yes.
- [33:46]
A
You gotta take it home.
- [33:46]
B
Yes, exactly. Because that means that book is trying to get your attention. It needs to come home with you.
- [33:53]
A
Yes. So that's the first rule of library serendipity, and it needs to be obeyed without question. Yes.
- [34:01]
B
So, Katie, when I think about this, because my best reading years, anyone who listens to the show knows my best reading years happen when I am using my library a lot and when I am making room for the discovery that can really only happen at a library for the exact reason that you just talked about. Because books are free.
- [34:23]
A
Right.
- [34:23]
B
So you can approach your discovery in a completely different way than you could than most of us could at a bookstore.
- [34:30]
A
Right.
- [34:31]
B
So I think the biggest thing for me, the biggest piece of advice that I give people who are like, how do I find great books at the library? The first thing would be give yourself time at the library. If you constantly have your library slotted in as a place where you just run in, grab your holds and run out, nothing to do it. It's not going to happen that way. So that is the single biggest difference maker, is give yourself a half hour to, if you can. And this is a luxury I've been through a lot of times. In my life, where, in fact, now I often, when I'm at the library, have my littles with me, my grandkids. But if you can, try to give yourself some uninterrupted time, some time where you can get into a library flow, that's my number one piece of it. For you. What's the first thing that popped in your mind?
- [35:18]
A
Yeah, for me, it's similar in that my first piece of advice is give yourself a reason to go regularly. And that means using holds which are not the same as library serendipity, but it is an email reminder. Hey, come in and see us. Right? Put us on your calendar. Make time to drive over here and pick up the books that we set aside for you. Once you walk in the doors, you have to get there in order to let the serendipity find you. So I always, I start with my holds pickup because then I know how much room I have between my fingertips and my chin to know how many books I can actually handle removing.
- [35:54]
B
Right, Exactly. And I don't even do that. I bring the currently reading tote bag. I bring a big, huge tote bag so I can just, you know, tote it around with me and I will just put it at the end of an aisle and just be like, you can just wait there for me for a second. So I'm not even having to have it on my body.
- [36:10]
A
We're all hanging out. Exactly. Yeah. So I go from the holds pickup to the new section at the library, which is not usually where the best serendipity necessarily happens, but it gets me into a vibe. It's because there are covers facing out. Oftentimes there. There's things I haven't heard of, I haven't seen a bunch of. There might be a new book from an author that I've been intending to read, and it'll start the, like, bookish mojo flowing is what the new section does. So I always go from the one straight to the other to get things greased up and moving along. What about you, Meredith? Where do you go when you get there? How do you make it happen?
- [36:53]
B
I mean, the same as you. I go, I pick up my holds and then browse the new releases. But I very much, if I have a hold, it's almost always going to be a new release. So the second gigantic piece of advice that I would give to people is get out of the new releases. I feel like a lot of us have been trained partly by Bookstagram, but partly, by the way, that libraries are laid out now where New releases are very much front and center. Get out of there. That is not where the best. I mean, you can find a book that you're really going to love there, obviously. But I don't tend to find my most spectacular bookish serendipity happening in the new release section. I go into the. I mean, you choose your pick, your poison, whatever you're interested in. Right. I happen to love fiction, so my library just has a big fiction section which has all kinds of fiction mixed in. Yeah. So it's not like fantasy and whatever. It's just all there, which I kind of really love. Then I have some in the category of Meredith maybe just kind of don't always have a plan. I have a plan. When I go in for my brows, I usually pick from a few different things, themes, and I usually am like, this is the kind of browse that I'm going to do today. Now, one of those is called Titillated by a Title. So in this browse, I decide that I am simply going to, with reckless abandon, go down the aisle and I am going to grab books that the title titillates me. There's so many bad titles now that when you look at older books, you're reminded, wow, remember when titles were actually really done right? And it wasn't like never let me go be titillated by title. So I will go through, I will go down the aisles and I will grab 40 books and I just am taking them to a table and I will put them down and I will just grab a bunch of books and that the title titillates me. And then I will go, and I'll do that fast, like in four minutes. And then I will go sit down and I will just from that I will start to cull down a little bit. Sometimes I will cull by reading the first couple paragraphs. Sometimes I'll call by looking in Goodreads. Sometimes I'll just be like, you know what? I'm just totally interested in what's happening here. So that's titillated by a title. My other favorite one is be aroused by an author. No, no. That's very good. That's very good. That should definitely be one because that's a perfect one. Like finding.
- [39:19]
A
I want to come up with a whole menu.
- [39:21]
B
Yes. No, I really like that. I like that a lot. No, I was going to say judge a book by its cover, which I also kind of call, grab and go. And sometimes I do these two things together. Now, this is different than just being titill by a Title. This is taking in more of the COVID Right? Like it's just beautiful in some way. It just looks interesting in some way. And I try to do this fast. I'm not sitting down and figuring things out in this one. I've got just a few minutes and I am just going to grab. Usually I will limit myself to like 15, but I'm judging the book by its cover with reckless abandon. Putting him in my bag, checking out, going home, making myself a huge cup of coffee, an oversized cup of coffee. And putting 15 books into five piles and doing three different book flights on each of those over the course of the weekend for. Because I usually go on Saturday mornings. So those are a couple different kinds of ways that I have found that have helped me find some of my favorite books.
- [40:22]
A
Yeah, I think that's great. I do also occasionally, like I said, I rarely pick up the new releases, mostly because they're either a seven day hold or they're shorter than my regular checkouts, which are usually 21 days for me. So I rarely pick up a new release. Same reason I don't usually borrow movies from the library. It's that seven day short window. I want to have my leisure with the books. And new releases are more likely to be put on hold, so I'm going to have to return them right away. But it's that getting the juices flowing. So then when I'm over there and I find, oh, when I was in the new release section, it turns out I was really gravitating toward pink. Or I was really gravitating toward the science things because there was some interesting stuff happening over there. I will let that kind of scavenger hunt guide me through the library. So maybe this time I'm going to nonfiction because I want to learn something. Or maybe this time I'm strolling fiction. But that author name that I saw over there reminded me of this other name that starts with K. So I'm going to go look in the K section of fiction and see what's around there. So I do try to hone my focus, which is the same thing you're doing, Meredith. Right. Like if you're saying, okay, today it's going to be titles and next time it's going to be covers, it's honing my focus to I really want to go down one aisle and get a whole bunch of stuff and just see what happens. I also really love going down the nonfiction, expensive book styles. Right. Art, crafting, cookbooks.
- [41:57]
B
I love to get some cookbooks.
- [41:59]
A
Yes. Anything that If I were to try it out at home, it may be a $45 book, especially in this economy. Right. But maybe it'll be a good fit for me and maybe it won't. The library is going to let me try it out for free and I can figure out if that's something that needs to actually live at my house. It's the Kiss version of Kiss, Marry, Kill. But doing that, all of that kind of stretches those reader muscles, stretches the serendipity options, stretches the library brows muscles within my body in a way or in my head, I guess, in a way that allows for that serendipity to happen more organically. It might lead me to the kids section. Even if I didn't bring kids with me that day. It might take me to the movies. I don't know. I probably don't want any movies. But what? That's a movie from the 90s that everybody talks about that I've never seen. I might as well grab it. It's free. I can return them or renew them. I can never watch them. I can never read them. And it's all good for the library. Right? It helps. Nothing hurts anything at the library. The more you check out, the better. So Gus Goss Arms is the name of the game or a full currently reading, read, return, repeat, tote bag, fill it up every time. Nobody is going to. There's no library police. They're not going to stop you. They're not going to ask if you're. Are you sure going to read that? Yeah, somebody else might want it.
- [43:19]
B
So many people are worried that people are going to give them side eye for taking a lot of books out. The reality is that is so good for them. When we check out books, we help their circulation, which helps their budgets. Like they need books to go in and out and it's just still one of the most amazing privileges that we get is the ability to go in and for $0, take out whatever we want, treat them well and just still think it's practically a. It's an amazing kind of magic that we get to do this.
- [43:52]
A
It really is.
- [43:53]
B
Right? But the theme of all of this, Janet, who asked our question is you have to find a way to just decide this is the place I'm going to go to get a bunch of stuff and then I'm going to take it back to my area or to my home or to my wherever you want to do it. And I'm going to see if any of these things call to me and then I'm going To do that over and over again.
- [44:15]
A
Right.
- [44:15]
B
That's the magic of it.
- [44:17]
A
And to let go of the expectation that it has to produce something groundbreaking to be worthwhile.
- [44:26]
B
Right.
- [44:26]
A
This activity is worth your time as a reader, as a consumer of the library, as somebody who loves that this space exists at all. Because it's worth it. It's inherently worthy, rather than. It has to make it so that now your reading logs show that you have a broader variety of genres or a broader variety of books you had never heard of before. It doesn't have to have an end result that is quantifiable to make it a worthwhile activity. It's okay to let serendipity take you wherever it goes.
- [44:59]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then, of course, Katie, you know, the idea that I can't get rid of, the idea that will just not let me alone, is that picking one portion of one shelf that's got, like, depending on what your shelves are like in the library. My library has shelves that has, like, have like maybe 30 books, like in a section. You know, like one shelf in a section. And I just have this. I just am so constantly pulled to this idea of just being like. Like, I'm just gonna go through. I'm just gonna get these five out and maybe not read. Maybe I wouldn't want to commit. I would surely not want to commit to reading every single one of those books because I don't like being bossed in that way. But, like, just a very systematic approach to doing book flights. Like, this is my next five now. This is my. Just based on how they appear on the shelf. I just can't get rid of that idea.
- [45:54]
A
Okay. Not to date ify this, but I love the idea of figuring out the least common author, last name, initial. Right. Which is probably Z, but who knows? And going to that section because you would get the broadest variety. If you go to Smith, there's 8,000 books by Smiths. And so one shelf might have five authors because everybody is named Smith. Right. Whereas if you went to Z, I don't know. I feel like there's a way to make it so that whichever section you're in, even if your library doesn't shelve by genre or does shelf by genre, has the broadest variety of stuff within that single shelf, because that's the part that gets me a little bit in my head about it, is that then you would end up with so much of the same thing. Yeah.
- [46:45]
B
I mean, I'm not going to pick the P shelf where it's like, All James Patterson. I'm not going to read 58 James Patterson books. But what I do think is that if I were to choose, you know, one of our bookish friends wrote in and said, you guys should do this for Patreon content. Because I'm interested in this notion for that reason. And I would definitely pick the shelf that nobody's looking at because you just have to be, like, down on your hands and knees. And you just know that those books down there do not get nearly as much circulation as the ones that are, like, up at face height. Right. So I would definitely pick a shelf where I felt like those books are not getting a lot of love. I love this idea. I really love the idea of, like, saying, you know what? If I'm lucky enough in my retirement, I'm going to read. I'm going to do that for the whole library. Like, what an amazing project that would be. Like the fiction section of the library.
- [47:36]
A
But still, when we know that like a thousand books are released every Tuesday, a when you finished one shelf, there would already be new books over there again.
- [47:46]
B
True. You know, you'd always feel like you had. Well, I mean, one time through, we'd have to be okay with that.
- [47:51]
A
Oh, man.
- [47:51]
B
It's an interesting idea, but we love, love, love libraries. We love libraries, and we're so grateful for our home libraries and for everything that libraries and librarians do for us. So, yes, hopefully this has spawned some sort of idea for you to go in and use your library even more, because, man, we have a lot of power to really affect good things for our libraries and their budgets.
- [48:16]
A
Yes. And like Meredith said, checkouts matter. Being in the library and allowing yourself to willy nilly grab things off the shelf is good for the library.
- [48:28]
B
Yeah, they want that.
- [48:29]
A
Just do it. Yeah, just do it. Like, let us peer pressure. You just do it.
- [48:32]
B
We talked to so many librarians who are like, please tell everybody that this is something that we cheer in our heads. We're not looking at them like, you're not gonna read all of that. Like, we're like, yeah, you take that book home.
- [48:45]
A
Yes. Yes.
- [48:46]
B
Okay.
- [48:47]
A
I love that.
- [48:47]
B
All right, Katie, before we go, I have a bookish friend of the week. And this is one of the things that I just love about our bookish friends group. Again, if you want to be a part of our bookish friends group, please join us on Patreon. It's $5 a month, which is really nothing compared to all of the content that you get. All the shows that we do behind the paywall but really you get to be in community with 3,000 of the best people in the world. All of our bookish friends are so great, and this one is one of our favorite ones. And her name is Jana and she's an all star contributor in our group. And after the most recent All Things Murderful, Jana said Elizabeth was talking about LJ Ross and her DCI Ryan series. And it's a series that's like from, I think it's from England or Scotland. And we haven't really had LJ Ross here, but Elizabeth was telling us how much she absolutely loves those books and we were interested in it. We had a listener press for the first in the series and Jana posted, if you heard the most recent All Things Murderful and their discussion of LJ Ross, here is a list from her Instagram page of all the books in the series. And then she included a handy graphic that gave us the list of the 25 books in order that are in that series because we are not animals and we want to read our books in order. And it stuck out to me, Katie, that there's so much great community in the group and there's so many great recommendations being shared, but often there's also really great, just little helpful things for readers. And I just found that to be really helpful, like, oh, that's right, that series begins with Holy Island. I'm going to go ahead and get that one. And Sycamore Gap, and I'm going to get both those out from the library or I'm going to get, I'm going to order them both, whatever. Just a useful little thing. So I just appreciated Jana for putting that out there.
- [50:37]
A
And it's so nice to just have the information provided to you instead of having to be like, oh, I should go Google that and figure out where it starts. And then I'll have to Google it every single time because, you know.
- [50:49]
B
Right, right. Sometimes it just cues you to remember, like, oh, that's right. I was listening to the show and I meant to go check on that. Now I'm at my computer and I can do that. So it's just a nice helpful thing. We have so many helpful bookish friends. Katie, what do you, what do you have before we go?
- [51:04]
A
Okay, Meredith, this week, before we go, so we have our menu of five things. When we first debuted this segment, and then probably a month in, somebody emailed us and said, ooh, I have an idea for something you could add to the before we Go menu. But none of us has ever done it before. So I'm adding it today. It's the currently reading made me do it segment, which is reserved for books that one or the other of us kind of made the other one read. But then we don't want to talk about it again on the show right away. But we want to talk about it and we want to be excited about it and we want to share our opinions. So I am going to talk today before the season ends. We're bringing you back to the show. For Whom the Bell Tolls by J.C. lynne.
- [51:49]
B
Oh, I love this book.
- [51:51]
A
I know, I know. I read this one after Meredith gushed about it on the show, and I have been thinking about it ever. It is a romance. Yes. It takes place in hell. Yes. But it's also so thoughtful and emotionally impactful and it's smart and funny and it's long, but it doesn't feel long at all because the reading is easy, even if you're thinking about the ramifications of our actions on earth and what happens after we take our final breath. Lily, our main character, and Belle, hand to heart, absolutely fantastic characters. The found family of the afterlife and all its denizens really make this book shine. I love it. I just held it in my hands again the other day talking to a friend about it, and I said, I have to talk about this on the show. I don't care that Meredith talked about it not that long ago. So much so that as I held it, I said, I think this might be the first book that I bedazzle the COVID on, which is, of course, a new bookish crafty trend. It just. It feels like it's begging me to do it, so I'm gonna go for it. This is For Whom the Bell Tolls by J.C. lynn.
- [53:03]
B
I love that book. I just saw it. I went to go visit a new romance bookshop, Flutter Flutter over here, right close to where I live.
- [53:12]
A
Cute name.
- [53:13]
B
Yeah, it's very cute. It's a very cute shop. And I saw that and I just happened to be close to another person, and she was looking at it and I was like, oh, my gosh. Let me just tell you how much I love this book. So, so good. I think about it all the time, too. It was funny and it was just so interesting. Like the whole structure of the afterlife was just done in such an interesting way that I was like, oh, yeah, that's how it should be. Like, that's the way that everything should happen. I liked it.
- [53:41]
A
I'm telling you that I have had conversations at church, which I'm pretty involved in and basically said that this book changed how I view the afterlife, y'. All. I go to a church. Like we read the Bible. I'm like, listen, let's talk about For Whom the Bell Tolls, because that tells me all I need to know about the afterlife. Along with the Good Place, that's the other thing that really, like, changed my structure of how I think it should work after we die.
- [54:08]
B
Yeah, well. And I think if you like the Good Place, I think For Whom the Bells Hold, I think you'd really like that. I'm glad that you brought it because that is a book of delight.
- [54:16]
A
It is a book of delight. So that was our first currently reading. Made me do it. I love it. From the Before I go. Before we go. Excellent. Okay.
- [54:24]
B
All right. Well, 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
- [54:33]
A
find me Katie Oates on bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putamong Evans, and you can find her on Instagram at most of megansreads.
- [54:43]
B
We'll show notes with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps. You can zoom in right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com youm
- [54:55]
A
can also follow the show @currentlyreading podcast on Instagram, where there's lots of fun new things happening all the time. Or email us@hellourrentlyreading podcast.com if you head to our website or our substack, you'll be able to sign up for our reader Know Thyself newsletter, which will help you hone in on exactly what works in your reading life. If you're interested in watching this episode and getting the blue check, although I have not seen him today for each one. You can also find us on YouTube where we're constantly adding new features.
- [55:23]
B
And if you want more of this kind of content and really why would you not, you can join us as a bookish friend. You can get all that content we talked about, that community we talked about, and also keep this show commercial free. If you want to help us, you can rate and review us on Apple podcasts or on Spotify and you can shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [55:48]
A
Yes, Bookish friends are the best friends with the best ideas. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [55:54]
B
Right? Until next week, may your coffee be
- [55:57]
A
hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [55:59]
B
Happy reading, Katie.
- [56:00]
A
Happy reading, Meredith.