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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 7, Episode 15: Book Talks In The Wild + Reading Rituals
00:56:13
On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: book talks in the wild and new Louise Penny books Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately Deep Dive:...
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- [00:00]
A
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.
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B
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 dive, and then we'll visit the fountain.
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A
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I am living my best bookish life.
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B
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And if you tell me you like to read, we're already best friends. This is episode number 15 of season seven and we are so glad you're here.
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A
Oh, Katie, I do like to read.
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B
Yay. And you are one of my best friends, Meredith. Perfect. It already worked. See? It's like magic.
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A
It is. All right, well, we are going to tell you that we are going to have a fun deep dive today. We are going to talk about our reading rituals. Those silly, superstitious, strange things that we do as readers every time the exact same way. And I'll bet that our listeners have some things that they do themselves.
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B
Yes, definitely. I had a lot of fun prepping this deep dive.
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A
I know. I love it. All right, let's get started though first by talking about our bookish moments of the week. What have you got, Katie?
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B
Okay, Meredith, last night I went to this business function, like a real estate business function with a friend. She's in real estate. I was a clinger. It was very fun. It was outside and gorgeous and just cool enough to need a light jacket. Like the perfect date, right? Which was an exciting change for me because our temperatures just dropped 20 degrees. So I finally get to get out like pants.
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A
Nice.
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B
I know. I'm so excited. We met a couple. We met a lot of people, but one couple. The conversation turned to books. My new best friend Jen, who I will call Julia Roberts for the remainder of this bookish moment because she looked exactly like her, showed me her goodreads and let me know she had kind of read through a bunch of books and stalled out. So Julia Roberts and I talked about where she could work, audiobooks in her routine and sitting down to form daily reading rituals around it. We talked about the books on her very short tbr. And I fought the good fight and told her to remove the silent patient from her want to read list as well as Anything else that I thought would not be a good fit for her based on our conversation, we sat right in the middle of this very businessy party, talked books for over an hour, and I pretended that Julia Roberts and I were best friends. The actual Julia Roberts and the fake one. It was bookish, delightful. There was conversation flowing and wine flowing and lovely appetizers and we had a great time.
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A
That is the most fun when you make a new bookish friend. And boy, if I had a fountain wish this early on in the show, it would be that readers could consistently make friends with new baby readers. Right? Like people coming into their reading life and consistently take the silent patient off of people's lit. Like there are public service. There are better thrillers out there. People. Oh, my goodness. But you know, I know a lot of people love it too. All right, well, I am living my best bookish life, Katie. And you know why it is because this week as we record today is November 2nd. We have a long period of time before we record between recording and when it goes live. Today is November 2nd. It's Saturday. A few days ago, Louise Penny came out with her new book. It was the first time in two years that we have gotten a new book from Louise Penny in the Three Pine series. This was the genesis of our conversation later on today around reading rituals. Because there is place in my reading life where I have more ritualistic behavior than I do when a new Louise Penny novel comes out. So I am happy to report I'm halfway through. I do tend to read these slowly. I don't just gobble like I really purposefully take my time because we only get one, you know, she normally it's every year. This time it was two years. Which, you know, all the praise hands for an author saying are I don't have the book yet that I want to put out, so everyone's just going to need to take a beat. Man, your second fountain. Wish more authors would do that. I realize it's a privilege to be able to do that. She's earned it. And I'm halfway through the Gray Wolf. I am enjoying the heck out of it. I can't wait to be able to talk to you guys about it. And I will bring it probably to the show. That is as close to when I finish it as possible. I won't wait on it because I know a lot of people are are wanting to hear about that. So I'm just never happier. It's fall. It's post Halloween now, which means we're getting into cooler weather. And I have a new Louise Penny in my hands. You and I are recording today for like, three hours. Back to back talking books for three hours. I mean, this is the best bookish life.
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B
Oh, seriously? How lucky.
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A
I know.
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B
How lucky are we to live in this world? We do, right?
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A
It's amazing. All right, well, let's start talking about some of these books. Let's talk about our first current read. Katie, what have you got this week?
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B
Okay, Meredith, I have one called Finding Sophie by Imran Mahmood. Okay. This book came out in March of 2024. I had requested a galley at one point, but I didn't read it until recently. Sad. I waited, but now is the perfect time to tell you about it. Here's the setup. Sophie is the daughter, the only daughter of Harry and Zada. And one day, when she's 17, she goes missing. The King family lives on a quiet street in a London suburb. Sophie leaves the house as normal one day, but then she doesn't come home. It's now been six weeks, and every trail has led to a dead end. So Harry, her dad, has started his own investigation. He has a satellite image of their neighborhood and is approaching each neighbor individually and checking them off his map to see if they have any information. But one house remains unchecked. There's a guy across the street at number 210 who won't even answer the door. Harry starts to spiral into obsession, pulling away from Zara, his wife, until she finally asks him to break his silence and share his investigation with her. They realize they've grown apart and have been suffering separately instead of sharing their grief and their assets. As we get closer to Harry and Zara making their own discoveries in the six weeks after her disappearance, Sophie's disappearance, We also have a second timeline a year or more later, which takes place in the middle of a murder trial. Someone has died, someone was caught, and someone must pay the price. This book was unput downable for me.
- [06:37]
A
Wow, this sounds so good. It's so good.
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B
Okay, so in my review, I called it the Gift of the Magi, but make it a thriller. Do you know that story where, like, the woman sells her hair to buy her husband something, and then he sells that item in order to buy her a hair clip? And so they both have, like, given up their greatest asset to enhance the life of the other person. No longer has that thing. So this is like a thriller version of that. Like, who made the sacrifice? Was it worth it? What's left at the end? Who has what to gain? The author Imran Mahmoud is a British novelist and a barrister or a lawyer whose parents emigrated to the UK from Pakistan. He specializes in criminal law and has said that his first novel, which is called you'd Don't Know Me, was inspired by a young man he defended in court. This is now his fourth book, and the taut pacing kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. He really used that dual timeline expertly to keep me wanting more on both sides of the story. Each courtroom scene ends with a question we're dying to know the answer to. Each neighborhood scene has us thinking we know what's about to happen next. And what happened to Sophie. It's an impossible to put down courtroom thriller. I couldn't get enough of it. I gave it four and a half stars for the way that there was a slight lagginess right before the halfway point where it seemed like Harry especially was just spinning in circles. But Imran got the engine restarted and it was worth sticking through for that final payoff. I really enjoyed this one and it has a great cover. It's Finding Sophie by Imran Mahmood.
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A
This sounds really, really good. Well, I'm downloading Finding Sophie now on audio because that's the perfect kind of audiobook for me.
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B
That's. Yeah, I love it. British Courtrooms, you're going to love it.
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A
Sounds so, so good. Okay. Which means you probably are going to expect me to have a current read, and I have one. Okay.
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B
Oh, good.
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A
Excellent. All working out. Okay. My first one is also a mystery, and here's another one where you need to look up the COVID Katie, while we're talking about this. So this is Peg and Rose solve a murder by Laurian Berenson. Here's the setup. Okay. Our leads are Sisters in law. And I love that. And they are both older, and I love that, too. Sisters in law, Rose Donovan and Peg Turnbull have spent 40 years getting on each other's last nerve. Rose is a former nun who is kind of one of those people who looks for the good in everyone. And Peg, well, Peg isn't that way. But now they're in their 60s and they're attempting to bury the hatchet by joining their local bridge club together. They've barely got their first win when one of the club's most accomplished players is found dead in his home. Rose and Peg, of course, can't resist, and they decide to do some investigating of their own. But their amateur sleuthing may have a fatal flaw, one that could prove deadly to both of them. So this is a Cozy mystery with two really interesting leads. So you've got that clash of personalities. We've got Rose's eternal optimism, Peg's pragmatism. Or really more like her. Tell it like it is ism. The Bridge Club has this perfect cozy setting where everyone knows each other and everyone knows each other's business. And this is best billed as the Odd Couple Meet Murder She Wrote. So what is not to love? So I almost never choose a book based solely on its cover, but in this case, I did. I got a wild hair one day to go onto Goodreads and try to find something that was well reviewed, but I had never heard of before and also fit my mood. I was looking for a unicorn, basically, and I came across the COVID of this cozy mystery, fell in love with it. And as it turns out, it was the best kind of bookish serendipity because it was the perfect book for the mood that I was in. It's kind of felt like the whole book was a lot of Cabot Cove kind of hijinks, vibes. That just was really calming to me. So, you know, I say every time that when I talk about a cozy mystery, you need to be in the right mood. This book does not move quickly. That's not the point of what it's doing. Peg is a dog show judge, so there's a lot of talk about dog shows, especially poodles. Poodles figure very prominently in this story. And I gotta say, I'm not a gigantic fan of standard poodles. I'm a brassilla phallic dog kind of girl. I have Boston terriers, that's, you know, Boston's English bulldogs.
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B
What does that word mean?
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A
Brassilophallic, squishy nose dogs. Flat nosed dogs. Okay, okay. So like.
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B
Like a squashed Frenchie.
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A
Frenchies. Boston's English bulldogs. Those are my favorite kinds of dogs. I don't normally run to poodles, Especially standard poodles. Especially standard poodles who are groomed to be in dog shows. But this book really educated me in some ways about both dog shows and how you prepare for them, and then also poodles themselves and how incredibly smart and sweet they are. So I kind of liked it for that. I'll probably actually remember this book for that more than anything else. But I was charmed the entire way through. We also, by the way, learn a lot about bridge and how bridge is played, and it reminded me a lot of mahjong and kind of a lot of the rituals around mahjong, which I've been playing a lot of. So again, that was another way that it worked for me. I was charmed all the way through. It was predictable as a cozy mystery almost always is. But there was this freshness with the pairing of Peg and Rose. Like I said, they're sisters in law and they have a lot of history. And a lot of the history is pretty painful. Like very much what you would see in a real family. It's not, you know, some of the things they've said to each other are. Have like wounded them 15 years ago. And it's the kind of thing you don't just get over. So when the book starts, they haven't spoken for quite a long time. We learn about their backstory and that really adds some depth to their characters. So as they start to warm to one another and the mystery got started, it was about 30% of the way in. And at that point I just had to find out how things were going to turn out for good old Peg and Rose. So for readers who love their mysteries on the gentler side, but still want that satisfying puzzle box element, this could be a great pick. If you enjoyed the Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osmond and the dynamics between the contrasting personalities, you're definitely going to want to pick this one up. So, all in all, it was a great way to spend a couple of hours. It's not long. I think it's less than 300 pages. This is Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurian Baronson. And I could, I should say, not unexpectedly, the beginning of a.
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B
Yes. And all three have great covers.
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A
I love the covers. The covers are very fresh and interesting. And the first one, you can see the poodle.
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B
Right. I saw that, of course. Are they pretty new?
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A
Yes.
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B
2022 for the first time.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just. I hadn't heard of it at all until I was doing that unicorn search on Goodreads, which is, by the way, kind of a fun way to like. I was in a real slumpy slump.
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B
It's like book roulette.
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A
Yeah. And I wasn't just gonna read anything, so I was doing. I was being purposeful, like I was looking through to find something that was going to fit my mood. And also was highly rated and also I hadn't heard of. Because I'm really, really, really feeling lately, like on Bookstagram and in podcasts, ourselves included, sometimes I feel like the same 15 books are everywhere. And I'm just really. I'm really not liking that feeling. So I'm trying very hard to bring books that are not to read, books just for my own self that are just not everywhere.
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B
Right. I don't think I'm gonna help with that today. I do have all three 2024 releases today.
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A
Right. And also people wanna hear about that too.
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B
It's true, it's true. And these are not necessarily on every podcast that I listen to, so I thought it was okay to talk Next About Bear by Julia Phillips so Bear was an indie press list book this summer from one of our fan favorite stores, Book Tenders in West Virginia. Ashley and her team really blew us away in February, so we ended up circling back to them when we had a scheduling snafu in the summertime and they delivered immediately again with precision and grace. We love them so much. Bear is a shorter book of literary fiction about a pair of sisters, Sam and Elena. They live on the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, and that's important because the setting here is breathtaking and portrayed beautifully on the page. These islands are only accessible by a ferry from the mainland, and that's where Sam works in the Ferry Cafe. Elena works at the local golf club tending bar, and they're both just trying to make ends meet together as sisters, especially because their mom is very sick. She was an esthetician for years, doing nails and breathing in the dust ruining her lungs. Now she has to breathe oxygen through a tube and the girls have to coordinate their work schedules to make sure she has helped, but there are not enough shifts to pay the bills. It's pretty bleak, but one night right at the start of our story, Sam is working on the ferry and she sees a bear crossing the channel, swimming in the water next to the boat. She makes up stories in her mind about where it could be going and why, and then she even reads about it in the paper the next day. But when it shows up in the front of their home, it upends their safety and security and shakes the foundation of their relationship as well. Sam and Elena's responses to this wild animal, and it's an actual wild animal, not an allegory or hallucination, are very different from one another. Their arguments over how best to respond to this beast range from terror to adoration and praise and honor, and it allows Sam to see that she and Elena have not been on the same page for much longer than she previously thought. She thought they were both walking one road together. It turns out Elena was not on that road for quite some time. This book is literary fiction, so not a ton happens, but there's an actual Bear in it. It's about the vibes more than the plot. The COVID the setting, and the characters are all great reasons to pick it up, but those have to be enough to make you stick with the story. It takes place over a relatively short period of time. It only clocks in at 300 pages. It feels like a fever dream that's also very real. There are real health issues here. There are real ruptures in the relationship. It left me wondering how I might respond in some of the same situations. The monetary one, the animal one, and the isolated island one. Each turn of the page had me considering this family and this story from a new angle, even though very little had actually changed. It's not a perfect book, or it wasn't for me. But for a girl who rarely goes literary for fear of being bored, then that's me. This one was not at all boring. I gave it four stars. I enjoyed it immensely. And I immediately revisited my photos of my own trip to the San Juan Islands from 15 years ago because Julia Phillips did such a great job bringing it to life on the page. This was Bear by Julia Phillips.
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A
Fever dream is a good word to describe that. That is a fast read for sure. And I think there's a lot to like about it. I struggled with, especially one of the characters, just wanting to just smack this person the whole time.
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B
Why? Why would you do this?
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A
Yes, but, yeah, so my own little thing about just struggling with characters that make decisions that I'm just like, why? Why? But it's a fast read and it's memorable.
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B
It is, yes. I keep thinking about it, even though it was like, it was, you know, not mediocre, but kind of a middle of the road read for me. But then I'm like, oh, gosh, remember that thing in Bear?
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A
That's the thing, right, that some of these books, for me, I've read several works of literary fiction that I didn't necessarily love and want to hug or whatever as I was reading it, but darn if those aren't the ones that I'm thinking about even now.
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B
Yeah. Six months later, here we are.
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A
All right, my next book is one that I have thought about quite a bit. This is from my morning reading. This is the Winter Hours by Mary Oliver. So Mary Oliver is, of course, we know, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, just the patron saint of American poets. And this is her most personal book. We have here in this very, very slim, I think, 110 pages. We have nine essays and a small selection of poems and Also a few of something that was new to me called Prose Poems. I did not know what that was. My thoughts. This is, as I said, this is part of my morning reading in September. It's short, but I really, really enjoyed it. I read A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver. And so immediately Roxanna said, okay, here's the next one that you have to read by her. Never read anything like it. It's interesting to me that in the essay form, which this was my first experience of Mary Oliver's essays, I somehow feel that I can know her more deeply than just in her poems, which, of course, are beautiful. That essay format really worked for me here. I love that in the essays that begin this, in the essay that begins this collection, there's a lot of focus on the concept of play. Play is something that I struggle with as a enneagram. One play is always a waste of time. Of course, I know it's not a waste of time, but that's what my inner critic tells me. So in this first essay, she's taking us through a home that she built with her own hands for $3.58 in Vermont. This is literally what this essay is about. It is fascinating. And there's so much in this and a couple other essays that start the book that are about play and about the mind body connection. About how important it is for us to have work for our minds, yes, but also work in our hands and the way that those two things work together to make us feel more playful. Now, I will admit that I struggled mightily with what were called the prose poems. These were hard to follow for me. I'm going to continue to work on this format because I am convinced that I want to read absolutely everything that Mary Oliver has written. But this was a struggle for me. But that's not much of this connection. There's this section in the middle where she writes essays on Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost and a few other poets. And this whole section put me in the mind of George Saunders. A swim in the pond in the Rain. And after reading those sections in Mary Oliver's collection, I felt like I had a much better understanding of the poems by those creators. But probably the standouts of the collection are the final two essays. One is called Swoon, and it's about a spider, a spider in a building that Mary Oliver is staying in. It's a very memorable piece and it took my mind back to the very meditative qualities in the Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. There's that same kind of rumination on the noticing and the contemplating. And I realized as I was reading that I would rather read about doing those things than do my own noticing. But that's probably. I could do something. I could do some more ruminating on. The final essay is, of course called Winter Hours, the name of the book, and it mostly sums up the collection. There's its focus on nature and our connections to nature, and its absolutely beautiful. I found myself wanting to read parts of it out loud, which speaks to the lyricality of the prose. So overall, I can't help but think that Winter Hours would be best read in Vermont in the winter. I would really, really love to do that at some point. That would be a delicious experience. And yet there I was in the hot faux fall of Austin, Texas, being quieted, calmed, and inspired all the same. This is Winter Hours by Mary Oliver.
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B
I love this. Now, you've brought multiple Mary Oliver books that I haven't read and you still haven't talked about the one that I have read.
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A
Wait, what's the one that you have read?
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B
Upstream.
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A
Oh, I haven't read that one.
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B
Yeah, I know.
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A
Okay.
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B
It's like we're going to cover the whole catalog, but never overwrite.
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A
Perfect.
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B
So fun. Yeah. She is a very interesting writer. I love the way she turns words into magic.
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A
She's so gifted.
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B
Yes, definitely. Okay. My third book this week is called the Book of Doors by Gareth Brown. And this was on our listener press episode this past summer. Here's the setup. Cassie Andrews works in a New York City bookshop, shelving books, making coffee for customers, and living just an ordinary life until the day one of her favorite customers, a lonely but charming old man, dies right in front there in the shop. Cassie's devastated. She loved his stories and now she has nothing to remember him by until she opens the last book he was reading, which is inscribed to her. This book is for Cassie. Because this is no ordinary book. It is the Book of Doors. It promises Cassie that any door is every door. You just need to know how to open it. As she plays around with the book in the shop one night with her friend, she realizes it has a transportative quality to it. If she can clearly imagine a scene while holding the book, the next door she opens will open to that place, even if that's actually the door to the bathroom or the storage room. It will open to a street in Paris or an Italian villa. She just has to imagine it clearly. Then she's approached by a gaunt stranger in a rumpled black suit with a Scottish brogue who calls Himself, Drummond Fox. He's a librarian who keeps watch over a unique set of rare volumes. And his library is unfindable. The tome now in Cassie's possession is not only a book with great power, but it's the one that is most coveted by the people who collect these unique volumes. Thus begins the story of Cassie's run for her life, attempting to avoid the powerful people who cannot help but desire this rare book. She uses its powers to evade capture, but she cannot run forever. There is a villain at the center of this story who is a shadowy woman, sadistic and terrifying. She is violent. She invokes terror in anyone she meets. And the way she uses her power imbued by these books is bloody and violent. One of the best terrible women I've ever read. Cassie is a wonderful protagonist. Figuring things out as we do, she's kind of thrown into this underworld that she had no idea existed, and we're tagging along holding her coattails. Drummond Fox, her Scottish guide, is a dish of a man. Dark and brilliant and bookish and brooding. He is a dreamboat. I loved the idea of being able to open a book to anywhere. And for those of us who have been around for quite some time, you'll see some similarities here to the middle grade series, the book Wanderers by Anna Page. However, in this book, this violent, adult, dark book, these are not fictional characters. The people are real, the violence is real. Katie Amenabhar was the one who pressed this into our hands during this year's Listener Press and I co sign her recommendation. This book absolutely transported me. I got so excited about the idea of making a fountain wish where I get to open a book and it takes me anywhere I want. Yes, please and thank you. I've always said my preferred superpower would be teleportation. And if that could exist through a book, gosh, I'd just be the happiest little clam in the world. I would just be so thrilled, right? This book was propulsive and transportative in the literary and literal sense of the word. I really loved it. And if you're not gonna shy away from some violent fantasy, this is gonna be a great book for you. It's the book of Doors by Gareth Brown.
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A
Now this is a book that I've stayed away from because I feel like I had heard several people say that it wasn't that great, but what you talked about sounds fantastic. And it has a 4.04 on Goodreads over almost 35,000 ratings.
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B
Yeah, well, I mean, not every book is for every Reader. For me, it was great. I thought it was so fun the way he built this world and the different typ. So Cassie's book is unique because it's the only one that has this, like, transportative power, the Book of Doors. But there's a Book of Time and there's a Book of Shadow. So it's kind of like the Infinity Stones that Thanos has on his gauntlet in the Avengers. Like, each one has kind of a different power. And I loved the way he built those out into something really interesting.
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A
Interesting.
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B
I could see how people might think that the ending gets a little out there and jumps the shark a bit, but it felt very appropriate to the story for me.
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A
Got it. Okay. All right, good. Well, yes. You and I did not know. No one has spoken of it. Having a really, really great villainess. Villainous.
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B
She. Yes.
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A
I love it.
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B
She's terrible.
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A
All right. I've got another book here that is also a page turner. This is Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby. Have you heard of this one?
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B
No.
- [27:17]
A
Okay, here's the setup. So I love a book about a corporate retreat gone horribly wrong. I. I plan corporate retreats for my company. I'm very invested in them going very right, and I spend a lot of time imagining them going horribly wrong. So this book gives us an absolute doozy. So a tech company is celebrating this huge breakthrough that they've had, like an AI thing that they've created. They've created an algorithm that can map human emotions and turn. They've created an algorithm that can map human emotions. And so they've got, like, this huge windfall that's happened to their company. So they're going on this great retreat, but then it turns into a nightmare because their plane crashes on what appears to be an uninhabited tropical island. The survivors of which there are some, including our protagonist, Kristen. Her job title at this very Silicon Valley startup is Chief Emotional Manager, which I do not want. That job sounds a little sus. Right. And her, the CEO, whose name is Sumpter. They think they've hit the jackpot when, as they're going around on this uninhabited island, they stumble upon an ultra modern private palace, complete with every technological bell and whistle that you could imagine, except for the ability to contact the outside world. But this seemingly perfect sanctuary, not surprisingly, has secrets buried in its foundation. And the reason that it exists is far more sinister than anybody on the retreat could have imagined. Okay, this is a banger of a premise, and it's absolutely catnip for me. And in many, many ways, this book Lived up to this promise of its premise. It's very page turning this book, especially the first 65%. The author, interestingly, is a futurist and she does a great job of building up that low level feeling of dread. In this first half of the book, I found myself thinking constantly about that movie. The menu where things are pretty straightforward, but then the author or the filmmaker will drop in. One or two little things that the acute observer will notice and realize are not quite right. Actually not at all what they seem. And this happened in the first half of the book and I loved it. I loved the near future setting and I like how we were dropped into a future with different tech and slightly different history. She didn't go into a ton of details on any of those things, just threw them in, sprinkled them in. Like readers of that time would just take for granted all of those things. There was something cheeky about the tone and I enjoyed it. But the last third of this book was a little less satisfying to me. There were some plot points that I felt were given way more time and attention than it than they deserved. And there were some that I felt got way less. It was just a little unbalanced and messy in a way that that last 30% just ended up making me give the overall rating 3.75, which is not bad. It's still a book that I would recommend, which is why I'm talking about it here. I still think that this book should find a wide audience, certainly a wider one than it's found. This is one of those books that sits right in that sweet spot between thriller and horror. You've got the locked room mystery elements with our group of survivors, but there's also this delicious creeping dread as the house reveals itself to the survivors. And there's something deeply unsettling about the kind of juxtaposition of the ultra modern smart house and then this very primal fear that the survivors are feeling more and more. Think Lost meets anything by Lucy Foley. Just maybe don't read this book right before you go on your next corporate retreat. Fair warning for hsps, this one does get pretty dark in places. And there are some scenes, scenes of violence just to let you know. But if you can handle that, elements of that element of things. This is a really smart, compelling thriller that will keep you guessing until it's slightly messy ending. This is Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby.
- [31:18]
B
Okay, I do like the premise.
- [31:20]
A
Yeah, this is a great airplane book. Like it's just a. It's just a fantastic palette cleanser. Airplane Book by the pool book. It's not going to demand a lot of you, but you definitely want to keep reading it.
- [31:32]
B
Okay. Yeah, I like that.
- [31:34]
A
All right, Katie, let's get into our deep dive here. We are going to talk about reading rituals. And again, this is a conversation that I feel is definitely best had amongst true readers. Because this is a way that I think, you know, if you are in the company of true readers, if you talk about a weird reading ritual that you have and they're like, I do that too, or I do. I do things like that. So what was the first thing that crossed your mind when we started talking about this?
- [32:04]
B
Okay. Well, I wanted to, like, guide myself with some questions and listeners. I think this is what you should be thinking about when we're talking about reading rituals. It's what do you do to get ready to read? And maybe there's a little superstition involved in that. Like Meredith said at the top of the show. Right. How do you set yourself up for success? How do you rub your lucky penny the right way to make sure that reading is successful and delicious the way that you want? Right. For me, I ended up kind of dividing this into multiple levels, and it's basically like, did I do the misan plus necessary to execute the recipe directly or correctly? Right. So level four is, like the base level. It's not that great. I'll bring a book with me. If I think I'm going to have to wait for an appointment. That is a ritual, because I will say, okay, I'm going off to, you know, the dentist. They're never on time. I'm gonna bring a book with me. I still have to choose. Well, because I'm probably gonna read in public. It has to be something I can drop at any second. It can't be so propulsive that I'm like, hold on, dentist, you wait for me.
- [33:10]
A
Right.
- [33:10]
B
Gosh. So I'm giving that a D grade. It's like, barely passable. Like meat, right? When if you had D grade meat, you'd be like, that's only acceptable for other animals to eat. That's not for humans. So that's my first, like, reading ritual. It's just choosing a book to read when you know you're gonna have a little bit of space, then we can move up. Right.
- [33:28]
A
And you have one every single time you go out. You never leave the house without something that falls into that category.
- [33:35]
B
Yes. And I have very strong opinions about this. And ideally, that book is on my Kindle, available on my Kindle at Least so that nobody can see what I'm reading and I can close it and it'll save my spot and I don't even have to move a bookmark. Yes, right. Even that. That's like planning well for this. This teeny, tiny little snippet of time that might be long, it might be short, but that book needs to be able to come with me.
- [33:58]
A
Yes.
- [33:59]
B
Okay. Do you have a. Do you have a D grade reading level?
- [34:02]
A
Okay. I hadn't thought about it in this way, so I'm going a little bit on the fly. But I get what you're. I'm getting what you're putting down. So I think for me, okay, D grade level would be. Whenever I read a book in print, I must select the proper bookmark to go into my book.
- [34:19]
B
Mm.
- [34:19]
A
That happens every time I collect bookmarks. I'm so lucky that people think to buy bookmarks for me when they go to wide, far flung places. So I have a really lovely collection that makes me think of some of my favorite people. I like to match colors. I like to match topic. I like to match vibe, and I do it every time I read a book in print.
- [34:40]
B
Yes, I like that. Do you have any strong opinions about, like, materials? I mean, like, do they need to be cardboard, card, stocky, or would you use a metal one, a plastic one? Do you have any?
- [34:50]
A
I have all different kinds. I have. Okay, so. So the answer to your question is no, I don't. I don't only have a certain kind of bookmark. I don't have anything. I've culled my collection so that I don't have anything that's, like, weight. Like, I don't. Don't have any dumb things. I don't have any. Like.
- [35:06]
B
Like kitschy.
- [35:07]
A
Yeah. Well, I mean, kitschy if. If it's a kitschy that I find cool. Yes. But, like, I don't have any.
- [35:13]
B
I'm not an oxymoron.
- [35:14]
A
All of the. I mean, maybe, but all of the bookmarks that I have are ones that I really like and in the right mood and with the right book would have their own place. But I have metal, plastic, fabric, acrylic, you know, all the materials.
- [35:30]
B
Yeah.
- [35:30]
A
Ribbon, yarn, Ribbon. Yeah.
- [35:32]
B
Okay. I like it. So that's like the base level, what you need to start a reading ritual, even if it's like, this is not a special book, it's just a book.
- [35:39]
A
Exactly. Yes.
- [35:40]
B
I need to get started. Well, yes. Okay. We're moving up to level three, which is C grade reading. It's passable I might have a class for a kid where I know the exact amount of time I'm going to be sitting and waiting. I'm still in public, but I'm going to have, you know, between 30 and 45 minutes. I know that there's reading time there when I know I've got that set amount of time, but it's not in my space. I still do a little prep. I got to get my reading self going first. I choose a book that I can read in public. It can't be a few things, so I need to choose carefully. I want it to be interesting, keep my attention. But I don't want to read a 5 chili pepper sexy book in public. No, thank you. I also don't want to be mad when my kid shows up and says they're ready to go. So we have to strike that balance between propulsive and fine. Right? I pick a chair as far from the door and other parents as possible. I'm very picky about my chair even when I'm reading in public outside of class. Right. And then this is key. I give myself five to seven minutes to screw around on my phone first because that kind of clears the slate for me. I can tell myself, no, you already dealt with Instagram, Facebook messenger, whatever, your email, whatever it is that's kind of pulling my tension away. And I can push those aside and then I can like put my phone upside down or in my purse or put it aside and actually be willing to leave it alone for that 45 minutes. Otherwise, if I don't do that, if I don't complete my five minute ritual of screwing around on my phone, I will instead check it for 12 seconds 18 different times during that 30 minutes. Right? Nobody wants that. That's all the time I could have been reading. Right? That's terrible. So I have to get it out of my system, set it aside. It's not a perfect reading experience. It might be a little distracted, but that gets me up to C grade. Okay.
- [37:21]
A
All right. My probably. I mean, again, I'm having trouble fitting these things because to me, they're all kind of the same kind. But another ritual that I have is, and we talked about this a little bit at the end of last week's show, unless something really unforeseen happens, I try very hard only to break on chapter breaks.
- [37:44]
B
Oh, yes.
- [37:45]
A
Except on audio, where I allow my. On audio, I will stop and start like a heathen. But on. On my Kindle in print, very important to me that I stop and start at chapter breaks. I will put off almost anything. I mean, not like a dentist, not I wouldn't like in a customer service. I would never be like, hang on, DMV person, let me finish this chapter right now. Like I'm not gonna. But like at home or in my normal reading.
- [38:13]
B
Ballsy though, right?
- [38:14]
A
I would not do that. I would not do that. But otherwise I will move heaven and earth to only quit reading at chapter breaks. I do not like stopping in the mid, just willy nilly like a psychopath. I can't do it. It makes me very, very uncomfortable. I have to do like four other rituals in order to stave off the bad luck that my superstitious mind has. If you stop in the middle of a chapter.
- [38:38]
B
Yes, I totally get that. In fact, usually when I start a new chapter, if I know that I'm only going to have time for one more, I move my bookmark or my book dart to that page wherever the next chapter ends so that I can visually see how close I'm getting to that spot on Kindle. It'll say how many minutes you have left of reading that chapter. Right. But physical books. I will move my book dart or my bookmark or whatever it is that's marking where I'm, where I've stopped for the day to the next chapter so that I'm just reading to that place and I know exactly where I'm going. It's like having a stoplight in front of me that I'm aiming toward well.
- [39:12]
A
And that, you know, I will tell you, as a part of this reading ritual, I have almost completely stopped reading books on Kindle. If like, like some arcs for example, that we get through netgalley. Not a lot. But if they don't have the ability for me to see how many chap. How many minutes are left in the chapter, I'm know what? I will buy this book later. I can't. That has become the number one most important feature for me on my Kindle.
- [39:37]
B
Yeah, it really, it makes me want to be able to go in manually and just add them myself because it detracts so much from the reading experience for me not being able to see that next chapter.
- [39:46]
A
Yeah, I can't. I just can't do it.
- [39:48]
B
It's so bad. Okay. Moving up to B grade level two. It's at home. It's not the whole enchilada. Okay. I have some time to sit down and read, but probably my kids are around, they might interrupt me. I'm going to have to set my book down and come back to it like 30 seconds later. I'm not going to walk away for two hours and come back in the middle of the chapter like you're talking about. I can still get a good chunk in, but I don't have time for a full ritual setup. There's a little distraction, a little noise, even if I am sitting in my perfect reading spot, which is what brings us up to grade B or level two reading, where I'm like, okay, I've got my spot, I've got my blanket. I'm ready to do the thing. But somebody is going to come in and remind me that we have to go somewhere in half an hour. Because they're always talking. They're just always talking to me. Yeah, I love them.
- [40:39]
A
I know, I know.
- [40:40]
B
They're always talking.
- [40:41]
A
They are always, always to someone. Always has a thought to share.
- [40:45]
B
Yes. So my children allow me for a lot of grade B reading experiences.
- [40:50]
A
Yes.
- [40:50]
B
Where I'm not getting the full experience.
- [40:52]
A
All right. My sort of second from Most important ritual. This, and this one has to do with how I read books in the series. This is the Agatha Christie Perot novels, which, you know, I'm reading my way through. Always, always, always do those on audio. I always, always, always do this on audio. And if I can, I try really hard to. Also I have a copy of most of them that I've picked up. Like, it just library book sales in the for like 25 cents. So most of the time I also have a copy. So I listen to the first two to three chapters on audio and then I stop. I go find my physical book. I will read the first two or three chapters and then again and then proceed on audio until the end. That ritual, for me, with Agatha Christie specifically, I don't do that for any other kind of book that I read that has helped me so much because she does this thing in the first couple of chapters where it's just this, like, info blast. It's just all these. You have all these characters that are coming out and you're getting information about them, and there's lots of names and they're often very similar names. And I have found that doing it that way, which doesn't take very long at all. Her chapters are short. The books themselves are short. That extra 10 or 15 minutes will really increase my enjoyment of the audio for the whole rest of the time. So that's been my best ritual for my Agatha Christie. And I do it every time that.
- [42:25]
B
I can, but they're always subsequent to each other rather than our tandem read. So you're not holding the book in front of you and listening to the audio being read to you. That's different, right?
- [42:35]
A
Exactly. That's different. This is subsequent to each other.
- [42:38]
B
Right.
- [42:39]
A
Because I take in information, I guess, in different ways, that kind of information. I've heard the names, but now seeing them, it really helps me with the Agni Christie. It helps ground those characters in my mind.
- [42:51]
B
I like it. I think that's great. Yeah, but you've never pivoted to do that with other mysteries where they're doing a lot of setup in the first whatever amount of time.
- [42:59]
A
No, because for the most part, I just haven't found that I need it now. There are definitely books that I read where I'm like, I'm actually really glad, you know, there have been times where it happenstance leads to the fact that I am listening to it on audio and I happen to have it also a hard copy. In that case, I will grab it off my shelf, I'll move my bookmark through because I do enjoy doing that anytime I can. And a lot of times that will lead me to leafing through and, you know, glancing and being like, oh, that's how that's spelled. Or that's right, that particular thing. But I don't do it with the ritualistic nature that I do Agatha Christie with, with Poirot.
- [43:35]
B
Okay. All right. We're up to the big money. The whole enchilada. Prime level A grade A prime reading time. This is the, like, wagyu beef of reading.
- [43:46]
A
Yes.
- [43:46]
B
Right. This is the gold standard grade A reading time. We have to have the right setup, the right accessories. Everything has to be perfect. This reading time ideally happens at certain times of day for me before my kids are awake or after they go to bed or when they've left the house for some reason, they can't be there. I need them to leave. Right.
- [44:05]
A
It's a different quality of quiet.
- [44:07]
B
Very different. It is quiet in my house, except for whatever noises I choose and my old dog snoring next to me. That is my. My very special brand of white noise that is totally unique to my home. I might pick an ASMR room for the light and the noise, but usually I'm a weirdo and I prefer absolute silence. I am not a. Like, put on a playlist of instrumental music. Like, I don't want sounds. And it's probably because I get quiet sound so infrequently in my life that I really strive for it when I can have it. Like, don't send Me a playlist. I love you, Candace. And she's like, okay, fine, whatever. You don't like music, whatever. But I just. I don't want sound if I can get silence ever. I have various lamps and small lights on. Never the big light. That is not part of the reading ritual.
- [44:58]
A
Right.
- [44:58]
B
I probably have my bookshelf lights on and a side lamp because it creates an ambiance around me. I have a table nearby. My beverages are full. I've gone pee within 10 minutes of starting. And I have a blanket, ideally my dual side cooling blanket, that can either warm me up or cool me off, depending on how it feels in the room. I have the whole couch to myself. No one's allowed to touch me. All of these are key. And my phone goes across the room or upstairs to charge, so it cannot interrupt me either. Then I can enter through my ritualistic reading experience, my Zen reading state, where liquid, like, pages turn into liquid and they just flow over me instead of being a physical thing in front of me. They are like part of the air I'm breathing. Right?
- [45:44]
A
You're in it.
- [45:45]
B
It's a thing.
- [45:45]
A
You're immersed.
- [45:46]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so this is Louise Penny for you. Right, Meredith, tell us, what is it?
- [45:51]
A
This is. Well, okay, so I will tell you. My ritual with Louise Penny is that I never. I pre ordered the second that it's available. It will not have a cover, it will not have a name. The second Louise Penny, you know, And I follow her in all of the places. I will pre order it immediately. In this particular instance, I always pre order it from Amazon. Now, you know that the vast majority of my buying of all kinds is through independent bookstores.
- [46:19]
B
Yes.
- [46:20]
A
This is a part of my ritual.
- [46:21]
B
Because really, release day delivery.
- [46:24]
A
Release day delivery. And also, it's just a part of the ritual. That's where I found Louise Penny was on Amazon. It was literally AM that fed her to me back in 2008. So I buy it, I pre order it, I do it on Amazon. Then I wait, and I get so excited. Then the book comes out. I wait all day for it to be delivered. I do not get a netgalley copy. I do not get an early audio. I will not touch it until I get my copy on release day. And then what I try to do is to clear all the other books off of my shelf. This time, I mean, meaning my current reads. This time, I actually have a few current reads in process. And I just said to the various people I'm buddy reading with, you're just gonna have to Give me a minute because I'm. I will be back to you soon, but right now I'm going to, you know, so it will take over anything else that I'm reading. Don't take the full day off of work, but I do try to plan myself, especially in the evenings and on the weekend of it where I have plenty of time to read. My perfect reading environment period for any book is in our bed at night. Yes. But then I get sleepy within about 20 to 30 minutes. So in the morning I can at this season of my life again. Because my youngest is 13, I can put in a good three hours on a weekend morning in bed. My perfect scenario is Johnny always usually gets up and goes for a run. So he leaves. Jackson sleeps really, really late now, so he's not an issue. The cat and the dog are right next to me snoring away, window open, raining outside.
- [48:05]
B
Okay.
- [48:06]
A
Cool breeze coming in underneath my covers with my clicker in one hand and my Kindle in front of me. And like you said, and then that. And it's quiet except for the sound of the rain and a little bit of the breeze coming in and the cat and dog snoring softly. There have been so many times where Johnny's like, goes out for a long run and then he'll do weight workout and he'll be like, wow, it's like no time has passed. When he comes back in, I'm in the exact same position and you know, I've got my coffee by my side. And yes, that is my perfect reading. I could do three hours easy on a weekend morning like that.
- [48:44]
B
And you get into flow state. Right?
- [48:46]
A
Exactly.
- [48:47]
B
Nothing, nothing is happening around me. All that matters is these words and my brain and the way that they're doing chemistry together.
- [48:55]
A
Yep.
- [48:56]
B
So cool.
- [48:57]
A
It's a delicious thing.
- [48:58]
B
Oh, I love it so much.
- [49:00]
A
All right, well, those are some high quality reading rituals. So of course we want to know. I really want to know this. We will put this on Instagram. What is your reading? What are your reading rituals? Are they around a particular author or series? Are they just things you do all the time? You know, what is your grade? A reading experience versus something that you kind of. It's low level, but you do all the time. Every time. I am very interested in this topic because this is the true. Kind of gets to the marrow of the bookish life. All right, Katie, let's talk about our fountain wishes. What are you wishing for this week?
- [49:39]
B
Okay, mine is related to this deep dive. So I am going to wish for Each of us to consider those grades or stages of the reading life. And that's because you can't always find the perfect book or the perfect reading experience or make sure that every box is checked to make to get into that flow state. Right? Right. We don't limit ourselves and say, this book is not perfect for me, so I'm throwing it away immediately and I never want to hear about it again. So we have to have some of that ramp up. And those grades of reading experience, even a D grade book or a D grade reading experience might still deliver something for us. Right. So we should identify what works for us and strive for it once in a while. That you allow yourself stages one, two, and three at any given time, and you allow yourself a three star book or a three star reading experience. Those are okay. But that you identify what works for you in your reading life with regard to the content and what rituals make that content really perfect for you. And it could be an author, specifically part of a series. It could be this certain time of day. But whatever it is that turns it from I had time to read to I got to perform my ritual and enter my reading routine in a different way. That we take time to figure that out. That's my wish this week.
- [50:58]
A
It's a good wish. And those change over time. And they can really. You can have even a couple grade A different experiences. Right. So of course I love to read in my bed in the morning and all of that. But also, like last year, Jackson had lacrosse practice far enough away from our house that it didn't. He was playing with his club team. And so we had to go pretty far away multiple times a week. And it didn't make sense to, like, drop him off and come back home. So I was like, okay, this is like an hour and 20 minutes of time that I have got to find a way to fill with grade A reading time, because I want to look forward to it and not dread it. And I don't want to make Jackson feel like this is a chore for me. So I ended up saying, okay, I'm gonna drop him off. And then I found out that really near the practice field there was a P. Terry's, which is a burger place here in Texas that is one of my favorites. And they have this crispy chicken sandwich. It's my favorite. And so I was like, I'm gonna drop him off. I'm gonna go get a pizzeria's crispy chicken sandwich and come back to the parking lot where he is. And I'm gonna sit there and eat my sandwich by myself and I am going to listen to my book or if I want to listen to a book for a half hour while I eat and then switch over to my Kindle reading. But either way, I found that to be incredibly grade A reading time. So it. I created a little ritual for myself so you can think through. Okay, you might not be able to have your perfect, perfect flow state, but where. Where are other places that you could create, like a pretty good stand in for that that maybe you're not doing right now. So something to think about.
- [52:39]
B
And a lot of it is like mental gets tied physical. So if you have a meal that helps you get into that state and you can replicate that, it does. Like, it'll click in your brain in a different way if it's a P. Terry's Crispy Chicken Sandwich. And then your body says, now it's time to read Perfect. You've completed the ritual. Right. Right.
- [52:58]
A
Well, and one of the things I'll tell you, when Jackson was little and our older kids, you know, were younger and still living with us, like when Jackson was tiny, one of the things I did every week on Saturday mornings is I did the grocery shopping. And so I just told Johnny like, hey, grocery shopping takes two and a half hours. It took an hour and a half. And so I would go and I would read. I would get a cup of coffee from Starbucks and I would go park in a parking lot for an hour because at that point I had a baby and, you know, and I just needed a few minutes with no one on me for anything. And then I did the grocery shopping and I came home and Johnny knew that I did that. It wasn't like I was hiding anything, but it was a ritual that now instead of me feeling like, oh, I have to go do the grocery shopping, it was like, ooh, I get to go do the grocery shopping. Which includes this little extra side errand that really fills up my cup. So there's all kinds of ways that you can create a ritualized reading experience that might really add to your joy.
- [53:55]
B
Yes. And be open to it looking a.
- [53:58]
A
Lot of different ways over the course of your life. Absolutely. 100%. So not a bad thing at all to create those. Those rituals. Okay. My wish at the fountain is for. Is also kind of related to our deep dive. If you too love Agatha Christie or I know a lot of you. I'm so grateful for all of you who let me know that you are also reading your way through Perot. The Perot books. There is a podcast called Perot Pals and they deep dive into the big Perot books and they deep dive. It's a deep dive, like a journey to three pints, only into the different Agatha Christie's that feature Hercule and it's really fun. So far they've covered books that I have already read, so I've gotten a chance to dig into them. They are spoiler filled, which they let you know right at the beginning, as all good deep dives are. But if you love Pierrot, it's just, it's fun to hang out with the Pierrot pals. So that's available on any place where you can find your podcasts. 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 meredithmonday Schwartz on Instagram and you can find.
- [55:02]
B
Me Katie at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putam Evans. You can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's Reads Full show notes.
- [55:12]
A
With 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 on our website@currentlyreading.
- [55:21]
B
Podcast.Com you can also follow the show and have so much fun with us over on Instagram @currentlyreading podcast or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com and if you want to.
- [55:32]
A
Join us, if you want so much more of this kind of content, you can join us as a bookish friend. It's only $5 a month and you get tons of great content, tons of great community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also rate and review us on Apple podcasts and shout us out on social media. All of those things help us to find our perfect audience.
- [55:53]
B
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals. Goals.
- [55:59]
A
All right, until next week, may your.
- [56:00]
B
Coffee be hot and your book be unput downable.
- [56:03]
A
Happy reading, Katie.
- [56:05]
B
Happy reading, Meredith.