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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 7, Episode 12: New Furry Friends + Retaining What We Read
01:01:31
On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: forgetting how to read and introducing new furry pals Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately Deep...
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- [00:00]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Foreign. 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.
- [00:24]
Katie Cobb
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk and our descriptions will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep and then we'll visit the fountain.
- [00:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And sometimes I just forget how to read.
- [00:42]
Katie Cobb
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And I've got a new reading companion. This is episode number 12 of season seven and we are so glad you're here.
- [00:52]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh Katie, I can't wait to hear about your new reading companion.
- [00:57]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I think she's ready for her debut, right?
- [01:01]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
She's ready for prime time. All right. Well, yes, so we, I'll tell you that we are going to talk later in our deep dive about how much do we remember and kind of long term retain of what we read and is that important that it be one way or the other? I think it's an interesting conversation and I know a lot of people are are interested in that.
- [01:24]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [01:25]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
But first let's get started with our bookish moments of the week. What have you got, Katie?
- [01:31]
Katie Cobb
Okay, Meredith, my bookish moment is of course my new reading buddy. It wasn't the ideal time in my life. Let me take you back to three weeks ago. Not the ideal time in my life, but a puppy basically fell into my lap three weeks ago. We continued to look for her owner. She was not chipped, she had no collar, but she definitely had been owned. We're now a few weeks in and not a single person has come forward and the kids have all bonded. We've all fallen head over heels. So this week I'm ready to introduce Penny Parker Cobb as the newest member of our family. She's shiny red like a lucky penny. She showed up at exactly the wrong time when everything was already hard and she had severe separation anxiety anytime we had to leave the house. Like her face from her mouth down to her chest would be covered in drool when we got back, whether it was 10 minutes later or an hour later. She was just mess. She was just a disaster. But she's quickly settling into a new normal. She's playful, she's a quick learner, she's super affectionate. She like curls up inside Einstein's little donut space and right on a kid's lap. And the best part is that she's learning from our old dog, Einstein, that whenever mom moves to a new spot to read, every dog is required to stand up, come with, lay close by. And that means I have two reading buddies now, and they are even better.
- [02:49]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Than one that is the best. So she's doing better. As far as the separation anxiety, I know that can take a long time of training and patience.
- [02:57]
Katie Cobb
Yes, it has gotten much better. She has stopped, like, chewing through her bed every time we leave. Occasionally I'll come back and she'll have wet paws, but her face is no longer drenched from drool anymore. So she's getting used to the fact that we leave, but we always come back for her and she's doing better. She did eat my couch in the meantime. She ate some blinds, like, and this was stuff she could reach through the crate. Yeah, she was just a disaster. Like, she just a mess.
- [03:24]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
She'd probably been through a lot. But I'm so glad that you guys found each other. And sometimes things that seem to be happening at exactly the wrong time do end up happening at the right time. So I'm very glad of that.
- [03:37]
Katie Cobb
What's yours? You forgot how to read?
- [03:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Well, my bookish moment of the week is that, once again, I am finding it difficult. I don't know why. In this past year, I seem to have these, like, stops and starts. I'm having trouble with a smooth momentum in my reading, which I feel like didn't used to be as much of a problem as it is for me right now. And so I am just, like, lurching. I'm lurching from one book to another. I'll get into a rhythm with a couple of good books, and then I will all of a sudden, like, I'll have finished two books, like, one on audio and one in print. And all of a sudden I'll be like, I just have no idea what I want to read next. I have no idea. I don't. I can't even really figure out what mood I'm in in these little periods of time in between. I'm also not reading at the clip that I normally read. And I've told you, Katie, like, I, for the past several years, have had this fairly big cushion of books that sits ready to be my next current read. And that makes me feel really comfortable because I know kind of no matter what happens in the shorter term, I've got plenty of books sitting there in that cushion. I know I'M going to be able to record and bring good books. That cushion is dwindling down, I think.
- [04:57]
Katie Cobb
Partly mine too.
- [04:58]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Partly because I had read several long books there for a while. I really read like some very, very long books. And that chips away at it. And then also I'm doing this thing where I'm taking two or three days where I just can't seem to pick anything up or I'm dnfing a lot. But then it ebbs and I, you know, like right now I'm into three different books that I'm very, very into. So, I don't know, just kind of making note for me, for you. And then also just kind of in this audio note that we have, that is the recordings of the podcast that this is the season I'm in right now of this kind of lurching from, you know, not having this smooth momentum. But that'll ease itself out. That'll smooth itself out at some point.
- [05:46]
Katie Cobb
That's the hope. Right? I identify so much with what you just said as we discussed this week off mic. In fact, I used the word when I was talking to Katie about this flailing. Like I'm flailing from one book to another and it's just whatever flail falls off the shelf. I'm like, I don't know, I guess I'll try it. And it doesn't. I don't know what I'm doing with my reading life.
- [06:05]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Right. I think maybe that's it. Maybe there are certain seasons where you feel like very directed or proactive. Like I'm very much in this mood and I'm drawing these books to me. But right now it feels like. Right. I'm. I'm not. I. Maybe it's a bandwidth thing. Maybe it's a. I've been very focused. Like, I've had some work projects that have been taking a lot of my focus and going really well. So, like, maybe it's because that element of my life is feeling very fruitful and so it's taking some bandwidth from this other element. I don't know, talking about it, I think is useful because you can sometimes pick up on patterns. And I really do think that that part of it, the fact that I've been. I've been so wanting to work on these couple of other projects that at night when I sit down, normally when I would reach for my book, I've been like, oh, maybe I'll just spend like another hour on my computer just. Cause I wanted. I just want to experiment with this one Thing, or I want to work on this one thing a little bit more, but in a really happy kind of way, not in a drudgery kind of way. So I think it's interesting to note that our brains are constantly. Our brains are finite. Okay, yes, let's start with that.
- [07:18]
Katie Cobb
Like, that's a thing, right?
- [07:20]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And that there are a lot of different things that can take our bandwidth that aren't just. I think for me, sometimes I'll think, well, I've been going through a really hard time emotionally, for example, or dealing with this really hard thing. Well, that's not really what's going on with me right now. So then I. Then when that's not my go to, I start going like, okay, so what is. What is my problem? Why am I dnfing so many books? Why is it that I'm reading a lot of mysteries, picking up a lot of mysteries, and they are not working for me Now I'm bringing a couple today that definitely did. So it's not like a zero sum thing. But I am in this season where I'm feeling like this, this genre that is usually a go to, that works for me is becoming spottier for me in its effectiveness to take up my attention. That's making me feel a feeling because it's like, whoa, what, what's happening? So that just came up for me as we were talking about it. That, that I think is part of why I'm feeling a little unsettled in my reading. Because, like, what if. What if mysteries just stop working for me? This genre that from, like my whole life has worked for me. I think there's like a low level. Yeah, like a whole low level fear there.
- [08:36]
Katie Cobb
We don't need to deep dive. Everybody's reading life right now. But I definitely have some of those same concerns about my own reading life. So, yeah, you're not alone, I guess is what I'll end on there.
- [08:48]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, exactly. All right, so we are reading. However, there are books being read and there are good books being read. So let's talk about what our current reads are.
- [08:58]
Katie Cobb
Okay. My first current read this week is Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. This is a gem from 2010 that I read over the summer. Again, we're talking about, you know, building up a cushion and then having to eat into that cushion. But this is actually two books in one, because I read Packing for Mars and then I followed up by reading the kids version aloud to my own children as one of our homeschool read alouds. So I'm going to Tell you about both of them. Katie, my reading partner, and I are on a mission to become Mary Roach completists. And this was one more step in that journey. I think we have only one book left right now, so we need her to write something new as soon as possible. In packing for Mars, Mary Roach approaches the journey to leave Earth, potentially with our sight set on Mars. With her signature curiosity and wit, she is willing and able and sometimes should not be allowed to ask the questions no one else will and push her ways into rooms where everyone else has been barred entry. Starting with the history of spaceflight and the historical concerns of getting humans out of the gravity of Earth and the atmosphere. Mary interviews astronauts, combs through NASA's record systems, and watches scientific footage to tell us the stories surrounding man's search for meaning in space. She tackles the questions piece by piece, just like she always does. Each chapter is focused on a different aspect of this thing, which in this case is a journey. And the challenges we find there. Everything from toilet training astronauts to feeding them and how water and food is extra weight that needs to leave the atmosphere and what it's like to put two to five people in very small quarters for an extended period of time, which they also do on Earth to see what those group dynamics are like. And spoiler, it's not good, right? It's not good. She introduces us to the animals that left the atmosphere before humans did and the challenges of working with animals like they can't report back. Yeah, I got dizzy during that time. They just have to keep track of their heart rate and their respiration, that kind of thing. She regales us with her own journeys on parabolic flights where NASA tests the effect of zero gravity in 30 second increments. So they fly this jet way up in the air, turn it way back down, and during that top of the arc, everybody on board is at zero G and there's a lot of vomit involved. Ooh. Mary Roach constantly amazes me with the way she's able to ask very serious people pretty ridiculous questions. She can be talking to a nationally or internationally recognized scientist and still stump them like, well, nobody's ever asked me that before. She can approach an astronaut who's been to space on multiple missions and get them to shake their heads and refuse to answer. It's truly a gift and we're lucky to have her share it with us through her books. Packing for Mars has to be one of the best ones yet because it had me constantly rolling with laughter page after page. I was in stitches. So I was thrilled to know that my mom had already gifted the kids version to us and I and it was already waiting for me in my home. I sat them down, I prepared them with if there are times that I cannot breathe from laughing too hard, just wait it out. Mommy's gonna be fine. Just wait it out. And then it was fine. For some reason, the shortening and summarizing that happened in the kids version also took out a huge portion of the hilarity for me. My 14 year old also only gave it two and a half stars. He said it was both too gross and also not long enough. Like he wanted more. And also he was sufficiently grossed out. Sadly. I have to agree. She kept the ickiest and strangest parts of the adult book, but then took out all the parts that made it truly hilarious. The main point here is that Mary Roach is best served undiluted, straight up. Don't try to dull her charm by making it more palatable for children. That's not how she works. Just like Roy Kent and Ted Lasso, whose acerbic nature is only hilarious when placed in contrast with Ted's joviality and adding photos and pop outs. But removing the conversations with tight lipped scientists did not do us any favors. So if you're planning to pick this up, go full tilt into the madness and grab the original adult version of Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.
- [12:56]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So first of all, great job talking about that book. I've not read Mary Roach and I know your love of her, so I've always kind of left her to you and yet so many of the top. I just love how she does so many different topics.
- [13:12]
Katie Cobb
Mm, yes.
- [13:13]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Like she's just endlessly curious.
- [13:15]
Katie Cobb
Now, Meredith, you have to read Stiff. You would love that one because it's about dead bodies. Yes, you would love it so much. That's the one that you need to.
- [13:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Pick up and you haven't brought it to the show for a really long time, so I could probably get away with it at this point. That's a good idea. I'm gonna do that. Katie, if you could go back and redo it, would you read the adult version to the kids?
- [13:36]
Katie Cobb
I probably would, because my kids. I don't. I have a good filter for the podcast. I don't have a very big filter in real life and I'm willing to discuss things that other parents might think are kind of taboo to discuss with their kids without an issue. A. I know my 6 year old is not going to understand and ask questions about things she doesn't care about. And B, if it opens the door to talking about, you know, sex and space with my 14 year old. And that's another way for us to have a conversation about that and make that topic less taboo in our house. I'm all for it. So I think having more hilarity and some of those deeper topics actually would have served my kids really well and we would have appreciated it more.
- [14:14]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Good to know. All right. My first book that I'm going to bring is a book that falls squarely in the category just of what we were just talking about. I had been dnfing. Dnfing a couple of things, and then I picked up this book and it just immediately I was like, yes, this is exactly what I needed. This is Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson. She's the one who wrote the truly devious series.
- [14:41]
Katie Cobb
Oh, okay.
- [14:42]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. All right, here's the setup. In Death at Morning House, we have our main character, who is Marlo Wexler. She is a teenage girl who she's just had. She's just had a really like a dating debacle. And it ended really badly on a couple of levels. And one of those is that it set the house on fire that she was supposed to be house sitting. Now I'm laughing because I had a similar experience when I was a teenager. I didn't actually set a house on fire, but it. I felt her pain. I. I lost somebody's cat. Okay, I'm just gonna tell you that. So anyway, so that gig, the house sitting gig, is off the table because the house is burned down and nobody was hurt. And Marlo decides to take a summer job far away at the historic Morning House mansion because she really just needs a reset. So she gets there and she is. She's like a tour guide at this mansion which is on this island. And she soon discovers that Morning House is hiding dark secrets because she's. Her task is to give tours of this 1920s era mansion. But very quickly it becomes clear that there is way more to this place than the Prohibition era kind of vintage decor. She learns that a series of mysterious deaths occurred in the family that originally lived in Mourning House. And suddenly this easy summer job takes a sinister turn in that more and more unsettling things start to happen. And Marlow finds herself drawn into a dangerous game of uncovering the mansion, its horrific past, and trying to avoid becoming its next victim.
- [16:16]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [16:17]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes.
- [16:17]
Katie Cobb
That's great.
- [16:18]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I enjoyed the heck out of this book. As my notes said, the first line was, which I always try to keep my first line of my notes because it's the crystallization of everything. This was one of those books that was just a great reading experience. So Maureen Johnson wrote the Truly Divas series, which I brought the first book, Truly Devious, to the podcast and I loved it. I brought that early on in the podcast history and then the rest of that series was deeply disappointing to me, including at one point making me want to throw books against the wall. So I stopped reading Maureen Johnson and Mary Heim, our good friend and show regular, had said, look, I know your complicated history, but you really, really should read this one because I'm hearing lots of great things about it and I fell in love with it in a few different ways. First of all, I have a deep and abiding love for our lead character, Marlo. She is a queer teenage girl and that normally wouldn't necessarily draw me in because teenage girl main characters are not normally for me. But Marlo is hilarious. She is smart and sensitive, but she is so funny. I loved every single minute of this book because the present timeline, there's a past timeline too. The present timeline is completely in her, in Marlo's voice. And she was just exactly who I wanted to be spending my time with, which is saying a lot. Also, I fell in love with the story from the 1932 timeline of this deeply creepy family with their six adopted kids. And then the very interesting story of the youngest kid, four year old Max. I was fascinated by the day to day life of this very strange from the beginning. And the house and the island where this book takes place are equally fascinating. We have pristine waters to swim in, we have a beautiful house to explore and dank basements where very creepy things are lurking. Every setting was delicious. Also, I love stories told in two timelines, but only when they are equally interesting. And this book does that in spades. This is that situation where every time you get to the end of one section you're like, oh, I wanted more. But then you switch back to the other, the other timeline where you are so happy to dive back into what was happening there. Which brings me to another thing that I loved about this book. It's absolutely flawless pacing. It's a YA mystery, but it does not read ya. It is very light on the teenager elements and heavy on the mystery elements. And in both the present and the past timelines, Maureen Johnson gives us just enough tantalizing info to be constantly turning the pages. So this book has a mystery involving not one, but two siblings dying in one Day. It has just the right amount of first love romance. It has eugenics and nut cutlets, which will make so much sense when you read it. So Maureen Johnson has redeemed herself for me. I really like the way that she writes, and more than anything, I love her storytelling. In the truly devious series, we get Stevie Bell, who is a great lead character. Character. And in this one, we get Marlo Wexler. I will definitely be picking up the next Maureen Johnson book. She has become auto buy for me once again. This is Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson.
- [19:58]
Katie Cobb
Okay, Meredith, I have to ask, as a former resident, lifelong resident of the Bay Area, were you picturing the Winchester Mystery House for any of this? Because I am getting some of those vibes from your description.
- [20:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes, except for the fact that the Winchester Mystery House is so kitschy and, like, not chaotic, not cool, like, you know what I mean? Whereas the Morning House, there are reasons that you read in the book that it's very stuck in it. It's very stuck in time. It's almost as if people have just left. So it feels very organic in a way that the Winchester Mystery House does not.
- [20:34]
Katie Cobb
Okay, I like it. This sounds so great.
- [20:37]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, I really, really liked this book. It was a delightful surprise and a great reading experience.
- [20:44]
Katie Cobb
Except I am gonna have to wait because I already, like, I'm just about done with unraveling Oliver, which you pressed into my hands last time we recorded together. Right.
- [20:52]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
But I haven't brought that to the show for a really, really long time.
- [20:55]
Katie Cobb
True.
- [20:56]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah.
- [20:56]
Katie Cobb
But I'm gonna have to wait on this. I'm gonna put it on my, like, next year. October. Right.
- [21:01]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Write a note in your calendar for future Katie.
- [21:03]
Katie Cobb
Reminder. Yes, exactly. Okay. My second book this week is a whole thing. It's Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson.
- [21:13]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. I've been curious about this one.
- [21:15]
Katie Cobb
Okay. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is probably rolling in his grave with this title, but we're going with it. This was an indie bookstore, bookish serendipity pick where I knocked it off the table, which meant, of course, I had to buy it. Phoebe Walsh is our main character. She's always been obsessed with true crime. She's Even writing her PhD dissertation about it, if she can ever get her gin up enough to finish writing it. It is hard to find the time to work on it, though, while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her younger brother, who's just obnoxiously happy and optimistic all the time, and grappling with complicated Feelings, mourning a father that recently passed on who she hadn't had a relationship in years. So there's a lot of plus element here. It doesn't help that she's pretty much convinced that her new neighbor across the street, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer. He looks like a normal dude, but we all know those are the ones, right? He definitely seems to be up to something. Sam continues to prove again and again that he's actually a nice guy. And Phoebe starts to realize that maybe not everyone is secretly murdering people in their garage. Sam is our cinnamon roll hero and he is a delight. He's exactly who we hope he's going to be. Sorry, that doesn't mean, Meredith, that he's an actual serial killer. Which is also what we were kind of hoping he would be.
- [22:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right?
- [22:35]
Katie Cobb
Phoebe brings the paranoia and self sabotage to the relationship and she is hard to read. She's a hard character to fall for and to be in her head with. Maybe because she spends so much time living in that world. Or maybe it's because she needs therapy. She's had this rough relationship with her dad who recently has passed on. But the long and short of it is that there's one person who's very easy to fall in love with in this book and it's not Phoebe. For me, I think especially with this title, that this book would have been better served with some murder in it. The title, the setup, the true crime focus left me feeling like this should have had some mystery or some death. Instead we got paranoia and can I fall in love even though I'm scared situations. And I wanted more. I wanted it to be a fuller, more interesting depiction of showing more than telling. So I. This was hard for me because I loved Sam. I loved the characterization of him as the boy next door. I even loved Phoebe's brother who brings this like light and fun and contrast to her as a character, but Phoebe herself as our main focus. While I enjoy a woman who is obsessed with true crime enough to write a PhD dissertation on it, the way that this author made her get so much in her head about it that she was seeing serial killers everywhere she went and just assuming that we all have plastic on the walls so that we can stab people and have easy cleanup, it just. It felt like a lot for somebody that I wanted to like at the beginning and who you're supposed to like in romance, right? You're supposed to like both of these people and want them to get together. But in fact it was not the best fit for me. And sadly Like, I was like, okay, well, I'll still talk about it because the COVID is fun. The title, again, is very fun, and Sam is a great character, and he was fun to read. And then I prepped all this and I went and I looked at other reviews, and a lot of people felt the same way. It has, like, a 3.4 average on Storygraph, which is usually slightly more generous than Goodreads. So I didn't even go look over there.
- [24:41]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right.
- [24:42]
Katie Cobb
It's just rough. So, sadly, bookish serendipity did not serve me well for this one, but I wanted to use this as a kind of, you know, some people this is gonna be great for. But mostly it's a. It's a warning away of. Don't let the title and the COVID fool you into thinking you're gonna get some fun serial killers and mystery with your romance in this one, which was Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson. Right.
- [25:08]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
It does have a great cover. So it Just to answer your question, Katie. 3.31 on Goodreads. Over 54,000 ratings. So clearly you were, you know, you're on the right track with how most people felt about it. And I think anytime where we have an expectation, then it's unmet. Like, that's automatically. Right. Like, you kind of thought you were going to be getting both and. And you didn't. And then also it sounds like. And I know something that you don't like in your reading at all is something that happened here, which is that they took a person and made her into a caricature instead of an actual person.
- [25:45]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, but it's.
- [25:46]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Because it sounds like a lot of the things about her are not the way that a thinking, intelligent woman would process a lot of these things. So then I can see why that didn't work for you, too.
- [25:56]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, it was a bummer, though.
- [25:57]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I'm sorry about that. But bookish serendipity is strange that way. It's not always a hundred percent, and.
- [26:05]
Katie Cobb
You have to respect it, even if it doesn't always pay out.
- [26:07]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Because when it does pay out, it pays out big time.
- [26:10]
Katie Cobb
Exactly. Exactly.
- [26:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. My second book is also a romance, but this was one that did really work for me, with one slight caveat that I'm going to give you. So proceed with caution on this. So this is the Devil in Winter by Lisa Claypass. Have you ever read her? She's historical, like Regency, which is, you know, if I say romance, you know it's going to be historical.
- [26:34]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [26:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay, so here's the setup We've got one of my favorite kind of setups. A classic marriage of convenience trope wrapped in a slow burn romance. I love. I love this trope. Our main character is Evangeline Jenner. She's. She seems to be kind of a timid wallflower. We'll find out that she is, in fact, not. But at first she is. She has a terrible family and she is about to be married off to a truly villainous person. So she, through a variety of circumstances, goes to our dear other main character, Sebastian, who of course is single and rich and super sexy and of course is a notorious rake. And they. She goes to him and says, like, look, here's what's going on. He agrees to help her by marrying her because of course, that's how our book has to get started. That's very early on in the book. Okay, so then this arrangement is all about convenience. But again, of course, the two start to have some heat between each other, and Evie is committed. Even though she's very attracted to her husband of record, she is not just going to be another notch on his bedpost because he has this outsized reputation. So she says to Sebastian that if he can remain totally celibate for three months, that she will consider maybe taking their relationship to the next level. And just when you think you know where this story is headed, you don't. Because danger from Evie's past rears its head and Sebastian finds himself doing the unexpected, risking everything to protect his wife, who at this point, he is still not sleeping with. So I love this setup. I heard about this perfect little treat of Regency romance from, or I guess maybe Victorian romance from Jamie Golden. She and I have very closely aligned tastes in our romance reading, so I knew that this would be a hit for me, and it absolutely was. What I love about this book is that although it does follow a very predictable trajectory of events, the trick with these kinds of books being good is that the author has to make it believable just to make us believe that these two people would go from being not enemies to lovers, but like people who didn't know each other at all and didn't have. Have any anything in common to being in love. It can't just be that they're physically attracted to each other, at least in a book that I'm going to like. For this to actually be a good book, there has to be way more than that. And this book has that more element. She works in. The author works in all different kinds of plot points to make sure that the trajectory of their relationship makes a ton of sense. I will say that this poor girl, Evie, Evangeline, she goes through so much. She goes from one traumatizing experience to the next when constantly being comforted and ministered to by her new husband. But it's. It's a lot. I also really like that this book had something a little bit different in that it had a real focus on a business being rehabilitated. I won't tell you what business, because that's kind of a spoiler, but this is something that I love in a book, especially in a historical context. Give me a business that is in shambles or not being run well. Give me a main character who comes in and really gets in the weeds of the financials and the tasks and the management, turns it all around. I love that subplot. And this book had a lot of that. I will say that there's no question that our lead male character. This is my caveat. Our lead male character, the gorgeous, tall, blond Sebastian. He is a bit suspect in the beginning. I have evolved over the last few years into loving a grumpy character. I love that. I love grumpy sunshine trope, but I don't love a male character who is flat out jerky at the beginning. Right. And this guy is that at the start. It doesn't last for very long, maybe just even the first chapter. But the overall arc of his character is a. Was a little bit jarring to me and was definitely the one part of the book that had some weakness. Overall, this was a complete win for me. I gave it 4.5 stars. I will say that it is very spicy, but it is believable in its spiciness. This is an author that I will be checking out more of her backlist and I will read more in this, which is part of a series. This is the Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas.
- [31:13]
Katie Cobb
Okay, this sounds very tailor made for Meredith in so many ways.
- [31:18]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
In the right mood. Exactly. Just exactly what I needed. This is one of those late night. I absolutely have to pick a book because it's been two days and what am I doing? And I'm combing through my Kindle and starting and dnfing things over and over again. And this Devil in Winter just like went down like a milkshake and I just. That's what I've been needing.
- [31:41]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I love it. Definitely has some similarities to one I talked about again a few months back, I want to say, called the Duke Gets Desperate by Diana Quincy. There is a business in trouble in that one. It's a. It's an old castle. But castles were businesses, right? They had to. Every part of it had to run like a well oiled machine. So I do think he would like that one as well.
- [32:02]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, that's good. Okay. Good.
- [32:03]
Katie Cobb
Okay. My third book this week is. Also has. Has a Mary Heim connection. I'm going to talk about Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. Mackenzie is our main character. This is so great. Meredith Mackenzie wakes up at the start of this book with the head of a crow in her hands. The bloody head of a crow.
- [32:24]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh no.
- [32:25]
Katie Cobb
Severed from its body. She panics, obviously, because. Ew, gross. Not only because of the physical sensation, but because only a few minutes before she woke up, she had been in a dream fighting masses of crows in a forest covered with snow. As soon as she blinks a second time, the head disappears from her hand. That's a setup.
- [32:44]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. I mean that's a great.
- [32:46]
Katie Cobb
There's more beginning. Yeah, that's the start. Right. This is not the last time that she'll have this dream. Night after night, Mackenzie returns to the forest in her dreams. So be aware, for those of you who do not like dreams and books, that's part of this one. In her waking life, she starts to receive text messages from Sabrina, her dead sister. She's also being followed around the city of Toronto by a murder of crows. Like any time she goes into a business, when she comes back out, murder of crows outside. So she heads north to her family in Alberta to visit them to see if they can help her figure out what's going on. They are still absorbed by their grief. The loss of Sabrina, the same grief she was trying to flee in the big city. This is John's debut novel and you can tell she put in the work. As she heads north, she brings in her indigenous heritage to make this indigenous horror story come to life off the page. It's only by dealing with the night that Sabrina died at their family cabin on the lake that Mackenzie will be able to deal with her grief. So hopefully she can do that before the rest of her family is put in danger as well. This is a dark horror novel and surprise of all surprises, it was included on Mary's spoopy reading guide for 2024. What? Right.
- [34:04]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
It does not sound spooky. Yeah.
- [34:07]
Katie Cobb
What? It's dark with a capital D. If decapitated crows didn't tell you, so perhaps you were not listening. However, the bonds of this family transcend the page and the mystery. There are strong women in this Family and the way that they call each other out and support each other and work with their indigenous heritage to make horror horror able, things change back into the ways that they should be is really, really cool. I loved it. Indigenous horror is where it's at for me in October. These books continue to deliver for me at the rate of at least one a year. In previous years, I've talked about Nick Medina and Stephen Graham Jones, who of course is the king of indigenous horror right now. So now I can add Jessica Johns to this list. She delivered in every way on this one with a slow burn mystery that had me turning the pages and totally paid off for me. I loved this one. I believe I bought it. There's a bookstore in Minnesota called Content and they do a paperback summer sale every year where they have like 10 books on their paperback sale from all these different genres. And if you buy at least three, you get an extra 20% off. So I usually buy, you know, five to 10 different paperbacks from them. I believe I got this book from them last summer, or maybe it was this summer, but now I finally read it and it was a delight. It was absolutely what I was wanting. Very wintry and snowy. Of course, I read it in the summertime because I have to remove myself from the hell of Arizona and the 115 degree weather and put myself in the woods of Canada instead. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns did it for me in a big way and I loved it.
- [35:47]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, that is perfect for where we are in the year right now, in the season. I've heard really good things about it and also I heard a lot about it because I listened TO Canada reads 2024 and it was one of the five finalists. So I. Yeah, so I was hearing a lot about the books, the debates about it. Yeah, exactly. So excellent. I'm so glad that that worked for you.
- [36:10]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, it was great.
- [36:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
That's a really, really good one. All right. My third one I just have really been looking forward to bringing to the show because this is an absolute standout not only of the summer for me, but a standout of the year and has really gotten me on a path to becoming a completist of this author. I want to talk about. I'm thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid. Now, if you heard me on Laura Tremain's show where we talked about horror, I talked about this, and this is horror, but it is not gory. So if you like the kind of unsettling element of things, but you don't want body horror, this is going to Be something that's of interest to you. All right. The setup for like the. The marketing, I think starts it out perfectly. It says you'll be scared, but you won't know why. This is the kind of book that you need very. You really are best served by having very, very little setup. So all you need to know is that we've got Jake and his girlfriend embarking on a road trip. They are on their way to meet his parents. And as we start, the girlfriend tells us that she's thinking about ending things. What follows is totally unexpected, deeply unsettling, and absolutely unforgettable. Katie, have you read this book?
- [37:27]
Katie Cobb
I haven't. And while I have seen it a lot lately, I don't understand why right now it's really big again. Can you illuminate that for me too? Because it's not brand new, is it?
- [37:38]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
No, it is definitely not brand new.
- [37:40]
Katie Cobb
But maybe there's an adaptation or is it just. Maybe Booktok blew it up.
- [37:44]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I'll tell you how I decided to read it was because it is the one book that is on the Sadie Hartman in Sadie Hartman's book 101 Books to Read before you're murdered. Well, Betsy and Le Betsy and Kiara and I decided we were going to read through that list together and that's the one book that I already owned.
- [38:02]
Katie Cobb
Okay.
- [38:02]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So I was like, hey, can we just start with this one? Because I already have it. And so that was how it came to me. I know that it was. Yeah, Sarah's Bookshelves Live was talking about it. They did a really good spoiler filled episode that I thought was so interesting to listen to after I read the book. So I was really happy that Sarah and Catherine talked about it. So yeah, I don't know quite. But as I said, this was a book that's been on my bookshelf for several years. I bought it at Fabled because at that point several years ago, several people had recommended it to me. I didn't pick it up because I tried it once and literally read like the first two paragraphs and it just wasn't the right mood for me. So I just set it down and said it'll be in the right mood later. And this is the kind of book that you need to be in the right mood for. And I was when I read it this time, which thank God because as I said, probably one of my top 10 of the year. I should also say right up at the top that I highly recommend that you, buddy, read this book if you are going to jump into it, please get you a friend. I did that with Bessie and Chiara and by the time I got to the end of the book I was like, I am so glad we read this together because if I had read it alone, I would have just had to go convince someone to read it because I needed someone to talk to about it. It's a great book club book. So if you've ever heard anything about this book, you know that a lot of people close its cover and immediately start to reread it because it is that kind of book. It begs for an immediate reread. Also, if you know anything about this book, you'll know that most people close its cover and say the exact same thing. WTF did I just read? And it is definitely that kind of book too. And those two things together. An incredibly clever plot mixed with sentence level prose that has you scratching your head the whole time is just such a delicious sweet spot in my reading. So as I said, found it through 101 Books to Read before you're murdered. It's interesting to me that this book is often not just there, but in many other lists categorized as horror. There definitely is a scary factor in this book, but it's not the kind of scary that you often see when you think of horror. What you see here is creeping dread. But more than creeping dread, because I've used that phrase to describe other books. This is a whole other thing. This is disorienting. This is strange and weird and unsettling and disturbing and uncomfortable. That's the word that for me is going to be the word that sticks with me about this book. Don't get me wrong, it's very easy to understand what's happening in the story. The sentence level prose is clear, so it's not like a fever dream situation. I do not like books like that. But here he's giving you tiny little bits of unsettling things all along. Little horrific winks and nods that just chill you to the core. There is a pair of shoes that at one point is just facing a certain direction. And I swear right now I feel like I just read that chapter and then of course you get to that ending, which obviously I will say nothing about. But I will say that this book is a book that I can't imagine ever forgetting. There is absolutely nothing forgettable about this book. It's not very long. In fact, it's only, I think maybe 230 pages. It's really very short and the author himself has said that it is best read in one or Two long sittings. And I would say that is probably really good advice. You don't need to know a lot about the book, but just need to. You do need to know that you need an afternoon to start it. If you're like me, it will be very hard to stop turning the pages before you get to that ending. So if you love weird and you love anything described as unsettling, and if you love the movies of M. Night Shyamalan, you are going to love this book. I absolutely did. It made me feel deliciously uncomfortable from start to finish. This is. I'm thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid.
- [42:13]
Katie Cobb
Hey, I'm interested. I'm interested.
- [42:15]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I gotta say, yes, it is. It is such a good book club read because it's short. Everyone will finish it, and everyone will be running to your book club meeting. Absolutely. Just tearing their hair out wanting to talk about it.
- [42:30]
Katie Cobb
But even better to read, like, at the same time. Right. With people. I mean, not just wait for a book club meeting.
- [42:37]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Sure.
- [42:38]
Katie Cobb
Like, if I can find a buddy reader.
- [42:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. That, to me, was a really, really great experience.
- [42:44]
Katie Cobb
Katie's not gonna read this.
- [42:45]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. And you want to read it with someone who can. Like, because I think it would be sort of frustrating in this instance to read it with, like, if you jammed through it really quickly and they're like.
- [42:55]
Katie Cobb
I'm just reading, like, I'm on page.
- [42:56]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
42 pages and I'll be done in a month. That would be almost more frustrating than just reading it on your own or waiting till book club. Because you. You. Yeah. You really, really want to talk about it. But it's. It's excellent. It's really well done. I already have Buddy read his next book, Faux, and I'm going to be bringing that to the show. And then, yeah, I'm going to be an Ian Ring completest because.
- [43:19]
Katie Cobb
Okay, wait, is that Faux like Enemy or Faux like fake?
- [43:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Faux like enemy.
- [43:23]
Katie Cobb
Okay.
- [43:24]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And it was also very good. Very different, but very good.
- [43:27]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [43:28]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. So. All right, well, I wanted to bring that book right ahead of our deep dive today because that is a book that I said, I think three or four times in my comments about. It was a book that I wasn't going to forget.
- [43:41]
Katie Cobb
Yeah. Unforgettable.
- [43:42]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Unforgettable. And it stands out because I don't necessarily remember. I don't retain what I read in the same way, for example, that my husband does. Like, he will completely forget the title of the book that he read, but he will remember things at such a deeper level. I'm convinced it's because he reads much slower than I do. But this issue of how much we remember or retain of what we read is something that comes up a lot of times when readers are talking to each other. So, Katie, where do you fall on this spectrum of how much do you remember?
- [44:19]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, it is an interesting question because we, for almost like six and a half years now, have joked that I, Katie Cobb, have a card catalog in my brain. Right. You can talk about a book and then three years later, say, Katie, what was that book that I talked about? And give me a few details. And I can usually tell you the title and author.
- [44:38]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes.
- [44:39]
Katie Cobb
For a book that I didn't even read, I just heard you discuss it with me. Right. And I can do that in a lot of areas of my life. So I feel like I have a pretty good memory. However, I just reread what Alice forgot, which I talked about how I was going to do that on the show. I repressed it. I said, it's been 10 years since I read this. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I did not remember how it ended. And when I got there, I was like, wow, this is. This is not what. Like, I had no idea that I was going to turn this page and this thing was going to happen. It was like reading it again for the first time. I had very hazy recollections of the way I felt at the end of that book. So I knew it had to pay off in some ways for me, but I didn't have that very clear. These are the plot points that this book followed. Or even if you had said, well, remember with Dominic, I didn't remember that his name was Dominic, that there was a character named Dominic, and that her husband is named Nick and she's dating a guy named Dominic. What?
- [45:43]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right.
- [45:44]
Katie Cobb
Leon Moriarty. What were you doing there? I didn't remember that. And I think. And now it kind of annoys me, so maybe I won't forget it. But I remember much more clearly either hearing somebody else talk about a book or the hazy cloud around the book. Like, these are the feels I had about it. Here's the general stuff I remember. Then I do very specific turns of the plot or very specific scenes. That's not something that's hanging out inside my card catalog.
- [46:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. I would say I'm right there with you. I definitely will remember if I liked a book or not. Like, that is almost never gone to me.
- [46:22]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [46:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And I feel bad sometimes when people will DM me about a book that I've read not very long ago that they've just heard me talk about on the show. And they'll ask me question. I always feel so guilty about this. They'll ask me questions about, like, deep level plot points.
- [46:38]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [46:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And I'll be like, oh, sweetie, I have no memory of what. I don't remember how that book ended. I don't remember who the killer was. As we start to talk about it, it will come back to me. So it's in there. It's not gone out of my brain. But I don't have easy recall of that. But oftentimes I will remember a couple of scenes from it, you know, so I. I'll have. I'll have some of it, but not that. And this is one thing that's come up a lot for Roxanna and I as we've been doing A Journey to Three Pines.
- [47:08]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [47:08]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Because obviously, I've talked a million times about how the Louise Penny Three Pines series is my favorite book series of all time. And many of them, I think, all the way up till the book, we're getting ready to start a beautiful mystery I have read more than once. And so this now is my third time with the book, and I am still going, oh, my gosh, I'd totally forgotten that that person was the killer. So even when I revisit a book more than once, those plot points don't stick with me. And I have just decided that I am gonna be okay with that. Because sometimes it's really wonderful to be able to reread something and have it be largely new to you. Right. For a variety of reasons. Because you've forgotten it, because it's been a long time. So you are a different reader. You're picking up on different things. So I've just kind of decided, you know what? I'm gonna stop beating myself up for the fact that I didn't remember who the killer was and just, in fact, be like, hey, I didn't remember who killer was. I got to experience that again. Right. And so, yeah, I'm okay with it. I do know that any book that I've taken in on audio, I remember in much more detail than a book I've read in print. And that's true for me in my regular life, too. I will actually. This is something that really bothers Johnny about being married to me. If I've been in a conversation, I will remember that with almost quotable level memory.
- [48:40]
Katie Cobb
Yes. This also annoys my. In real life people.
- [48:44]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. And so that is, you know, I have immediate Recall of not only what was said, but exactly what was said. And so. And the tone. And the tone and the context. And so if I've heard something, it's in a completely different kind of lockbox, which is why audio sticks with me. I'm, you know, I'm convinced.
- [49:03]
Katie Cobb
So much better that happens to me also, to the point where sometimes if I drive past the same place where I was listening to a certain thing in a book, I remember what was happening in that book at that time.
- [49:16]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes.
- [49:16]
Katie Cobb
Or when I think about driving to visit my bestie, Heather, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, I remember the books I was reading or listening to on that drive with nearly perfect clarity.
- [49:28]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Katie Cobb
And so I could tell you a lot about the change by Kristen Miller, because that's what I listened to when I did that drive by myself most recently. And it's like, that was two or three years ago. And I can't tell you as much about what Alice forgot that I read a month and a half ago because of the way my brain takes in the audio.
- [49:49]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Which also may be part of the reason why books that I read and tell you about stick in your brain.
- [49:56]
Katie Cobb
It's huge.
- [49:57]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So that's very. That's very interesting. So how much do you care about your level of retainment?
- [50:06]
Katie Cobb
I only care enough to be able to have the conversations, y'all. That is the new puppy. If you can hear barking, that's Penny. There's a lot of kids here, but she's playing with a lot of kids. She's not supposed to be barking.
- [50:20]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right.
- [50:20]
Katie Cobb
We'll see how much can get cut off. I only care so much about having the conversation. So there are books where the ending was pivotal to the book and the experience as a whole. And I had people come to me afterward and say, okay, but let's talk about that ending. Let's talk about these aspects of that ending. Those. I want to remember all the details of it so I can have the conversation about it. Because books in community are what matter to me. Having my dead soldiers on my shelf and saying, these are all the books I've ever read. Like my book graveyard of look at all I've accomplished. And being able to perfectly recall everything about those books does not matter to me. I want to look at it. I want to have good feels about it. I want to know the hazy plot and the hazy characters and the hazy vibes. But the only details that matter to me are the ones that I'm going to discuss in conversation with other readers. So I guess it doesn't matter to me much at all that I don't remember everything perfectly right.
- [51:23]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And I think partly too, maybe the reason that this comes up in conversation a lot for me, it will often be with people who do a lot of reading of nonfiction. And now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of my Enneagram Fives in my life have been bemoaning this fact of like, I just wish I could remember more of it because I, I remembered it so clearly when I finished that book on the Revolution. And now I've lost some of the details and.
- [51:48]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [51:48]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Because for an Enneagram Five, that information intake is so key. I can see how it would be harder for them. But Katie, then how do you explain the books, like the Ian Reid book? I'm thinking of ending things that I was just talking about where I said it's absolutely unforgettable. I mean, for me, there are, there are books that get slotted. And I read that one in print, in fact, which, by the way, I should have said, I should have said when I was talking about, I'm thinking of ending things. If you're going to do it on audio, which I've heard it has a really good audio experience, you're also going to want a print version. So don't just do that book on audio, like have a print version or a digital version available to you. I suggest, I suggest print. But it's the books that are outliers that stick with me in the most detail. Right. So the, these penny books are not outliers for me because I read so many mysteries. There's, there's patterns, there's, you know, they're not tropey, but there's patterns that my brain has learned with this one or with, you know, one of the books I think about all the time. Eye of the World, the beginning of the Wheel of Time series, that was a book of high fantasy. I'd never read high fantasy before. It's very memorable to me because it was completely new to me in many different ways. So the books, Hamnet is another example. Just books that are real outliers in my reading stick with me. And also I think are often the ones that end up. I've said this before, in our top 10 books of the year, often when you look at what were the books that I. That really stuck with me from the year, they will be the ones that didn't fit your normal reading pattern.
- [53:23]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, they surprised us in some way.
- [53:26]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right.
- [53:26]
Katie Cobb
Okay. I think we probably want to start wrapping this up But I do want to say that I will send a gift link to Megan for an article in the New York Times that kind of started this discussion between the two of us. It's from September 28th. It's called @ Capacity. And the author talks about how not only does our memory capacity change as we get older, but we're also in this era of hyper digestible information. Right. We will watch a TikTok for 15 seconds, but sitting down to watch an hour and a half movie might be too much of an ask because like we talked about at the beginning of the show with your bookish moment, Meredith, we have this limited capacity in our brains. And so sometimes for us readers, that means I can say, overall, I love Louise Penny and that this book of the series is my favorite and that Inspector Gamache, this returning character, is one of my favorite people ever written on the page. And I don't have to remember every single thing because my brain needs to be able to fit a lot of other stuff in it also. Right. And I, as Katie Cobb can say, I've read thousands of books over the years and I don't have to remember every single detail of all of them to maintain my identity as somebody who reads a lot of books and remembers a lot of things about them. Because there's only so much capacity. The hard drive is only so big, Right. You have to delete files in order to put in new ones. Maybe Ian Reed's shoes, facing a certain direction, had to take the place of the people's teeth falling out in Rumaan Alam's end of the world book, whose name I can't remember now.
- [55:02]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, leave the world behind. Look, Leave the world behind, Meredith. Bandwidth coming in. Clutch.
- [55:07]
Katie Cobb
See, and I just watched that movie not long ago, so maybe I erased the title because now I've, you know, you have the visuals in all its formats. I've got it done, you know, because there's only so much capacity on the hard drive. So I think that article is a really great read and it does speak to some of these things, like what do we need to use that capacity for in our day to day life? And how much does it matter if you remember something or if you can experience it again for the first time?
- [55:32]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right, exactly. I mean, we could have a long conversation about capacity in different ways, that we need to clear out the hard drive so that we can have creativity and have bandwidth for projects that we want to work. That's a whole separate conversation. All right, but you are right, Katie. Let's get to the fountain. What is your fountain wish this week?
- [55:51]
Katie Cobb
Okay, my fountain wish this week, Meredith, I brought it with me. Is a product. It's a fun, wordy reading calendar. So this looks like it's for kids, but it is a delight. It's called Mrs. Wordsmith Storyteller's Word a Day. There are 180 pages in this calendar which you can flip up like an a frame so it'll sit up on your. On your desk. And it has a word on one side with an illustration and the definition. And then on the other side, it tells us how frequently that word is used in the stories we read. Word pairings where you might see that word paired with other words, the etymology of that word, and then it gives you the very start of a story. So the one I randomly flipped to was cramped. And it says, tell a story. Army hid in the cramped cupboard reading an old book about. And then it says, so this is technically for children, right? It's to get them started thinking about different words that they can use. Because kids and all of us get into a rut, right? We have so much capacity for our vocabulary. We start to use the same words and turns of phrases over and over and over again. Flipping through here and getting a new word like rancid that maybe they've never heard before, or they certainly never used it for themselves before is so fun. It adds a new depth to their writing, their speech, their vocabulary. And it's great for adults and anyone who loves story. If you didn't know that rancid is only used in 1.3% of stories, you do now. And it comes from the Latin word rancidus, which means stinking. How cool is that?
- [57:30]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I love it.
- [57:31]
Katie Cobb
So this is on my kitchen counter now. We flip it every day to a new word, and we're all playing with the words, trying to work them into our daily lives. And it's been delightful for all of us. So that is Mrs. Wordsmith storyteller's word a Day Calendar.
- [57:46]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, I love it. Katie. I think I'm gonna have to get that. That is just. I love, first of all, I love anything a day. Like, I'm addicted to duolingo. Like, I love anything that's like a couple minutes every day. I just love to create a chain of things. So that sounds like a lot of fun. My wish, honestly, sitting here right now, my wish is that the new Louise Penny, the gray wolf would come out. Not the gray wolf just called gray wolf would come out sooner. It's coming out October 29th as we sit here today, that's two and a half weeks from now. By the time you guys get it, it's only eight days. By the time you guys get the show, it's only eight days away. For a long time in the run up to a new book, I can kind of like compartmentalize it. And then I hit a point. About two and a half weeks is the point, apparently, where all of a sudden I'm like, okay, no, it's really soon, and I just can't. And what if it's good? And what if it's bad? And what if it's the last one? And what. Although we have heard her say that this is not the last one. But I just, you know, yes, I could have gotten an arc. Yes, I could have gotten a print arc. Yes, I got offered a galley and an audio arc. An audio arc. I just like to do this on the day. The release day. It's my. It's my ritual. But I am. I just wish it would come sooner. But it's been a long time. It's been two years without a book from her, so. Which is the longest that we've had to go for, I think, ever in the series. So I am. I just cannot wait. The gray wolf. Not the gray wolf. It's just. No, it is the gray wolf. It's the gray wolf. And it has such a great cover.
- [59:16]
Katie Cobb
That cover is amazing. However, we do know they did switch the audio narrator again.
- [59:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes.
- [59:22]
Katie Cobb
So it's now a third person that we have never met before.
- [59:26]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
But have you heard him?
- [59:27]
Katie Cobb
But Louise, Penny just loves him. Yes. I've watched videos of him. He seems amazing.
- [59:32]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
They've done a really good job of.
- [59:34]
Katie Cobb
Like, we're have to get used to it.
- [59:35]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Trying to make it okay for us. Like, they've been like, folks, it's all right. Promise.
- [59:39]
Katie Cobb
We thought about it. He's going to be okay.
- [59:41]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
He's quebesoir and so apparent. She. She made the move because she's just. It's really been on her heart that a KbiSoft person should be narrating the. The books that. So I. I think he sounds great. And I do. My first read through. Always in print anyway. So.
- [60:00]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I can't wait.
- [60:01]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I can't wait.
- [60:01]
Katie Cobb
I don't. So I'll report back about the. Yes.
- [60:04]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let us know for sure what you think about that. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me. I'm Meredith. Meredith Monday.
- [60:14]
Katie Cobb
Schwartz on Instagram and you can find me Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putovong Evans. You can find her on Instagram at most of megansreads full show notes with.
- [60:26]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
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 youm can also follow the.
- [60:38]
Katie Cobb
Show at currentlyreading Podcast on Instagram or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com and if you want.
- [60:46]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
More of this content, you can join us as a bookish friend for $5 a month on Patreon. You get so much additional content. You can also rate and review us on Apple podcasts. You can shout us out on social media. And you know what? You can also buy some fantastic mugs, coffee mugs that are very bookish and very beautiful. And you can find a link to that on our website as well.
- [61:09]
Katie Cobb
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [61:15]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
All right, until next week, may your.
- [61:17]
Katie Cobb
Coffee be hot and your book be unforgettable.
- [61:21]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
That's right. Happy reading, Katie.
- [61:23]
Katie Cobb
Happy reading, Meredith.