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The Currently Reading Podcast
Going Into A Book Blind + Making Birthdays Bookish (Season 8, Episode 44)
01:06:53
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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 I am over the top and totally okay with it.
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B
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona and Bookstore Peace is Medicinal this is episode number 44 of season eight and we are so glad you're here.
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A
Oh Katie, I am very interested in what that bite size intro means. Bookstore Peace is medicinal.
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B
My life lately I needed some medicine and it was at the bookstore. We'll get to that though. First I'll let our friends know that today for our deep dive we are going to talk about going into a book without any knowledge of what you are approaching. What does that look like in our reading lives? And how do we pick those books that we're willing to just dive into without even taking a peek at what's inside? But first we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. What is yours?
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A
All right, Katie. Like I said, I like to be over the top in a few areas of my life. Not in all areas of my life, but in a few. And one of those is with my grandbabies, my grandsons. I really like to, you know, do things that are going to be fun and make common things, daily things a little bit more fun. Bath time is a big focus for me. I am constantly looking for both. My grandsons love bath time and at Mimi's house we stay up a little bit later than normal and our bath time lasts a little bit longer than normal. And so I like to make it as fun as it can possibly be. So I bought two of these new bath or shower lamps. Have you seen these? There's a lot of them on Amazon. You can find many different kinds. I happen to buy one called the Fun Linri shower lamp. We'll link to it. It's a waterproof lamp so it charges, but it can be in the shower or near a bath safely. And so it's cordless. And this one has 16 different colors that it can be and it Also you can take like the kind of like shade off of it and there's this glass underneath or the plastic underneath that makes it into like a projector. So then we can turn the lights off in the bathroom, but we can have all these cool lights projecting and it comes with a remote. And of course you give a two year old and a four year old the opportunity to choose color and shapes that are going onto the wall and the ceiling and you put them in the bath with, with soap and bath slime and spray Silly string soap. It's just a good time. We can spend an hour and a half in the bath. Why is this bookish, Katie? It's bookish because when it's time for my bath time, the babies are in bed, I am exhausted because two and four year old boys are super fun. And also, you know, it's a workout. I like to take a bath and turn on these lamps. For the reader in me, it has really added to my bath time atmosphere. So I put the shade back on right. Because I don't need it to be reflecting onto the ceiling during my bath time because I'm reading. So I put the shade back on, choose the like very, this perfect golden light that it has and then I can read in the bathtub. I could, I mean I can obviously have my Kindle which has its own light, but now I can take a hardback book. Sorry, library. I'm very careful with my books. I never drop them in the water.
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B
Oh no.
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A
But I can read and have a little bit of lamp light to help me do that without having to have that big horrible light above me on in order to read. So it's a little bit over the top. Johnny's like, I really never. He comes in while the boys are having this bath experience and he was like, this is just not the way my baths were when I was.
- [04:21]
B
True, very true. But there is that saying if they're crabby, put them in water. Right. I think baths for babies especially just solve a lot of ills. So making that as pleasant an experience as possible, as delightful as possible is not going to hurt anybody. Exactly, exactly.
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A
It's, it's just. Let's lean into being over the top, Mimi. I love it.
- [04:46]
B
Over the top indeed. All right, my bookish moment, as y' all know, my birthday was this past week, but it was the day after we got home from a trip, being out of town. So I ended up having just a really busy day. I was kind of go, go, go from 7:30 in the morning till 8pm and I was running from one drop off to another. My Internet was being stupid, so I could not work reliably. I went to drop Micah off where he needed to be at 10am and I brought my laptop with me to work at a coffee shop. But in the meantime, I mentioned to Micah, it's my birthday. I just want to go to the bookstore. And I threw a temper tantrum. I just want to go to a bookstore. I just want to have a coffee in my hand and I just want to walk around and look at books and I don't have time. I have to work. I have to get this thing done so I can get this thing done like it's Domino's, right? He's a great kid. I love my oldest. But he just encouraged me to go. He was like, mom, you always get the stuff done. It's gonna be okay. Right now, you don't have something on your calendar where you have to be for one and a half hours. Go to the bookstore. And I needed that permission. And I did. And he was right. It was joy and peace. And I just like exhaled for the first time that day. And I was like, it is my birthday. I am doing this one thing for one hour. And it was perfect. It was perfect. It was just what I needed. And so it was like this like medicinal bookstore piece. I just needed it, you know, And I didn't talk to anybody, but I walked out with four books.
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A
Wait, you walked out with four books?
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B
Four books. No good.
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A
You need. You need to be able to do that. And certainly on your birthday, you absolutely need to be able to do that. I'm so glad that he encouraged you to take that time.
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B
I was like, I really needed somebody else to tell me to do it. Right? Like, I knew what I wanted to do, but I convinced myself that there was no time to do that. So he had to tell me, go do it. And he was right.
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A
Good son.
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B
All right, let's get into some current reads, though. I finally am reading a little bit. It makes me feel very happy. So I want to talk about books. Let's talk about books. What do you got?
- [06:47]
A
All right, I've got some really, really good ones today. And I'm starting out with an absolute five star mystery. If you are a reader like me, this is one you are going to want to have on your list this summer. This is a book called missing by E.A. jackson. Here's the setup. It's August 1990, and we are in London, where we are in the midst of a sweltering and ongoing like a long running heat wave. And little baby. Bella Carpenter has been kidnapped through the open window of the hotel room where she was staying with her parents. Detective Inspector Martha Allen is assigned to the case, which is of course, very high profile. There's a lot of pressure on her and her team and she is determined to solve it. And then just a few days later, the baby is returned, the parents are relieved, the higher ups are satisfied, and the case is closed. But Martha Allen can't let it go because something feels off. She's pushed to back down, and she mostly does, until 30 years later, New information comes to light. And Martha, now a superintendent, finds herself pulled back into the one case that has quietly haunted her entire career. Now, I will say I wrote that setup very specifically. If you go to other places and you start reading setups, they are going to give you more information than I just gave you. And it. I really feel like they give too much. So I really purposely just gave you what you need to know. Baby's taken, baby's returned. Something's hinky. And DI Martha Allen is on the case.
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B
All right.
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A
I was standing at the stove making scrambled eggs when this book ended. And out loud, I said, I was listening to it out loud. I said, well played, ma'.
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B
Am.
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A
Well played. That is where I want to start when I talk about this book, because the ending is kind of the punctuation mark on an entire reading experience that surprised me at every turn. I do not remember exactly where I first heard about this book, but I do know that when I saw that Nicola Walker from Unforgotten was the narrator, I immediately was like, oh, well, I'm going to listen to that because I will follow Nicola Walker anywhere. She's a British actress. She did Unforgotten, the split she did Annika. I absolutely love her. If you watch a lot of Brett Box, you've probably watched Nicola Walker. I did a quick sample and it. I was so drawn into the story itself right from the beginning. This is a real police procedural. It's focused almost entirely on the case itself. That distinction matters to me as a reader because you get some of DI Martha Allen's outer life and you do get some of that texture. But this book doesn't wander. It stays with the investigation in this as the center of the gravity of the book. And Alan, which is what she's called throughout the book, is a remarkably very safely, solid lens through which to experience what's happening here. She's methodical, intelligent. You feel like you're doing the work alongside her rather than watching from a distance. I really like this reading experience. The pacing is. It's described in a lot of places as slow burnish. I say that it's not a thriller, but it never feels slow. It's building constantly. We're getting clues quietly accumulating. I had several theories throughout my listening, and each one I really thought I had nailed it. And each time I was completely wrong. That is a favorite way to read for me. That's what good mysteries do, right? You feel smart right up to the moment where you feel delighted that you were actually wrong because the author was just a little bit smarter. It's such a favorite feeling for me. So if you love police procedurals that trust you to be patient with the investigation, if you like a very atmospheric 1990s setting and this great protagonist, then I think you're going to want to read Missing by E.A. jackson. It's a debut, so I couldn't jump into more written by her, but, man, I cannot wait to see what she writes next.
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B
Okay, this is. This sounds great. It's also, like, pinging in my brain. So I want to ask you if you either recently have brought or maybe talked about On All Things Murderful, another book with a baby, Bella, that was missing.
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A
I think we recorded All Things Murderful when I was in the middle or had just finished reading this one. So I think I probably really quickly brought that one as a current read for All Things Murderful. But, yeah, no, this is one. This is a five star rock solid. I've recommended it to a few people and they've gotten back to me, been like, yeah, that one was really especially good on audio. Really, really, really good on audio.
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B
Excellent. I love it when, like, just like ping, ping hits on all cylinders. So good, right?
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A
It's not super violent. It's Baby's Fine. You know, like, it's just. It's one that appeals to a lot of people, but if you just like that, like, what the heck happened? Feel like what? Like, mm, something's not right. And then more stuff, you know, layers and layers and layers where you're like, no, no, like that. Like that kind of thing.
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B
Oh, it's really good, ma'. Am.
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A
Yes.
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B
All right. I like it. Okay. My first one this week is. It's interesting. I'm gonna talk about Harriet Tubman Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen. How many words were unexpected in that collection of words?
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A
A lot.
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B
A lot. Okay. Even the title of this novel will probably pique the right interest for the right readers. I can't wait to tell you about it in Harriet Tubman Live. We're going to meet Darnell. He is a rap producer, a hip hop producer. He's produced some of the most chart topping hip hop hits of our time. But he's on the outs right now in the industry because a rival producer outed him as gay on the world stage. So there's a situation here. So now he's looking for work, and he has been presented with a frankly impossible opportunity. But not in this world, because here, icons from the past have been resurrected from the grave without explanation. So when he walks into the recording studio with Harriet Tubman and four of the people she led to freedom during her time as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, he's both surprised and not. Because this has been happening. But why him and why her? Darnell, by Harriet, has been tasked with writing a Broadway musical based on the life of this icon. So he needs to spend at least the next few days getting to know her, because really, he needs to produce this musical by the end of the week. The goal is simple. Write up the past, set it to music, and then rewrite the future in the style of Flynn Manuel's Hamilton. But with Bob the Drag Queen's wit and charm, we are taken through the production journey. The lesson in history, as Darnell peels back the layers on Harriet's life in order to best portray her story and the camaraderie between Harriet and these people whose lives she changed by bringing them north during the time of slavery. Y', all, this was nuts, right? But I really enjoyed it. However, there's some things you need to know. When we talked about Hart the Lover for the May Indie press list, Meredith, you pointed out that it's in fact, first person, present tense. And until that time, I had never said, well, that is definitely a thing that works for me, or definitely not a thing that works for me, but sometimes it doesn't work for us, right? And in that book in Heart the Lover, it did not work for me. This book, which I picked up maybe two days later, is also in first person, present tense. And while that does mean that we are in Darnell's head a lot, he's spending so much time learning outward. He's learning about the life of Harriet Tubman, he's having these conversations, he's writing music, he's getting to know her compatriots, that it has a very different tone. It is not that unmitigated interiority that we talked about on the MA&D press list. It's not literary fiction. This is like dystopian historical sci fi all mixed together. It surprised me that I found two books with that first person present POV so close together when I don't think of it as something that's prolific in the written world right now. And it was really fun to figure out the difference about why one worked for me and one did not. After that conversation, we also had a bookish friend point out that Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is written in first person, present tense. And a lot of us love that one. So that's a really good way to figure out. Is that a writing style that works for you or not? Because if you loved one and hated the other or vice versa, that'll tell you something about yourself as a reader and get you to know yourself better. In the case of Bob the Drag Queen and Harriet Tubman, I loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with both of these icons. Harriet Tubman's an icon. So is Bob the Drag Queen. Harriet was made lively and nuanced through Bob's writing. And while there was space left for learning and leaning toward true historical fiction, this was much more milkshakey romp than even the word historical fiction would imply, which is why it's hard to categorize. I had a great time with it and I, I do recommend it, but you gotta be the right reader in the right mood to pick this one up. It's Harriet Tubman Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen.
- [16:29]
A
That is unexpected every way, but I love that you loved it. All right, my next book is a book that I expected to love and was disappointed by. My next book is the Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clark. All right, here's the setup. Six decidedly mid list authors get an invitation to spend the weekend on a private Scottish island, courtesy of Arthur Fletch, the most famous mystery writer of their generation. There's one problem. When they arrive, Fletch is dead. His magnum opus, the most anticipated novel in publishing history, sits unfinished on his desk. The six authors have been hand selected for a 72 hour competition with stakes that could change their lives forever. Whoever writes the best ending walks away with a game changing book deal and two million dollar bills. And then people start dying. Okay, so quick context worth knowing, I think, before you dive in. Evelyn Clark is a pen name for a partnership of two authors. The book is co written by V E Schwab, the of course fantasy heavyweight that we all know, Invis life of Addie LaRue and many others. V E Schwab is Prolific and really, really good. And then Cat Clark, who's a YA author and a screenwriter who has a credit on Good Omens 2. I know that that's a big favorite of everybody, so the pairing is interesting to me. So I wanted to love this book. The premise, I thought, was interesting, solid, and for the first 20% of the book, I was completely in it. I was reading it fast. I was along for the ride. The opening is done really, really well, and I think plenty of readers are going to fall in love with those first chapters. Really, really well done. Then they got to the castle on the Scottish isle, and this is where things get tiresome and lazy and middling. It felt like a sharp, propulsive opening that just stopped doing the work. The pacing slowed way down, the cleverness of the writing flattened out, and the things that I'd most been looking forward to in the premise and never really materialized. The bigger problem for me was how the book handles its themes. There's a lot of commentary baked in about the publishing industry, and that can be a really juicy thing to mine in a story like this. But the issue is that the commentary doesn't feel woven into the story itself. It feels like stapled on every few chapters. I had the sense that I was being told what to think instead of being shown something and then trusted to draw my own conclusions. I check out fast when I feel lectured to. And the back half. By the back half, I was wondering whether the authors liked the industry they were writing about, because the affection for it is definitely not on the page. The mystery part of the mystery let me down too. I had the ending pegged from somewhere in the middle, and it never wavered. I mean, that was what it was. And when the reveal finally came, it didn't surprise me. It just confirmed that I had figured it out. And that didn't make it much of a thrilling ending. I also think this book was decidedly 75 to 100 pages too long. The author spends huge amounts of real estate on backstories for victims and then dispatches them and moves on. So by the time we find out who the killer is, there's barely any room left to sit with the motive in. In any way. You're just like, wait, wait, what? Then why did we spend so much time learning about these other and then they're just dead. Now, I want to be fair because we know writing book is hard Co wr writing a propulsive thriller must be even that much harder because the premise here has real bones and I think there absolutely. I know that There are readers who thought that this book lived up to its potential. If you don't mind pointed commentary about the publishing world and you don't mind seeing the ending from a long way off, you may have a better time with this than I did. For me, this one had the potential to be a knockout and it landed in the meh pile instead. A lot like all of the authors from our story, it just felt either lazy or ham handed. And I don't want to feel when I close the book like I'm trying to decide between those two things. This is the Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clark.
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B
Do you feel like they gave it away with the title? Like the ending wrote itself right into the middle of the book?
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A
I mean, maybe. Yeah, I just. It has a really, really strong premise and it has a really good. And it has a good setup of characters. Like characters that are brought together are interesting. It's everything that happens from that moment. It's like the whole first third is setting that up and then it just like falls off a metaphorical cliff.
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B
It feels like they gave it the great British Bake off treatment, which is what I tell my kids is happening. When we. When we're watching an episode and then we kind of go deeply into one person's life, I'm like, oh, that's who's going home this week. Because now we know so much about them. Like, we're going to be bored with them. So we're going to send that person home. We have to get to know them first. I mean, Kat Clark and VE Schwab. So I guess her E must be Evelyn. But she. It sounds like that's what they were doing. Like, oh, if we're going to kill this person off, we need to let them know who it is so they care about him.
- [21:50]
A
Yeah. Lots of interesting pieces of the puzzle. Some interesting death scenes, like the ways that people died. I'm always, you know, into that. That could have been fun and interesting, but just nothing ever rose up enough to be like, to live up to expectations or to live up to the potential.
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B
Yeah, what a bummer.
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A
It was a bummer.
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B
Okay. My second one this week is nonfiction. And the last book I read from this author did not live up to expectations. So I went in a little worried. But this one survived the cut. This is Replaceable youe by Mary Roach. So this continues down the road of I will be a completist. And honestly, I think I have one left to be there. So I first want to tell you that I got to read a galley of this book, even though I read it after release, because that's how I do things. And that's because a bookseller from Charter Books in Rhode island sent me a copy after she got to meet Mary Roach in person. We have worked with them only once on the indie press list. But Amy was so kind to share the bookish love with me. I just, it was unexpected. Just opened this package in the mail and was like, what? And wrote me this sweet note. I loved that part of it. Like, when I opened it, when I picked it up, I felt that affection from Charter Books all the way across the country. They are.
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A
I mean, that's a really great store. That's the one that Elizabeth and I visited. That's a great store.
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B
So good. I did, like usual though, wait to read it until after release. And that's because Katie and I read Mary Roach together, so I needed her to be able to have a copy too. I was not sure what this newest one might be about because we've already had adventures around the body With Mary Roach. She wrote Gulp and Bonk as well as Death and the Afterlife with Stiff and Six Feet Over. So what could adventures in human anatomy entail? Well, it doesn't matter to this reader because it's Mary Roach and I'm willing to go wherever she leads. It turns out that Replaceable you is all about how the human body is so very irreplaceable. Each chapter tackles a different piece of our human anatomy and the ways that science and medicine have tried and mostly failed to find ways to refurbish or replace parts that fail for whatever reason. From hair follicles to skin grafts, from joint replacements to organ transplants, from prosthetics to corrective eye surgery, Mary Roach tackles, as always, the weird and wonderful and the downright confusing ways that humans and physicians and researchers have attempted to make up for the fact that we are human. We break down, we get sick, we get old, we get injured. We're human. It's both horrifying and a little bit wonderful to know that the very best way to manufacture human body parts and pieces is the way that we've done it. Since Homo sapiens first walked on two legs inside a uterus, There are no real substitutes. There are patches and cobbled together fixes and amazing medical advances and really cool studies. And of course, we've learned a ton since the time of the Egyptians. Like using a hook to take a brain out, because that was a useless piece, right? But even through the weirdness and the grossness part and parcel to Mary Roach's writing. It was endearing. It was reassuring, a little melancholy. Even the human body is miraculous. In some cases, it shouldn't work. Like, why did the eye evolve the way it did? In many cases, it won't work without exactly what was provided by our genes and our genetic coding. And yet we persist. We continue living, searching for solutions, digging deeper and finding new opportunities to learn and grow and even replace the pieces of us that fail after a time or an injury. I loved this book. I talked about it with everyone I met while I was reading it. Whatever I was learning about. Hi, you have eyes. Do you want to know what Mary Roach just taught me about eyes? Right. I was like giving mini TED talks to everyone about knees or skin grafts or whatever it was that I was learning about because I couldn't help but have it bubble out of me. It was quintessential Mary Roach. I couldn't wait to share it. And it was a refreshing return for both Katie and me to the way that she delivers that. She dives headfirst into any topic and then shares it with sparkle and wit. I loved this one. I'm so happy that I loved this one because again, last one I didn't really love. This is Replaceable you by Mary Roach.
- [26:15]
A
Oh, I'm so glad that that was a return to a book that you really, really loved.
- [26:19]
B
Oh, it makes me so happy.
- [26:21]
A
That is really fun. All right, well, I'm going to talk about a book that's not only really different from all the ones that we've talked about today, it's different from really any book I've ever read before.
- [26:30]
B
Ever.
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A
Katie, you read this book too. This is the Wall by Marlon Hosshofer. All right, here's the setup. Our book opens with a very simple premise. A middle aged woman is vacationing at a hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps. When she wakes up to find herself cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable wall. Everything on the other side of the wall seems to be dead. Our narrator has no name in the book, which feels intentional and definitely a little bit unsettling. What she does have is a dog, a cow, and a cat. And that's it. That's the entire cast of characters for most of this novel. So the central question becomes, what do you do when the only thing to do is to survive? So our narrator begins keeping a written account of her days, not because she thinks anyone is going to read it, but because it's a way that she holds Herself. Together, she's planting crops. She learns to hunt. She figures out how to keep herself and her animals alive through an Austrian winter. And in the spaces between all of that very practical, unglamorous work, she recounts who she was before the wall and most interestingly, who she is becoming inside of it. Okay, so this book, which was published in the year of our Lord 1963, was an IPL pick from books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida. I didn't choose this book. I jumped into it like a trooper, like I always do with all the indie press books. And somewhere around first third of this book, I turned to my husband on the plane. We were flying back from California and I told him I might die. I'm so bored listening to this book. I literally, like, I need you to sit with that for a second. Because several days later, when I finished the Wall, I was on the treadmill and I had no words when we got done. By the end of it, I was fighting this completely unexpected feeling of like, gosh darn it. I think I really loved this book and I might need to reread the entire thing and annotate every single page of it, because that is the kind of book this is. It gets under your skin in a way that you did not invite, and it does it while you're still looking around going, wait, what's happening? Why am I listening to this? Nothing is happening. The word quotidian is basically woven through this entire reading experience because that's the entire point of this book. It's a book about the dailiness of survival. Milking and churning and building and playing, planting, the slow accumulation of one day after another. This book is aggressively quiet, aggressively itself. It does not apologize for a single thing. And I could not stop listening to it. Now, before we go further, here's what you need to know. This book is called the Wall, and there is in fact a wall. And it's weird and it's out of nowhere and it. No, but no one can explain it. This is not a post apocalyptic thriller, no matter how much you want it to be. And God knows in that first third, I wanted it to be. This is not a mystery about what the Wall means or where it came from. The Wall is the inciting event and then the book moves on from there. If you go in waiting for answers about the Wall, you are going to find this book very frustrating. And that will not be the book's fault, because I've told you here, and this is what I mean to say. The book is aggressively what it is. It doesn'.
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B
Much.
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A
You need to understand why. How? What now? The book doesn't care. What I didn't see coming is that the Wall is a quietly fierce work of feminism. Published again in 19, not published again. I'm telling you again that it was published in 1963 by a woman who was born in 1920, the year, of course, that we got the right to vote here in the United States. Underneath all the churning and the building and the survival is a question that the author, Hosshaufer, is asking very persistently. What would your life actually look like if you didn't have to run it through everyone else's filter? What would it be like if you had no one to take care of, no one whose feelings needed managing, no male gaze, just you and your animals and the mountain and your days. The fact that this book was written when it was, by who it was a female author, gives that question so much more weight. Our narrator doesn't even get a name, by the way, which, as someone who genuinely cannot stand unnamed narrators, that should have been an automatic deal breaker for me. It was not. Because I love a character who rises to the occasion. And this character does that in spades. She's just a regular lady, like a regular middle aged lady. She's a widow visiting her cousin. She is completely unremarkable in all the ways that matter before the Wall. Then the wall comes and she figures it out. She learns things that she never thought she wanted to learn. She survives. And by the end of this book, I genuinely cared not only what happened to her, but God help me, I cared what happened to the cow and the cat and the dog.
- [31:51]
B
Dog.
- [31:52]
A
And I want to be really honest with you, I don't care about animals deeply. I like my dog a lot, but generally cats actively annoy me. There's a cat in this book that I was very worried about. Something happened to me as I was reading this book. Now read or know thyself, because there are things you need to know before you commit. But I dare you to actually care about these things if you read it. The book does not have any chapters. It's just one continuous narrative with small breaks where you can pause. Gird your loins because you are going to hear a great deal about milking and churning. Just be ready. The ending is ambiguous. Genuinely and unapologetically ambiguous. If you need resolution, this book is not going to give it to you and it's going to flip you off when you need just doesn't care. I keep calling this literary quotidian fiction, and that phrase is doing a lot of work in describing what you're going experience. The most common comp you will see for this book is I, who have never known men. And I understand why they are different books, but they share the same essential quality. Don't read it for answers about the strange thing that happened, because that's not what we're here for. I had never thought I would pick up either one of these books. And now I am thinking about the Wall weeks later, turning it over and over again, which for me is the measure of a reason. Really, really good book. This is the Wall by Marlon Hosshofer and Katie. It may very well be on my list of favorite books of the year.
- [33:27]
B
I love hearing you talk about this book, even though I also, you know, have recorded with you since then. And I know that it threw your reading like, out of whack. It did a while afterward.
- [33:39]
A
It really screwed up my month. My month of May's reading.
- [33:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:45]
A
Because I had a hangover.
- [33:47]
B
Right, because your book hangover was just intense. But it also is so interesting to me that our agreement between the two of us is like, okay, when we have an indie press list book, we're. We're committing that we're going to read at least 10%. Right? Which in this case is what, like 18 pages of this book? Like, it's not, it's not very much. Right. You could dip in, you can get a feel for the writing. You could see what's going on, and then you could be like, Sayonara, mister. And by 25, you were like, I'm gonna die reading this book.
- [34:16]
A
And yet I had every ability to stop reading. Like, I read enough to be able to talk about it. Yes, of course there was something. It gets its hooks in you. And I kept being like, okay, I'm just gonna give it another. I mean, part of it's. Cause it doesn't have any damn chapters. But I just being like, okay, I was listening to it, I was on that flight and the book's not that long. And I was like, I'm just gonna give it 10 more minutes. Okay, I'm just gonna give it 10 more minutes. And then I was like practically in tears at the end of it, and I can't stop thinking about it. And you're right, Katie, that is exactly why my reading in May got so screwed up. I had a terrible month of reading, numbers wise, by the end of May.
- [34:56]
B
Yeah, it threw you off a cliff in a big way.
- [35:00]
A
Overall, over we. Why. Why the Wall? But by the end of it, I didn't even care about why the Wall.
- [35:07]
B
Yeah, I didn't.
- [35:09]
A
This is. The unnamed character is. She's really good. She says at one point, like, I had a name and I'm gonna. She said something like, I'm gonna write my name down here and never say it again. But then she doesn't tell. She doesn't tell it to us. I really like this book.
- [35:23]
B
And this is why, even when we get an indie press list like that one, because Heart, the lover that I was talking about earlier was also on that list. Right. And we both got to have this really interesting conversation about, like, what works for us as readers and why do certain things that maybe on paper don't work for us actually grab us sometimes. And I just. That stack, and that episode is one of my favorite ones that we've done of the indie press list because of how much we were able to, like, draw out of it and learn about ourselves from it.
- [35:54]
A
And, I mean, if you. If literary fiction is what you really, really love, first of all, I would say follow books and books from Coral Gables and, yeah, dip in and just get that one. Like, become a bookish friend for a month and get that one stack, because, man, that was a great stack of literary fiction. We had so many litfic fans being like, finally an indie press list for us.
- [36:17]
B
Oh, my favorite list I've ever heard in my life.
- [36:18]
A
Yeah, I bought all of them. Yeah.
- [36:21]
B
Right. Yeah. Well, probably not, because Fever beach was also on there. Carl Hyosan.
- [36:27]
A
That's right.
- [36:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was just. It was interesting across the board. Yeah. Okay. For my third book this week, I'm just gonna, like, plonk myself back down in my wheelhouse, and we're just gonna, like, move back into, like, very comfortable ground. And I'm gonna talk about Honey Be Mine by Sarah T. Dub. This is romance, Contemporary romance. And it can't. It comes along after her runaway smash debut, which was called Birding with Benefit.
- [36:55]
A
That was another indie pressless pick. And I read that whole. That was like, the older protagonist.
- [36:59]
B
Yeah. She's divorced, and she's having her, like, year of yes, where she's like, I'm just gonna say yes to anything that anybody presents to me. So she ends up in a birding competition. Yeah, that's not bad.
- [37:09]
A
I didn't think that one was bad at all. Which is saying a lot for Rom com.
- [37:13]
B
Yeah. Yeah. For a contemporary romance, for sure. So that was her bird book. This is her B book. It's a cute thing, right? It's romance. Here's the setup. In a small town called Sullivan's Glen, Penny Becker lives with her mom and her grandmother on their farm where they keep bees. It's just the Becker women, because none of them ever seem to be able to keep a man around, nor want to really. Men bring heartache and trouble. So Penny keeps her nose to the grindstone, working hard, just like her faithful honeybees. Especially now that she made a bad business deal and needs this summer's Honey Festival to be a wild success. Or she could lose the farm to creditors and her matriarchs. Her grandmother and her mother are blissfully unaware. That means when Xander Boras moves back into his grandfather's house next door after the old man passes away, she wants nothing to do with him because she remembers Xander from the summers that he would spend in Sullivan's Glen as a teenager. He was sullen, he got into trouble, and he always gave Penny the worst side eye. But now that his grandfather has died, Xander has to fix up the house for sale and does so this summer with his unusual family situation in tow at his ex in law's house down the road. When Xander's son falls head over heels for the bees, he forces the two unlikely allies together for the first time in decades. And when Zander finds out that Penny needs help and she'll never ask for it, he elbows his way in to assist with planning and executing the best Honey festival the town has ever seen. Despite this fragile working relationship and the fact that Penny knows that men are no good and do not stick around, the cold shoulders start to thaw and the honey starts to flow in actions and words. This was so good. It was so fun. I got to see this author Sarah on a panel of local romance writers in Tucson in March. And she joked that she had already written about the birds and now she had to write about the bees. And honestly, it worked. You can tell she spent time with beekeepers, reading about and falling for these buzzy beauties. The way that Penny loves her bees like that we all would be loved so well. You can tell she also loves small town romance and that is usually a big win for me. Just like small town mystery. I like that close connected community. She pulls it off wonderfully. Here. The in laws are close by. The ex in laws are close by. There are three generations of women living in the one house. 3. The whole town knows about the Honey Festival and knows everybody else's business. This all is my catnip. I love it. This book is full of character and sweetness. Even when there's some really tough stuff in both Penny and Xander's past. It's not overwhelming by any means. You're not like, sitting in it, but it's there and it's not shied away from either. I gave this one four and a half stars. I will definitely continue to pick up more from her as as she releases it. Whenever she writes it, I'm there. The spicy scenes are descriptive and hit around three and a half on my personal chili pepper scale. But I loved this one. It was sweet like honey. It was delightful. It didn't have any sting to it at all. This is Honey Bee Mine by Sarah T. Dub.
- [40:20]
A
I really appreciate how many bee puns you put into that write up. That was really good.
- [40:25]
B
I tried really hard.
- [40:26]
A
Yeah, I could tell there was craft.
- [40:28]
B
Yeah, I love it. All right, y', all, those were our six current reads. And now we are going to get into our deep dive where we talk about what it's like to go into a book with no idea what's inside, just willfully ignorant about whatever you are picking up. Why do we do it? What makes us actually be willing to go there, et cetera. And this is because we got an email from a listener, Tara, and she said, hi there. I hope you're doing well. I'm currently in season six, and a few episodes ago, Katie and Meredith were talking about going into a book blind. You mentioned a few tropes you loved, and I believe Meredith said she would write them down on a bookmark. I can't remember the exact exchange, but that was the gist. Anyway, I was wondering, did you ever do a deep dive about going blind into a book and just talk about those tropes? What would actually get you to do it? So Tara is really hoping that we can talk about how we choose what we're willing to just wing it when we dive into a book. And I feel like it's more than just tropes. Meredith, where did you land on this conversation?
- [41:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think first we have to kind of define or I needed to define for myself. Like, what level of ignorance are we talking about here? Usually when I talk about going in blind to a book, that means that I really have looked as little as possible on, like, any of the big websites about what the book is about. If I'm doing it really right, for me, it means I didn't even look on the jacket of the book itself that I'm holding. I literally just Opened up page one and started reading. And that's actually a really, really fun experience for me. It's what I try to do. It's part of what is fun about my book flights that I do when I go and get a whole bunch of books in the library and then choose, like, five of them and read the first little bit. Instead of choosing based on a Goodreads rating or what other reviews were, I'm instead choosing by what the book is revealing to me about itself there in the beginning. So that's usually what I think of. But for you, Katie, do you think about. Is it just, I don't know, jacket copy? Is it going in willfully ignorant means I didn't go and check ratings or reviews in it. Like, how ignorant are we talking?
- [42:41]
B
I rarely check at least ratings before I pick up a book, but there's usually a reason, right? And sometimes it's jacket copy, but that's pretty unusual. It is more likely that I heard about it from somebody I trust and then decided to close my ears and say, la, la, la, la, la, before I dove into it. So it could be a recommendation source. And I have a few of those people who can get under my book radar and just say, like, katie, when you get a chance, try this. And they just be like, found family and walk away. Because that's a trope that I will usually pick up for favorite tropes. And then every once in a while. And I think this is usually what happens at the library. Meredith. It's a cover, right? Like, sometimes that's what does it. And I'm like, I don't know what's inside this, but I like it enough to at least take it home with me, let it sit next to me for a while. Let's see what happens, you know? Yeah.
- [43:39]
A
I mean, I think that it is one of the most fun things and something that I try to do regularly is to go in completely ignorant of anything, even. Gosh, like, the more The. The less I know, the better. Because then we've really managed expectations. Like, that's. That's one of the things where you really, by having, you know, by. By knowing as little as possible, you are managing expectations. You're also letting the book be fully what it is. And there's something the mystery lover in me, even if it's not a mystery book that we're talking about, loves figuring out, like, okay, what are we doing? What kind of book is this? And just the getting into it is partly figuring that piece out. And that's kind of Fun and interesting for me. So I really like it for me when I am most likely to do that kind of reading, it's with the indie press list. And that is. So we might know a little bit in setup, but. But I think, Katie, you're the same. We do very little research when we help the stores or when the stores make these choices. And with our anchor stores, we're really letting the stores that have been with us multiple times, they've gotten really, really good at choosing books for us and for our listeners. So more and more we're able to take a stack and just be like, this is a stack of five books and I have no clue what we're gonna find. And so often, like with the book that I just talked about the walls all, I didn't really know much of anything about it and just it just was able to open itself up to me and there's something really nice about. It's a very old school way of reading. I feel like right now we have so many sources of data coming at us all the time. Any reader, not just you and me, any reader has so many sources of data that, man, I feel like we miss out on a lot of books that, that we would otherwise really love if we just let it reveal itself to us instead of trying to parse out every little tiny, you know, what's gonna happen in the plot and what are the possible triggers and what did everyone I know think about it and all those pieces of data.
- [45:48]
B
Yeah, I agree. And I think the other thing about the indie press list is whether it's an anchor store or someone like books and books that we had never worked with before, and we kind of worked back and forth with them, is that we're making those decisions at the beginning of the month before it airs, right? So three or four weeks ahead, we're looking at the list as a whole. We're maybe doing a little research, like, what genre does this go in, how backlist is it, et cetera. But we're not getting into the books we're helping whittle, right? And then two weeks later, a stack of books shows up on your doorstep, on my doorstep. And it's like, wonder what this is like. I don't have any recollection of the 25 books that we narrowed down to five. I'm looking at covers and I'm diving in because that's all I'm going on, right? I'm not gonna go look at the Goodreads review because either way, this is one of the books that we chose for this list. Right. It doesn't matter what the Internet thinks of it at large. What matters is that this store liked it enough to put it on our radar. And that between the two of us, we decided it was a good idea to hone them in the such and such direction. So here we go. You better dive in. And it is. It's one of my favorite reading experiences, which is why I'm so willing to. When I have those trusted sources, or in the case of the indie press list, this, like, reading assignment, I'm just willing to go with it. Right. I know that Book boyfriend Bill at an Unlikely Story. He sent us five books, and then he sent each of us us a galley that we had never heard of. He just threw it in the box as, like, a little bonus pic. I have no idea what that book is about. I'm definitely reading it because it was book boyfriend Bill that he chose it for me. I'm gonna do it, I think.
- [47:31]
A
Yeah. The. More we can find ways, whether, you know, whether it's a book twin on Instagram or a trusted friend in real life or the indie press list or whatever it is, to just be like, I'm just gonna allow myself to discover this book and just see if it's gonna work, like, to take some of the controls off. But also, I think that only works, at least for me, as the mood reader that I am. That only works if I also am very quick with my DNF ability, too, because it's. You will let yourself discover more things by happenstance or not knowing as much, going in blind to a book if you also know that you're not going to be stuck behind it if it's really not working for, you know, either the mood you're in or the reader that you are for whatever reason. So I feel like that's a very happy reading spot when you're open to discovery and also very quick to dnf. If it's not working like, that could be the ingredients for really interesting reading year.
- [48:35]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It is the combo. It's the peanut butter and the jelly of the sandwich. Right. You can't. You can't do the one without the other, and you can't. It doesn't work. You have to have.
- [48:45]
A
I'm. I'm always interested. I just stepped on you there, Katie. And I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry about that. I'm always interested in this notion. I've played with this notion for a long time of choosing randomly, like, having somebody else Like Jeffrey, my four year old grandson, choose a shelf of the library in the fiction section for me and just be like, Mimi, this is the shelf at my library. And then just being like, I'm just going to read over time, not only, but I'm going to read one book after another just from this shelf.
- [49:16]
B
Oh my God, I would never do that. Right.
- [49:18]
A
But it's kind of an interesting. Because like that there would be a lot of, I mean it's all going in blind, right. Every one of those books would be a complete surprise to me. It would be a mix of genre. It would be, Lord help me because I'm not letting them go to the P for Patterson section. So it would be like a mix of authors. And if I was open to discovery and quick to dnf, if it wasn't working, I'll bet you I or anybody else who's willing to do that experiment would ha. Would come up with some real gems, would read some books that they'd be like, I otherwise never would have picked this up. But I'm really glad that I did.
- [49:51]
B
I do love the idea of being like, okay, pick a random shelf. And now without even really looking, these are the five books I'm taking home and they're just right from the middle of that shelf. Right. I'm book flighting. They're available and they're shelved next to each other for whatever reason. Right. And it's probably author last name, depending on how your library does their things. And then coming home and saying, let's see what you have for me. Right. I don't, I don't have to be married to any of you, but we could speed date for a second and see how it goes. Right? Right.
- [50:20]
A
And all five might be complete. I mean that would actually probably be if all 3,000 of us who are in the bookish friends group did this at our libraries. I'll bet we would really help libraries because all of a sudden the circulation of some of these books that are not being picked up at all, that would be there. That'd be a real, that'd be a real little blip on the library's analytics.
- [50:44]
B
But just imagine if it were all the currently reading listeners all over the world, not even just the bookish friends. Yeah, this is $8.
- [50:51]
A
You could go, this is us recording too much in a day. I just, that's what happened there, folks. I was in, in depressed list mode and Katie's like, meredith, we're recording a big show episode. So, so what if it wasn't just 3,000 people.
- [51:05]
B
What if it's 20,000? Yay.
- [51:08]
A
Thanks, Katie. That was a really gracious way of saying Meredith, what are we doing recorded.
- [51:12]
B
This would be really fun if we just invited everybody to do that. Okay. But. Okay, let's go back really quick to Tara's email. And let's say that libraries all of a sudden one day decided to change their shelving. And instead of either genre or author last name, they did shelve by tropes. Is there a trope shelf that you would be willing to be like, fine, I'll start at the beginning and let's just see what they have here.
- [51:38]
A
I mean I would read any police procedural.
- [51:40]
B
Okay. Right. So like the microgenre but a trope.
- [51:45]
A
I don't. I'm.
- [51:46]
B
Oh, a trope.
- [51:48]
A
Okay. I mean is a tr. Is a plucky orphan? Can that be a trope? Yeah, Because I would read a plucky orphan across genre.
- [51:57]
B
Uh huh. Yeah. Because you could put her in a mystery or a romance and she's probably doing something. I like it.
- [52:04]
A
Yeah. What about you? Is there a trope that you would automatically say, I will at least give a try to every book that includes that trope. That's actually a separate deep dive. And that's interesting.
- [52:14]
B
My first one is Found Family. Because it can be contemporary fiction, it can be a fantasy road trip novel. It doesn't matter if it's like an unlikely group of companions coming together and they just love and support each other. Whatever. I don't care what it's about. Put it in my veins. Right. I'll read everything. That whole shelf. That's fine. And then people know this. But Ashley Skeen from Booktenders sent me a book and when I finished it, I found her note that I had tucked in the back called the White Octopus Hotel. And it was just. Cause it had octopus in the title. Right. And then she and I talked about it and there were some things that worked and some things that didn't work for me. But I was like. When I found out on page six that she has an octopus tattoo that moves around her body, I knew I was reading the whole thing. Like it didn't matter. What else happened in that book?
- [53:03]
A
Yeah, I mean I feel like a sentient house. That's another thing for me. I like that a lot. That's a really favorite trope. That's an interesting reader Know thyself question, actually, Katie, that I. That I want to explore because. Just a fun thing to think about. Like what are the tropes but as far as going in blind, it is that. That's an examp of knowing just a little bit and then, like, letting the rest of it reveal itself to you.
- [53:25]
B
What else happens? Yeah, exactly. All right, y', all, we do want to know what it takes for you to be willing to jump in with no foreknowledge into whatever book was just placed in front of you. Whether you placed it in front of you or somebody else did tell us about it, we'll put a post on Instagram. Of course we want to know what is it that works for you in this? Me, you. And do you agree about this, like, braided thing where it's like, willing to try anything and also dnf with abandon? Is that. Is that the magic sauce here? Sweet. Bet it is. Yep. All right, before we go, I cannot wait to tell you about our Bookish Friend of the Week. This week I chose Amy, who was doing the Lord's work. She said, let's grow everyone's tbr. What books are you most excited about this summer? Here's some of mine. She gives us five books, which I'm going to read to you because they're probably going on your summer TBR as well. But she says Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier, Love youe More by Emily Giffen Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer, June Baby by Shannon Garvey, and the Top of the World by Ethan Joella. First of all, this tells us a lot about Amy as a reader. We can see some of the places that reading really works for her and some of the authors that have worked for her in the past. But between this post and the summer reading guides by our bookish friends and podcast pals, I am fully set up for summer reading. Right. There are comments upon comments, people who read all different kinds of ways saying, did you know this person has a book coming out? Did you know? I've been waiting on this one because it has a great trope that I never shy away from. Right. I've got printed guides as well from Sarah's Bookshelves, Mom Advice and Kelly Hook Reads book books. And I've also bookmarked Bookish friend Courtney's Anti Summer Reading guide. So much goodness out there. Fully set for summer, partially thanks to Amy and all the goodness in the bookish world right now.
- [55:19]
A
It just does. The group does such a good job of just bringing together, like as a re. As a hive mind.
- [55:26]
B
Right?
- [55:27]
A
Yes. Brings together all that goodness.
- [55:29]
B
Back to the bee puns.
- [55:30]
A
Right? Right. Full circle. All right, well, I'm going To do a. Currently curious again. I have gone down two rabbit holes right hard in the last couple of months. Sourdough, we know. Like, I am. I am a sourdough making fool and I'm reading the books and doing the thing. You're gonna hear more about that for sure. But the other thing that I have got, I have gone down a rabbit hole. And again, I blame Jamie golden from the podcast, a fragrance. I fell down this rabbit hole and I just cannot get out. And I don't even want to. I have been introduced to this world of niche fragrances, European fragrances, art, like really small perfume houses that do interesting things from the United States. Anyway, I have gone down the rabbit hole. I have been reading books. I read the Perfumist of Paris by Al Kajoshi. I'm reading the Scent Keeper right now. I've just. I have really, really been going down, down this rabbit hole. And let me tell you, I didn't realize how much obsession with perfume is really similar to an obsession with books. It is so much more similar than you would have thought it was because they're both things that you can buy, especially if you get into like what's called decants. Do you know what a decant is? I didn't know. So when you go down this rabbit hole. Thank you, Jamie Golden. You don't blind by just actually what it's called. You don't blind by a perfume fume. You buy a decant which is like a 1 or 2 milliliter sample of it that is from, you know, you buy it only from a few certain places that you know you're getting the actual high quality, right? So you, you start ordering from all these and they're. They're inexpensive. Like, they're. I mean, that's a relative term, but like right as 1ml could be $6 right. Compared to hundreds of dollars for a bottle. But then you start buying. You'd start. You start going down a rabbit hole really quickly, like we do when we start filling our shelves with books. We're like, you start to get like a TBS a to be sniffed list instead of a tbr, right?
- [57:40]
B
You.
- [57:41]
A
And then you start. Then you start going online and you start going to fragrance Talk and you start getting scent twins. Like you have book twins. And you're like, well, she really liked blah blah, blah. And so I might really like blah blah, blah. And then you start having things where you're like, oh my God. God, she really like blah, blah, blah. I would never. I'm nev. If she thinks this about this scent, then I would use. It's the exact same. It's the exact same. You start overspending in the same way you start looking for ways that you can.
- [58:10]
B
Like, fragrances could really get you.
- [58:12]
A
Like, I, I really need to like, stop buying samples because I have plenty and I need to just wear what's on my shelf. Katie, instead of buying more.
- [58:21]
B
Maybe you just need to smell what's on your shelf.
- [58:23]
A
But then you have to smell it. Then you have to. But then you can't just smell it, you have to actually wear it. Because it turns out my skin, my skin chemistry is really weird and wears like, wears things really differently than most people do. So like, you have to like, learn about your own chemistry and what works for you, what works for your nose and what all of this stuff. It's been one of the most interesting rabbit holes that I have fallen into. I have learned so much. I am learning to speak French solely to understand more in the fragrance world because so much in the fragrance world is French. And I am learning the history of fragrances back thousands of years ago, but also just like in the last 200 years. It is fascinating. And books, of course, are all. There's lots of really interesting resources in book form and there's interesting, you know, fiction that has a lot of interesting stuff about fragrance and scents and how fragrances are made really, really interesting. So that is what I am currently curious about. I will tell you. I will end Fragrance Corner by telling you what I am wearing today, which is a new fragrance that has ended up. I'm getting a full bottle. I buy very few full bottles because after you get a decant and you love it, you buy a 10 milliliter sample, like a travel size spray. You don't go straight to a bottle unless you love it. I am wearing Musk K by Ella K, which is a French perfumer. It's a skin scent, it's you, but so much more refined and with better staying power and projection. So that's what I'm wearing today. That is the end of Fragrance Corner. But again, be careful because if you fell into Book Book World, you could very easily fall into Fragrance World.
- [60:13]
B
The addictive personality. I will add though that if you want a tiny gateway right at Christmas time, my best friend got me a fragrance sampler from Dillard's. So it had 25 of the most popular and they must have been decants. They're like these teeny little bottles with a little atomizer top. And so before Valentine's day I had to at least try all 25 of them because then it included a gift certificate to buy a full size of your free of your favorite one. So I had so much fun categorizing them and taking notes in the little booklet that came with and trying to isolate like well what works about this one for me versus that one. And these ones feel really similar. But is it because today I'm one day post shower and it wasn't a fresh shower day. Like what is it that's happening with my body? You know, it was so fun and something I did not expect to really enjoy doing.
- [61:06]
A
It's really really interesting. I will tell you and thank you for saying that Katie because that reminded me not a commercial but just another female owned business that I absolutely love what they're doing. Part of the reason that Jamie and the podcast sent me down this rabbit hol that they had a local small business called Ode to Perfume. Ode to Perfume. They're out of Denver, Colorado Women owned women run and they basically they sell all kinds of interesting from interesting houses all over the place but that you can buy I think for $69 you can buy a service from them where you tell they ask you all of these really great questions about yourself and about what you like to smell. Maybe it's fragrances but maybe it's also just smells in the world. And then you give them all of this information and then they choose six scents just for you and they send you two milliliter decants of each of the six. And then also Rachel the owner does a video like a loom video for you that you get as you're waiting for your scents to come. And then she tells you why she chose each one and kind of gives you some scent education around like the house and the the notes of each one. And I did that twice back to back and then from there just started to know and I'm buying from them and then just started to know like oh wait but there's this and there's that. I just anyway we've, I've, I realized we've talked for a long time about this but I am so rabbit holed on I cannot stop thinking about it. I'm not even going to tell you how many samples I put bought mostly because I don't want my husband to know that there's an actual number.
- [62:50]
B
But this does apply so well to that like it's like smell or know yourself right. Where if you can isolate the things that really work for you.
- [62:58]
A
Yes.
- [62:59]
B
And you know where to lean in that matters. It. It plays out in all these other areas of your life.
- [63:05]
A
This is exactly another connection I should have made, Katie. And it is all the things I love about reader. Know thyself.
- [63:14]
B
Yeah.
- [63:14]
A
Scent lover. Know yourself. Because, right. Once you do know what top notes you like and what your body does with bass notes and all of that, you can start, like, you know, narrowing in. And when you find one, like Musque by Ella K. When you find one that you're just like, oh, my gosh, this is. This is me in a bottle. Like, this is exactly me. But they've put it in a bottle, then it just is. So there's something really satisfying about it. And then the other thing is there's all these ways to organize your decants. There's a bunch of ways to organize your decants. And I went with, like, a jewel box. So there's multiple ways you can, like, stand them up. Like samples. Not samples, like vials. Like, they do, like, in a lab. A lot of people do that. Or you can do, like, layered.
- [64:04]
B
Like spice shelves.
- [64:06]
A
Spice shelves, Right. But I went with a jewel box setting. So you can. You get, like, basically, it's like a jewelry box. Like a really pretty jewelry box, but you can arrange it so that it fits your decants perfectly. And then I've organized them with, like, the top shelf is, like, all the ones I'm actively trying, and then there's the ones that I love or saving for a date night or that kind of thing. But it's like, in this really pretty jewel box kind of setting. There's something very satisfying about that, too.
- [64:33]
B
So we're going to need a picture.
- [64:34]
A
Yeah, I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that.
- [64:37]
B
Y. All right, you ready to wrap this up?
- [64:40]
A
Yes. Yes, I'm ready to wrap it up. Thank. Thanks, Katie. Move me along. All right. Gently, gently. One more thing just at the top of. Before we go, if you listen to us on Spotify, would you do me a favor and just hit the follow button for us? It really helps with analytics, which we're learning about on Spotify. But that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me. I'm Meredith at meredithmonday Schwartz on Instagram,
- [65:05]
B
and you can find me me. Katieotes on bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putam Evans, and you can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's reads full show notes with
- [65:17]
A
the title of every book we mentioned. In the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com you
- [65:29]
B
can also follow the show @currentlyreading podcast on Instagram or email us at hello@currentlyreading podcast.com if you head to our website or our substack, you'll be able to sign up for Reader Know Thyself or Smeller Smell Thyself. Whatever it is that super interests you, they 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 for each one, you can also find us on YouTube where we're constantly adding new features.
- [65:59]
A
And if you want more of this, you can of course join us as a bookish friend. For only $5 a month you so much more content, you get amazing community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also very much help us by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts and Spotify and of course shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [66:26]
B
Yes, Bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and know ourselves better and get closer to our goals.
- [66:34]
A
Right until next week, may your coffee
- [66:35]
B
be hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [66:38]
A
Happy reading Katie Happy reading Meredith.