← The Currently Reading Podcast
The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 7, Episode 25: Reading Resolutions + The Art Of The DNF
01:04:30
On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: reading resolutions and reading while being tattooed 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 you should know we do not shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
- [00:25]
Katie Cobb
We are learning 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.
- [00:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I am still making reading resolutions.
- [00:42]
Katie Cobb
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom. Four living in Arizona. And sometimes stories are what get me through something painful. This is episode number 25 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here.
- [00:54]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, Katie, I am so glad to be here all the time, but especially today because it's been weeks and weeks since I have been on a regular episode just because of scheduling things and end of year stuff. But it feels really good. Like I was. So I have a lot of books I want to talk about.
- [01:10]
Katie Cobb
Yes. This past week you were joking with Megan and I. Be serious, guys. Have I been fired from the show because it's been so long, especially since I got to talk to you? Meredith.
- [01:19]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Did you guys let me go and I just didn't know about it?
- [01:22]
Katie Cobb
Never. We would never.
- [01:24]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
All right, so our deep dive today is a topic that, for whatever reason, I just keep thinking about it. I keep hearing about it everywhere. I wanted to talk a little bit, Katie, with you about DNFing. I feel like this has been a hot topic recently. It always is at the beginning of the year. I have some questions for you and at this point in your reading life, how you feel about. About DNFs.
- [01:47]
Katie Cobb
Yeah. This is like a regular New Year's resolution for me to get better at this.
- [01:51]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. Right. So a lot to unpack around the topic of DNFs. We'll do that in our deep dive. But first, of course, we want to start out the way we always do with our bookish moment of the week. Katie, what is going on in your bookish life this week?
- [02:05]
Katie Cobb
Well, it was something painful, of course, Meredith, because yesterday I got color added to my octopus tattoo. And it turns out so I had never had color added to a tattoo before. And not only is this my biggest one, but color is a whole new experience and it is horrendous.
- [02:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. And your tattoo is very big.
- [02:24]
Katie Cobb
It's very big. It's very Colorful. I was in a lot of pain. She's beautiful. She's a beautiful beastie. She's blue and purple and stripey and pink suckers. But I was so excited to have stories to keep me company. So, physically, I was reading along with Katie in the Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. And that has been excellent, but I couldn't focus on that for very long. I caught up to where we should be, and then I tried to switch to my Kindle. My eyes were glazed over. I needed my eyes closed. So I actually switched to my audiobook, which I'm reading. Empire of sand by Tasha Suri, a big, long, epic fantasy. And that was the perfect thing to kind of sweep me away from the feels in my leg. I was just so happy to have my stories keep me company and kind of wrap me in a warm hug in a time when I really needed that physically.
- [03:17]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Another way that our reading comes alongside us when we really, really need it. I know when I was in labor with Jackson, because, you guys know I'm not a music person. And as labor was getting more and more painful, I definitely was listening to my audio book. But interestingly, I do not remember what audiobook it was, which is testament to how much pain I was in. So, yeah, our stories, it's so nice when they can come alongside us. And I wondered. Cause it was, like, three hours, right?
- [03:50]
Katie Cobb
Yes, it was three hours, and that was two hours previously and then three hours yesterday. And color is, like six needles right next to each other.
- [03:58]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Oh, gosh.
- [03:59]
Katie Cobb
It's just horrible.
- [04:00]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. So I talked a little bit on stories this week about how I have three tattoos. My biggest one is my bookish one. It's certainly not as big as your octopus, and it's not only just black and white line drawing, but it's fine line tattooing, which is really even more specific and apparently even less painful because it's a really, really small needle. So if you're thinking about getting a tattoo, it is possible to do, you know, to do it on the less painful side of things.
- [04:31]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, that's the way to start, for sure. I had a lot of questions in my stories about the process and the pain levels and stuff, and I can testify that starting with something small and fine lined is the way to go to see if you can handle it.
- [04:42]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. Because it really. I mean, my. I think my bookish one took about an hour to finish, but literally, pain. It. It just. It was the equivalent of someone, like, writing on you with a ballpoint pen, like a Kind of sharp, more pressure than anything. And like, at some point you're kind of like, ah, I won't be upset when this sensation is over, but it is never anything I would have described as painful, so. But. But yours is a work of art.
- [05:09]
Katie Cobb
It is. And I'm very, I'm very happy with it. I got to do kind of like show and tell at the studio. When it was done, my artist kind of took me around to all the other, other artists and he was like, do you want to see the finished product? Which was really fun. And today I can barely walk. And that's fine. It'll be done soon. I'll be over it. My body will heal just like it has from all the other weird things I've put it through over the years.
- [05:31]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But it's really, really beautiful. So, yeah, I think you will be very glad that you did it. All right, well, my bookish moment of the week is that, you know, here we are at the end of January as you're listening to this, and for us it's kind of mid January. I am still making reading resolutions, Katie, but I feel like when I say them on the podcast, when I. When I actually or say them to you, like looking at you in, in the face, I am more likely to feel accountable to them. So here are my two that I'm kind of playing with right now or that I feel very sure that I want to incorporate into my reading again. I never do any numbers related thing that. Because that's not important to, to me as a reader. But quality prose matters to me now more than it ever has. You hear this when I talk about books all the time. So one of the things that I thought about was my reading year. Last year was fine, some real standouts, but it wasn't my best reading year. And when I really looked at my reading tracker, I had a lot of books that were falling in the like 3, 7, 5 range, which for me means this is a book that was fine. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. And here's the thing. I think we all have those books. We all are kind of like, you know, it happens. I hate bringing those books to the show because I feel like I am boring on mic when I'm talking about a book that was fine.
- [07:04]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [07:04]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And the le. The last thing I want to do for anybody who gives us the time to listen to our show is to be boring. Right. I'm not trying to, like, overblow things, but I don't But. But me saying it was a thriller, it was fine, is just not what anybody needs. And it's not what I need for my reading life. And the difference maker for me is that happens when I pr. Prioritize plot over prose quality. Now, hear me say I don't need. When I say quality prose. I don't need every book to be written at a Lauren Groff level. That's not what I need in my reading. But I do need it to be written better than I could do it myself. Right.
- [07:47]
Katie Cobb
Preach. Preach.
- [07:48]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And so. And with a lot of thrillers and. And even some mysteries and other kinds of books, too, that's kind of what I'm finding. So I don't want to push through a book because I'm interested in the plot. If the quality of the prose is bad and that's the resolution, stop pushing through books for that reason. The other thing is, I realize, and Roxanne and I have talked a lot about this in the last two calendar years because of a lot of things that have been going on. Not bad things, but just things that have taken a lot of bandwidth. We continue to talk a lot. We. We do a lot of voice messaging, but we haven't been doing as much in the way of buddy reads.
- [08:27]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [08:27]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
And both of us have really felt the loss of that in our reading because we choose different books when we read together, and we get so much more out of those books when we talk about them together. So we just finished our first buddy read of the year. It was no surprise a book that was about nuns, because that's, like, a weird little thing we have together. And we just were like, man would not have read this book alone. And we had so much to say. So that's the other thing. Those books add texture to my reading year in ways that not only give me more, like, memorable reading experiences, but they also, when I have that kind of textured reading experience, then when I go back and read kind of a straightforward mystery, even that has more texture to it.
- [09:21]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [09:22]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
You know what I mean? It's like that back and forth is really what I need more in my reading, rather than a solid midline kind of meh. That's a lot of words about this. But that's where I am right now.
- [09:34]
Katie Cobb
Okay, well, I'm gonna chip in with. Just this morning, I was the same, making random reading resolutions on January 18th. And because Katie and I are reading the Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, which is about 600 pages, we got into talking about how longer stories with well written Prose. It's a thing for this book as well. They are different and they make a difference in my reading life. So it's been five years since I did my 12 Bricks in 20 challenge, where I wanted to read 12 books over 600 pages over the course of that year. And I think I'm gonna do it again this year, starting with this one that we're reading right now. Just trying to prioritize length and substance. That's what she said over, like, quick One Night stand books. Yeah, we're just gonna go with it.
- [10:21]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. I think it's an apt metaphor. Long term, committed relationships are not always on every single day, the most exciting thing that pulls you through to the next day, but way more satisfying in the ways that really matter. So I think it's an apt metaphor. And yeah, but say thinking through, the reason I brought this and brought all these words about this was because, again, Katie, this is the thing that is the. One of the most important parts for you and I of doing our show, which is not just to talk about the books that we're reading, but to really help other readers think through what matters to me, what works for me, and how can I get more of that reader Know thyself. That's why I wanted to. To really kind of put it. Put some time in on this particular thing today.
- [11:11]
Katie Cobb
Yeah. It's not just the books. It's the reading life that we're here for.
- [11:15]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's start talking about those books. Katie, though, what's your first current read?
- [11:21]
Katie Cobb
Okay. My first one is called Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar. So at a bookish friends meetup for my 40th birthday, which was in May, Arizona, bookish friend Jillian gifted me this book. And she said that her kids really enjoyed it and it would make a great read aloud. So I put it on our shelf. I added it to the vote rotation that we do for our next titles, and it came up in November. In this book, Letters from Cuba, Esther starts by writing to her father Abraham, who has fled to Cuba as the situation in Poland for Jews gets steadily worse and worse. He has been in Cuba for a while now and has saved enough money to bring only one child across the Atlantic. Esther lobbies for it to be her. She's the oldest, but she's a girl, so there's a. There's a give and take there. Right. She ends up being successful. And so as she leaves her family, she agrees to share everything that happens to her via letters to her sister. Malka, who is staying behind, which she will share with her whenever they are reunited, no matter how long it takes. This book is based mostly on Esther's time in Cuba and includes each of those letters. It's epistolary, detailing how Esther and Abraham earn a living and work to reunite their family in safety across the Atlantic. The author's note makes it clear that the majority of this story is based on her own grandmother and her immigration story and childhood, which makes it all the more special. I'm going to continue this review with something a little bit different and switch over to let you know what my kids wrote about it in their review. This is how we finish every read aloud. We work on reviewing the book together and they've gotten really good at it. So I actually shared this review with Jillian when when I told her that we had finished this book and here's what the kids said, they called it Missives to Malka this month we read the book Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar. This book was written in an epistolary format, which means every chapter was composed as a letter. The main character is a young Jewish girl named Esther, who immigrated to Cuba to be with her father as the Nazis rose to power in Poland. Their goal is to raise enough money to be able to bring the rest of the family across the ocean to safety. She writes letters to her younger sister Malka over the course of a year, keeping record of their time apart. While living in Cuba, Esther discovers a talent for designing and sewing dresses, which helps them to raise the funds faster than they expected. She also builds connections with the citizens of Agramonte, the small town where they live, and Havana where they sell their goods. The story was special because it's based on Ruth Behar's grandmother, Esther, with many parallels to her real experiences. We loved this story. It was emotional and sometimes sad. We enjoyed the format, the short chapters, the budding friendships, and the resistance to fascism. Even though it's not an old book, it was interesting to see how we could draw parallels between the late 1930s situation in Europe and what is happening in current world affairs. Overall, Our rating was 4.75 stars average and we would definitely recommend it. So that's what the kids put together. We have a lot of fun writing these and I'm really proud of the way that they are able to better articulate their feelings about a book. As I kind of draw it out of them and then put it into sentences that are grammatically sound, we'll say.
- [14:27]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So that's what I was going to Ask you, Katie. And I feel like that's what everyone listening right now.
- [14:33]
Katie Cobb
Your kids actually write like that.
- [14:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Let's pause for just a second because I think this is really interesting because this is. And this is not like a homeschool thing. This is a raising readers thing.
- [14:42]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [14:43]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. So you. So obviously this is all four of your kids that you're reading aloud to. So you're getting feedback from all four of them. And they range from 14 to, to 6 years old. Yeah, So I was going back and forth between six and seven for Annalee. Cause I was like, we're in season seven. But okay, right. So you talk with them and lead them through various questions and sort of take their. Like, how does that, how does that work?
- [15:11]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I open up a document on the computer. Usually I start with Analy because she is going to have kind of the most basic understanding of what happened in the story or what her favorite parts were. And I'll just give her kind of an open ended question. What did you enjoy about this book? Or what was your favorite part of this book? And type out a sentence that encapsulates what she said. So that was learning to design dresses. Right. Because Anali is a girly, girly girl. And then go up to Noah and have him add something to it. Levi was the one that was really obsessed with the epistolary format and he asked what it was called and then he told other people about it as we read. So he wanted to make sure that, that that element was included in the review. So we just go back and forth asking questions. I ask all four of them for their ratings and then I just average them out like Goodreads does. Okay, well if you gave fours and you gave fives, here's our average rating. And I will go up and down in the paragraph too. So if it makes more sense to mention budding friendships after this, I'll put it there. So I'm not just having them dictate to me what they want to write. I'm taking their thoughts and putting them into a paragraph. That being said, their sentences have gotten much better, Much more adept at describing what happened in the book or what they really loved about it. Remembering key points that really affected them in some way. It's just, and this has been over years, we do this every time we finish a read aloud for the last two or three years. I can go back and get all of them.
- [16:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So yeah, yeah, that's. I mean, that's incredible. I absolutely love this. And I love, I mean, I think that is such a useful way to have your kids not only learn reading and then writing about what they're reading and then just writing that will be useful in every single part of their lives, no matter what career they go into. I think. I think that's fantastic. So I'm really. I think it's a wonderful way for you to have shared with us what they thought about what, you know, what you guys all thought about this book.
- [17:11]
Katie Cobb
Yes, it was. It was great for myself. I gave it four and a half stars. I'm grateful to Jillian for leaving me her copy. This was Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar.
- [17:21]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Excellent. That was so fun. So fun. All right. My first book is a book by an author that I am working really hard to become a completist on. I'm only one book away. This. This one I'm going to talk about is Murder Road by Simone St. James. You guys have heard me talk about her. I love Simone St. James. Here's the setup. It's July 1995, and newlyweds. Our main characters are newlyweds. They are April and Eddie, and they are on their way to their honeymoon. They're going to go to this getaway spot in Michigan and they take a wrong turn onto a deserted road. That road is called Atticus Line. They spot a woman hitchhiking, and it's late and it's raining, and so they decide to pick her up. But very quickly, this good Samaritan act quickly turns into something really, really scary when they realize that the woman is bleeding. And there is also a. A truck sort of barreling behind them that seems to almost be chasing them now that they've picked this woman up. So before they know it, April and Eddie find themselves in this small town called Cold Lake Falls. And they've tried to do this positive thing, but they are now prime suspects in a murder investigation that's part of a long string of unexplained deaths that are happening on this eerie stretch of this road called Atticus Line. So April and Eddie are being questioned. They are prime suspects, but they are. They don't have enough to convict them, so they're like to arrest them. So they are able to get out and do some digging of their own to try to clear their names. And they find out from the locals that there is a long history, decades long history of a supernatural presence called the Lost Girl who haunts that stretch of the Atticus Line. The deeper they investigate, the more they realize that things are definitely not right about this town and all the secrets of Atticus Line. All right. This is the latest book from, as I said, one of my favorite authors. It's one of my favorite sub genres, that is ghosty crime fiction. It's a tricky micro genre because when it's done badly, it's so bad, but it's well done. It hits just right for me. And this book, Murder Road, is an interesting one because it hits right in the middle. So there were some things I really, really liked and some things that I didn't like as much. A couple of things that I know are absolutely true. The first one is that I love me some Simone St. James. I love her writing, especially at the sentence level in the crime genre. She's not only easy to read, but her writing packs a punch. That's that quality writing I'm talking about. What I also know is true is that nobody, in my opinion, writes ghosts better than Simone St. James. And she nails that piece in this book once again, in her hands, ghosts are not just there for jump scares or thrills and chills. Her ghosts are there as their own character. They have a backstory, they have a motivation. And ghosts are there to also smartly move the plot along. These things are very well done again in this book. I ended up giving this book a solid four stars. I enjoyed reading it all the way through. I liked the couple that were the lead characters. And there were some things about the setting in this novel, things I won't tell you that were just incredibly well done. But there's a part of me that felt conflicted when I finished it. And so I went to my old strategy of using Cawpile for my reviews. And it turned out for me that it was all about the construction of the plot where I was feeling conflicted. In Simone St James work, this is usually a piece you can count on to be done really well. Her plot lines are very well organized. But in Murder Road, things felt messy. There was quite a lot of fat around the storytelling. First of all, we were repeating over and over again things that just didn't need to be hammered home. I almost felt like a kid who knows they have a certain page count that they have to hit. That's what it felt like here, just a little bit, but enough that I did notice it. And the plot overall just didn't seem sure of itself. Have you ever had that experience where you're like, you want to feel like you can rest easy in the hands of the author and just kind of sit back and relax and enjoy the ride? Usually, again, I feel like that with Simone St. James. But in Murder Road, I kept having the distinct impression that Simone herself didn't know exactly where she was going with the story. It wasn't boring at all. It just felt sloppy. And then by the time I got to the end, I felt like the conclusion was a big letdown. It was kind of the path of least resistance to take, not the path that was best for the story. As I read over my notes preparing for the show, I realized that there were way more question marks in these paragraphs as I write them than there usually are in a book that I've just finished. I think what this says to me is that there were weaknesses in this book that I just don't expect with this author, however. Solid. Four stars. I'm not mad about it, and I will absolutely continue to auto buy anything that Simone St. James writes. But I will always and forever believe that her best book is the Sundown Motel, followed closely by the Haunting of Maddie Claire and the Book of Cold Cases. Each one of those, I think would be a great place to start and a better place to start with than with this one. This one is Murder road by Simone St. James.
- [23:00]
Katie Cobb
Okay, well, I'm glad that I've read at least two of three that you feel are the best of hers.
- [23:05]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes, yes.
- [23:06]
Katie Cobb
Gold star. All right, my second book this week I am going to talk about the Invisible Husband of Frick island by Colleen Oakley. Strangely, this was a second bookish friends swap with my local group. But that's where the similarities end with those two titles. First, let's talk about where this goes in the bookstore. It doesn't fit really anywhere, but we're going to call it contemporary romance, but we're kind of wedging it in to that section. Okay, so here we're going to meet Piper Parish, who lives on Frick Island, a small spit of land in the Chesapeake Bay where cell phones don't work. There's ferry service to the mainland and back once a day, and the Internet can only be accessed via a dial up connection at the local grocery store. Nobody has Internet in their homes. Piper's husband Tom is a crabber. He's a lifelong islander. But right as the story starts, he has recently been declared missing after a storm sank his boat. His body was never recovered. So Piper did something odd. She carried on acting as though Tom were alive right there next to her in bed in the morning, sharing meals with her at the diner and leaving on his boat each morning from the dock. Since the townspeople of Frick island adore Piper, they decide collectively to indulge her delusion. They greet Tom when she's at the diner with him, even though he's not there, in hopes that it will help her move through her grief in a more constructive manner. Anders Caldwell is our other protagonist. He's a journalist and has dreams of being Clark Kent. Not Superman, Clark Kent the journalist, but instead he's employed by a small town daily newspaper and writing fluff pieces about pie contests. That's why he's sent to Frick island to cover the annual cakewalk, the most boring newsbeat he could be on. He's hoping he can find a story that's worth telling on his podcast, which briefly found some success but is now just floundering in the doldrums with less than 200 downloads per episode. When he meets Piper at the diner and she introduces him to her husband Tom, who is clearly nowhere to be seen, he determines this might be the story he's looking for. He angles his way into the community in order to ostensibly do some reporting on climate change and how it will affect the island and all the people who live there, all while getting to know those people who call this tiny island home. This book is romance ish, but as you can tell, it also deals with grief and widowhood in a pretty tender way. And while I was annoyed with Anders for a large chunk of the story, he did grow on me by the end. It just took quite a bit of time to get there after so much overt lying. Also also, not everything needs a podcast. Yeah, the reason it works here is because the lack of technology on the island allows Anders to perpetuate his lie a bit longer. Nobody can download a podcast. There's not good enough Internet to do so. So when it starts gaining traction, they're not hearing about this podcast going viral that focuses on their tiny called what the Frick? But I kind of hated that part. The community here though, reminds me quite a bit of gander Newfoundland in Come From Away, which I loved. Both Piper and Anders have a bit of a found family situation as they navigate their lifelong disappointments, like having dreams that are not being realized. That's the part that I really did love and what led to me giving it four stars. But up until we sealed the deal at the end and Colleen Oakley really turned the story around, I was pretty annoyed with Anders and that part was hard to read. Him trying to like flounder through becoming famous by basically exploiting somebody else's tragedy. So I came out the other side. I did enjoy it by the end, but it took a while to get there. This was the Invisible Husband of Frick island by Colleen Oakley.
- [26:59]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Very interesting. Okay. All right. Well, one of the books I'm going to talk about later has a weird connection to what? To that book that you just. That you talked about. But first, I'm going to talk about a book. And I'm really worried. I'm very worried that I'm going to make a lot of people upset when I talk about this book and how I felt about it, because it's a very. It's. I really am. I am so glad this book is around and out and available to people. It just wasn't for me. Okay, this book is a bit Much by Lindsay Rush. Okay, I'm going to read the author's blurb on this for a very specific reason, because if I had done this before I read it, I would have better been able to guess my feelings about this collection of poetry. Here's what it said at long last, A book of poetry for people who didn't even know they liked poetry, and they're in good company. Author Lindsay Rush didn't know she liked it either. That is, until she embarked on an Internet experiment under the Instagram name Mary Oliver's Drunk Cousin that turned into a body of work that struck a chord with women across the country thanks to her signature wordplay, witticisms and against all odds wisdom with titles like Shedonism, Someone to Eat Chips With. It's Called Maximalism, Babe. And breaking News, Local Woman Gets out of Bed. Rush's debut collection of poetry uses humor to grapple with the female experience. Okay, here are my notes. I have thought for days and days about how I want to talk about this book. This was a book that I read for my morning reading. You guys know I love mixing poetry in, and it was a very interesting part of that mix. And I think it's because I'm doing that morning reading that I have more to say about this book than I would have otherwise. So our beloved Mary Heim brought this book to the show and she loved it so much, and she was so happy when I picked it up. So I had an extra amount of affection for this book because of how much affection I have for Mary. And also there are a lot of things that I. That I did really like about this poetry collection. I loved that the sections are organized by mood, and I think there's a really good reason for that. And I'll touch on that more as I get to the end of my. My thoughts here. I love the fact that the collection exists at all. I love that it came about as Lindsay Rush decided to post her own poetry on Instagram because that's exact where I think it really shines. It's so perfect in that format. I think part of why I struggled was that I read it of a piece as a collection, it's better done kind of one a day, maybe one every time she comes across your Instagram feed because read altogether they felt really repetitive to me. And I think that's why it's divided up by mood so you can dip in and read the kind of poem that is what you need it to be that day. And that is a really useful way to read this work. I also love the specificity of her references and I think that's a part of why it's so well done and it's gained so much of an audience. In one particular poem, one called An Error Message just for you, she references Roomba and Tesla and Florence and the Machine and she gets it all exactly right. This poetry collection is a lot about self love. It's a lot about giving permission to yourself to be sad or joyful, to be a novice, to be free, to be too much. And all of that is so, so good things. I am so behind. This is a book of poetry that I want to hand to my daughter and hand to my niece because it resonates far and wide. There are so many people who will feel seen here, but it is not, at the end of the day, a collection of poetry that resonated with this reader. And that is because this book is so incredibly millennial coded, which is exactly what it sets out to be and it is perfect in that way. And I am not a millennial. I am incredibly Gen X coded. Part of the reason it took me so long to figure out how I wanted to talk about the ways in which this book didn't work for me came from the fact that on the very same day I was thinking about it was the same day that we currently reading received a comment from someone telling us that they were no longer going to not only be a patron of the show, but they were not going to listen to the show anymore because of the fact that they said I quote unquote, hate millennials. And really honestly, that couldn't be further from the truth. My children, my older three are millennials. I have several really good friends, including my podcast partner, who are millennials. I don't hate millennials, I just am not one of them. I was born in 1973 and so Gen X is deep in these bones. And in fact, there's one poem here that perfectly described why this collection doesn't make me feel seen. And it's one of my favorite poems in the collection. It's called Abs of Buns of Cinnamon. Lindsay Rush says that's the real title of a book collection of Kathy cartoons. The artist behind them, Kathy Lee Geisweit, said that her work centers around what she called the four basic guilt groups of a woman's life, food, love, family, and work. Lindsay Rush goes on to say, I'm not sure if Kathy the writer was lampooning or normalizing this distinctly feminine shame, but I know there's big money in the business of convincing women that we are always failing at something ack on us, that we'd put something as grave as that in the funny papers. That's an actual poem from the collection. And that's it for me. I grew up with a Kathy cartoon view of the world. I grew up thinking that I need to feel guilty at least a little bit. I grew up thinking that work is a really important part of my life, that there are parts of my life that are work so that I can enjoy the parts of my life that are not. I have to give in order to get this collection helped me figure out why it's so difficult for me to understand the millennial brain. Because in my brain I don't want to have permission to love or have fun or be joyful in every moment of my life. That doesn't feel right to me. I have to have some hard things, some work things, some crap things in order to enjoy the good things, the joyful things, the fun things. This is not about right or wrong. It's just about the fact that this is a collection that is perfect for millennial women to feel seen. And I'm so glad that it exists. I will recommend it highly. I just am still looking for the collection that makes this Gen X woman feel equally seen. This is a Bit Much by Lindsay.
- [33:49]
Katie Cobb
Resch well, I want to briefly address the fact that as a millennial, you have never made me feel less than or like my experience or life doesn't matter or that it's not good enough in any way. So while I saw that comment come through as well, I dismissed it out of hand. Knowing Meredith, knowing you on a person to person level, I know how much you adore especially the women in your life who are of the generation below you, how you buoy us and lift us up and encourage us. And I am part of that, and it's half of where my confidence comes from today is from you. Not as my mom, but as my partner. And so I love you for that.
- [34:35]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Well, thank you for saying that, because how stupid would it be for me to hate an entire generation of people? That's just absolutely ridiculous.
- [34:43]
Katie Cobb
Like, our whole team at currently reading. I think maybe only you and Roxanna are not millennials.
- [34:47]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. Exactly.
- [34:49]
Katie Cobb
It doesn't even make sense.
- [34:50]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right.
- [34:51]
Katie Cobb
And I'm guessing there's probably a similar generational distribution at Here Comes the Guide. Like, you spend a lot of your time just being annoyed by 95% of the people that you spend your time with.
- [35:03]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Exactly. Including 75% of my children. Exactly.
- [35:09]
Katie Cobb
Exactly. So that comment to me was a bit much. But this poetry collection also doesn't feel like quite the right fit for me. Although most poetry collections are not. But I think somebody else will find it perfect for them. Including our Mary.
- [35:24]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Exactly. It's. It's exactly what it should be. And I'm so glad that I spent some time with it, and I still really am, because I don't feel like Mary Oliver is the. The poet of our generation. You guys know I love Mary Oliver. There's gotta be help. Help me, listeners. Help me find kind of what I'm the Gen X Mary Oliver because it's so awesome that the millennial Mary Oliver exists, too.
- [35:50]
Katie Cobb
Have you read Kate Bear?
- [35:52]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
No, I haven't. I've heard of Kate Bear, but I haven't. Maybe that's a good idea.
- [35:57]
Katie Cobb
Trying to figure out how old she is right now. Oh, she's younger than me. Just kidding.
- [36:01]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay, I'm looking as well. Yeah, I'm looking. Which doesn't mean that her poetry's not fantastic at all.
- [36:08]
Katie Cobb
But I identify with it a lot, which makes sense.
- [36:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right? Yeah.
- [36:12]
Katie Cobb
There's gonna be somebody in there, and I. You know what? Our listeners are very smart, and they will be able to find that person.
- [36:17]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
That's really. Honestly, I believe that completely. And I'm hoping that's true, because I really am getting quite into poetry as a part of my morning reading. I'm feeling it really is adding that texture that I keep talking about. All right, what's your. What's your next book, Katie?
- [36:32]
Katie Cobb
Okay. My third book is short, so my setup for it is going to be short. I read Orbital by Samantha Harvey. So I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not someone who runs out to read Booker Prize winners every year. I went back and looked because I was like, is that true? Katie yes, it is. I've only read seven of them and it's been a prize for 56 years now, so I feel like, you know, a little more than 10%. That's probably a good number. And I didn't know any of the rest of them were Book Booker Prize winners. I just saw them on the list after the fact. But that is how this book found me. I think it was partially the COVID which is very beautiful.
- [37:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah.
- [37:12]
Katie Cobb
But also I've found that liz hein@lizisreading and I have a very small but specific overlap and I can count on anything within that overlap being a pretty good pick for me. It's kinda weird, kinda quiet, kinda sciency books. Anything that can be described by those three kindas is gonna work for me. And this is one of those Orbital takes place on a space station orbiting the Earth over the course of a single Earth day, which is the same as 16 sunrises and sunsets on the spaceship because it takes 90 minutes to go around the planet. There are six astronauts on this spaceship, each with their own stories, of course. And this is a book about nothing like a lot of literary fiction feels to me. But after reading Packing for Mars by Mary Roach last year, this was a really wonderful way to see all of that knowledge from a fiction point of view. It was a bit meditative with the repetitive nature of the days and nights, but pivoting from one point of view to the next was really great for me. I read two excellent and short reviews that are opposite each other. The first was zero stars and said I have no idea why the author needs this many words to say nothing. My goodness, what a pretentious bore this book is. The second was five stars and said beautiful. More poetry than novel really. Nothing happens. Just people living mundane but profoundly significant lives. I found it gentle and relaxing to read. Loved the bits about history of the universe and Earth. I think that mundane but profoundly significant lives is the distillation of why I really enjoyed this book. Because aren't we all living mundane and profoundly significant lives, at least to ourselves? So I feel like any reader might fall on either end of that spectrum. The zero stars review to the five stars review for this reader. It was really lovely and at only 207 pages there's basically no reason not to try it. You can read 20 pages and you've already finished 10% of the book. Like just give it a try and see if you are interested in mundane but profoundly significant lives. Sixteen sunrises and sunsets in a single day. This was Orbital By Samantha Harvey.
- [39:33]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I've heard about that book a lot of places. I didn't realize it was that short.
- [39:36]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, it's just a wee little thing.
- [39:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
By the way, related but unrelated. Did you read the Safekeep?
- [39:43]
Katie Cobb
Not yet. It's still on my to be read shelf.
- [39:46]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. Yeah, that's. That's another booker that I think will be. When you're ready for it. It may be far in the future because there's been kind of a lot of Hula Hula blue about it. That will be one that I think you will also really like.
- [39:59]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [40:00]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
All right. I know I have one more book. Yes, I do. Okay.
- [40:04]
Katie Cobb
This is a book again, exciting. If all of a sudden it was like, Just kidding. I only brought two.
- [40:09]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I only brought two today. Sometimes it's gonna be three, sometimes it's gonna be two. No, today it's three. And this is another book by a. An author I am a completist of. And it is her newest work. It is Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney. Have you read this yet, Katie?
- [40:25]
Katie Cobb
I have only read, I think maybe one Alice Feeny.
- [40:29]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. She's one of my. She's sort of like a Riley Sager for me. Although I have more luck more consistently with Alice Feeny. But she comes out with one every year. And I'm always going to read it, I think, with one exception. But this is Beautiful Ugly. So our lead character in Beautiful Ugly is author Grady Green. And he is having what you definitely would call a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. His wife Abby has vanished. His writing career after that happened, is in complete shambles. And he basically is living on coffee and anxiety.
- [41:02]
Katie Cobb
Same, right?
- [41:03]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Exactly. When his literary agent, who's really trying to, like, she really needs to get him out of his slump, when his literary agent suggests a remote writing retreat, like a place where he can go right on the Scottish island of Amberley, it seems like the perfect escape and the perfect way to get him to focus. It's perfect, by the way, if your idea of perfection is being trapped on a tiny island with 25 eccentric locals. Unreliable phone service. The only phone is in the grocery store.
- [41:34]
Katie Cobb
No way.
- [41:34]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. And absolutely nowhere to run. But here's where things get deliciously twisty in a way that Alice Feeney does really, singularly well. Our boy Grady starts seeing women who look exactly like his missing wife. And he discovers that this quaint little island has some seriously dark secrets. And he can't shake the feeling that somebody is watching him, maybe going into the house that he's staying in and moving things around, which is one of my catnip tropes. The only companion that he can trust is his dog, Columbo. And honestly, even that's questionable at this point. Okay, Alice Feeney, this latest one is this really, really great example of Locked island suspense. We're getting a lot of this. Like, we kind of had the closed room stuff come back. Now everything is becoming this, like, locked, you know, place. Like, you're in a place that. That is just a few people are there. Locked island, specifically Scottish island, also has become a thing. So, like, we're getting more and more micro. This one is done really well. I went back and forth as to how I wanted to categorize it, but I think Alice Feeney did, too, as she was writing it, because it seems like she didn't know exactly what genre she wanted her latest book to be in. So she just kind of decided to mix it up. And in this case, that was a good thing. This book has all the things in it that I love about an Alice Feeny novel. It's got, of course, this great Scottish island setting. I've read a few that have taken place on Scottish islands recently, and this book is extraordinarily evocative. I feel like Alice Feeney does her settings really, really well, and she uses them expertly to play into her plotline. This book also has a great kind of large cast of characters, all of whom we don't know if we can fully trust, but every one of them we want to know more about, and that is a trick. This book also has multiple points of view, something that is a trademark of Alice Feeney's writing. And I think that is also done to great effect here. She plays with this construct in an interesting way in the novel. The one thing that I would say about this book that kept it from being higher than four and a half stars for me was that it had a slightly mushy middle. There's no question for about 25% smack in the middle of the book. We're kind of huddling over the same territory over and over again. But it definitely got through that and it was worth reading till the end. And the ending itself was, I think, really satisfying and very clever. I think she's trying to say a lot of things in this book which I can't talk about because that would be spoilery. But suffice it to say, I am down with the message that she's giving. As with a lot of her novels, we also are getting little bits of news stories or island folklore, different cases and situations that weave together in a really satisfying way and are interesting on their own. And that's a part of her writing that I really love. And I will say this one had an extraordinarily good audio production. It has multiple narrators, including the fantastic Richard Armitage as the main narrator. And it has little bits of audio ambient production, like the click of a walkie talkie or the ringing of church bells. It's not overly done, it's not theatrical, but it's very much something that added to my enjoyment of the story. So I would highly recommend doing it that way if those things are enjoyable for you. If you have enjoyed any of Alice Feeny's books before, especially my favorite, which is his and hers and Daisy Darker, then I think you are going to want to pick this one up. This is beautiful. Ugly by Alice Feeney.
- [45:12]
Katie Cobb
Okay. That remote Scottish island with things moving on their own and a dog that might not even be trustworthy. I don't know. That might be where I draw the line.
- [45:21]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I know. Well, really, that was more. I was making more of a joke there because Columbo's a great character.
- [45:26]
Katie Cobb
We love.
- [45:26]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
We love.
- [45:27]
Katie Cobb
Columbus is safe the whole way through.
- [45:28]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Columbo is safe. Yes.
- [45:30]
Katie Cobb
We gotta know. Yeah, absolutely. Keep those doggies safe.
- [45:32]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Absolutely. All right. We're gonna do a deep dive on the concept of. Well, we're gonna do a conversation around the concept of DNFs, because, like I said, I feel like it comes up a lot at the beginning of the year as we all are taking stock of our reading lives. And I feel like it gets talked about a lot in a lot of different forums, and it gets talked about on different podcasts. And part of the reason what I wanted to talk about it was because it's a topic that is endlessly interesting to me. I do think it has a serious. If you know yourself as a reader and can use DNFs properly, it can very much add to your. Your reading year because you're not wasting time on books that aren't going to do anything for you. But I feel like there are a lot of ways we define what is a dnf, when to dnf that. I was listening to a particular podcast where I was literally. Johnny was like, who are you talking to in there? I was like, oh, I was just. I mean, I know the person in real life, so I could say these things to her, but I was, in fact, talking to the podcast and disagreeing with some of the definitions of Things. So, Katie, generally, how do you feel about DNFs?
- [46:41]
Katie Cobb
I love them and that's why I want to be better at them than I am.
- [46:47]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. Do you feel like you get.
- [46:49]
Katie Cobb
You.
- [46:49]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
You don't do it quick enough?
- [46:50]
Katie Cobb
I feel like I stick with books that are not working for me longer than I should. Okay. But I also feel like I've gotten better at choosing books that will work for me, so I don't necessarily have to DNF as often. Like, I. I have very few books from last year that I'm like, I should have DNF'd this. It's, you know, maybe the two. The top two hated ones that I had that we talked about on that Patreon exclusive episode. But otherwise, mostly I feel like they were a good fit for me. So that's okay. Right?
- [47:23]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right there is. I mean, that's the thing about DNFs, right? Is like that moment, what is the decision maker? Because we have all had the experience where we've pushed through some slowness or some hesitation and there's been a really big payoff.
- [47:39]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [47:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. And that is the thing that. That makes it difficult. I. So let me start kind of a little bit on a more general level. One thing that I find there to be a big disparity on is the topic of what is a dnf? What is, how far in does it qualify as a dnf? I was listening to someone talk and they were saying, you know, I really only got a couple pages in and decided to dnf. And I was like, that's not a dnf. You simply tried it and decided it wasn't right for you at that moment or maybe ever. But I feel strongly that a couple pages in is not a dnf. Like, where do you land on that, Katie?
- [48:22]
Katie Cobb
I absolutely agree. I have to be into it enough that I think I'm going to keep reading. And therefore I have gone to storygraph and marked it as currently reading. Okay.
- [48:33]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yes.
- [48:34]
Katie Cobb
Can take 10 to 20% before I even say, okay, this is one I'm interested in continuing.
- [48:41]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right. I'm like, where you kind of tell yourself, I'm reading this book.
- [48:44]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, exactly. And I've taken it with me and said, I'm going to keep going with this somewhere. So that, I mean, so when we sample read for the Indie press list, we're usually reading 10 to 20%. Even if I don't continue one of those books, I never count that as a dnf because I never committed to it. And marked it as currently reading somewhere.
- [49:04]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right, right.
- [49:05]
Katie Cobb
Which is a different thing.
- [49:07]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Exactly. And so some people will talk about how they have, like, really high numbers, you know, a really high DNF percentage, but then they're counting, getting 5 pages or 2% into a book and calling that a DNF. And I'm like, no, but actually you're just really good at. Try at. At sampling. And then. Right. Which is a skill. And I think people need to get better at being more profligate in how much they sample. I think sampling is really, really important. And I think knowing when a sample isn't working for you, again, maybe ever. But again, maybe just right now, that's a skill. But that, to me, is not a part of the DNF conversation.
- [49:48]
Katie Cobb
Right, I agree. So when does it count for you, Mary?
- [49:51]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Well, and so then, because there's this, because people are loudly conflating these two things, I think it makes the DNF conversation harder for people. Right. Because. So that's part of the reason why I'm getting so activated around this. Like, let's call a sample a sample. It's lower stakes. We can do it with reckless abandon. Because that doesn't at all mean a sample. I call it oftentimes I'll say an nrn A. Not right now, as opposed to a dnf. Because so many times when I get a big stack of books, even books that I have purchased for myself, I will be like, okay, I'm ready to pick up my next book, and I will sample four or five and pick up the one that really calls to me. That doesn't mean I DNF'd the other four. That just means it didn't win in that round of samples. Oh, Katie. I'm very, very activated around this topic because there really is an issue of DNFing. Like, that really is. And I think you just solved a big problem for me. I think you just offered a really useful definition that we can all adopt for our own selves. That doesn't depend. Like, some people will say, do you have a page, a number of pages? And for me, I often will say, yeah, my number of Pages, loosely, about 50. When again, I'm not talking about a sample. That's not a sample. This is. I have committed to reading the book. But if I get. If I'm. I'm like, yeah, this is really interesting. If I get to 50% or if I get to 50 pages or about 10% of the book, and my insides are screaming, this is not working for Me, I kind of don't want to pick it up. I put. I set it down, but I don't want to pick it up. That is a dnf. Or maybe. Maybe it's a dnf because maybe I've just decided I've now read enough to know the style isn't working for me or the topic makes me feel icky. And so maybe that's a. I'm gonna DNF it with prejudice. And I'm gonna say, that's not for me going forward. And in Goodreads, I put that on a shelf that I have that's called DNF with Prejudice. So that I will remember. Okay. I really probably thought that will almost never work for me. I never say never, but likelihood is, then I have another shelf that is in our in, which meant, please revisit these books because there was something in them that made you know, you're likely to want to read this at some point. It's just not right now.
- [52:36]
Katie Cobb
Yeah. And what is a DNF without prejudice? Because the people need to know.
- [52:40]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
A DNF without prejudice is an in. Our in.
- [52:45]
Katie Cobb
Okay. Yeah, that's different for me.
- [52:46]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay.
- [52:47]
Katie Cobb
So not right now means I me as myself, as a reader, I think eventually I will like this book. It's just not for me right now. This current version of me, A DNF without prejudice is. This book is not for me, but it is for other people. Whereas with prejudice for me is, I don't like this book and I don't. I don't want to hear about anybody else liking it. So I just wish to not ever think about it again. Like, those are very different things. Okay. Like, I'm prejudiced against that book.
- [53:19]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Okay. So. So I think it's useful for. Right. Whether you use Goodreads to shelve it or you are. Are keeping track of it in the reading tracker, or you're just keeping track of things in your own mind. I think it's useful for us to say, okay, what is a dnf? A DNF is a book that I've committed to reading that at some point starts to feel not right for me ever. Or right now. And I'm going to decide to not read it right now. And then maybe there are some categories you could put that DNF into. Right. I put them into two categories. It sounds like you have three categories. Each reader can decide on those on their own. But it's useful to know what those categories are.
- [54:05]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [54:06]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Because then that helps you decide. Okay. If I so NRN gives me so much freedom because then I don't have a feeling of, well, if not now, this book is going to disappear forever from my. You know. And I firmly believe two things about this that make me more able to set books down. Number one, if a book is supposed to find you, it will find you. You cannot lose a book that is going to be a lifetime favorite. I believe strongly in bookish serendipity in that way. So just like you can't miss out on a relationship or a job or something that is supposed to find you, it's going to find you. So secondly, I know from having spoken to a lot of authors at this point that they say, if you are reading my book and it's not working for you in any way, shape or form, please set it down rather than pushing it through. Because if you push through and it doesn't work for you, it never has the opportunity to be the right book at the right time. So when I think about it in terms of I'm doing the author a disservice if I don't set down a book that's not working for me, that makes it easier.
- [55:23]
Katie Cobb
Yes, I agree. And for people who especially are recovering people pleasers, that is a really important distinction to make that the author is not like, read my book no matter what. They want their books to find the right people at the right time as well.
- [55:38]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Here's one question that I have. Do you find that you DNF more in a single format than in other formats?
- [55:45]
Katie Cobb
I am more likely to DNF in print, and I have a theory about why that works. So the. The most likely reason for me to decide to actually DNF a book, I've marked it as currently reading, I'm committed to reading it, and then I have decided to DNF it is because when I look at it, it elicits a sense of dread, like, ugh, I have to do that.
- [56:11]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
The pit of your stomach feeling.
- [56:13]
Katie Cobb
And I see the books in print more often because they are physical objects in my house. So I am more likely to DNF a print book because it will visually catch my eye. And I can feel that feeling in a different way than if it's on my Kindle. Yeah. Even though Kindle books take me forever to read. And really I should be dnfing those a lot faster because usually they're galleys and sometimes they're terrible.
- [56:40]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Right, right. Well. And I tend to DNF a lot more and allow myself. Now, this is part of, you know, one thing I want to change, allowing myself to DNF a lot more on audio. Now I use, I use three different audio sources for my books and, you know, librefm primarily audible. And then Spotify has gotten into my, my rotation and I do. I have widgets for each one of those on my phone. And so I see the copy, so I see the visual as I'm in my phone. And it will have that same effect on me, that same like. And if I start having that feeling, I'm just committing to switching and that's more the way, you know, because I've realized that audiobooks, something about the book has to land with me even more specifically than books on my Kindle or in print for it to feel good to me. And I don't know if it's that sound aspect, I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm fussier about it and more likely for it not to work for me. So I'm, I'm saying to myself, if it's more likely not to work for me on audio, then that needs to be the format that I DNF quickest.
- [57:54]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I like that. For audio, I am most likely to DNF if I've hit that 20% mark. I, I'm at currently reading status and I realize I don't care who the characters are or what's happening. Like, I look at it and I'm all, why am I reading this? It's not necessarily with audio, a sense of dread. Although what I will do is if I have a physical copy of that book, I will leave it out even if I'm listening to it on audio so that I can kick that belly feeling into existence if that needs to happen, you know, like make a visual reminder somewhere else. Yeah, I like the widget idea though.
- [58:32]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah, widgets are really helpful for that. And they also are just helpful because you can just stop and start just right from the widget.
- [58:38]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [58:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
So it's. Yeah, I find that to be really useful. Okay, so hopefully this discussion has been. Has at least given people some things to consider, some things to think about for you in your reading. Are you an expert DNFER or not right now, or is that something that you do quickly and well and you feel really good about that? We want to hear about that. What are your tips and tricks? What are your kind of milestones that help? You know, I'm going to DNF because there are some people who really do that quite well. So we want to hear about that if you really struggle with it. We want to hear about where are those pain points? I think. I mean, we know not. I think we know this is something that every reader deals with.
- [59:23]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, definitely. And I'm interested if anybody listened to this conversation and rethought how they even define a dnf. Yeah, like, what does that actually mean? In my reading life, am I dnfing a lot or am I just a sampler? And I'm really good at that. And that's great, right?
- [59:39]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Yeah. I mean, this conversation is. Has helped me realize that I sample I not right now. And I dnf. I do all three of those things in different situations. So using all of those tools in the toolbox, I think is really. Is really useful. All right, Katie, let's make a wish at the fountain. In addition to the wish that people would understand the difference between a sample and a dnf, what else do you wish?
- [60:05]
Katie Cobb
Okay, this one is something y'all can do for me. So this is now an annual tradition. I wish to hang out with attendees at the Tucson Festival of Books in March. I am thrilled to say that I will be spending the weekend in Tucson again this March for the Tucson Festival of Books. We will have a currently reading listener dinner together on the evening of March 15th. And if you are listening and you will be in Tucson, I would love to include you. You don't even have to be a patron. Just send us either an email@currentlyreading podcastmail.com or contact me directly on social media, not the podcast account, because then Betsy has to find them and forward them to me. Send it directly to me and I'll add you to my email update list and you'll get details about when we're meeting up. And sometimes we coordinate. Oh, we're all going to this author event. The Tucson Festival of Books is a free event. You don't have to pay to be there. It takes place at the University of Arizona, which is my alma mater. So it has a special place in my heart. It includes about 450 authors spread over hundreds of events. Really wonderful time with more than 100,000 other readers. It's also perfect weather. Tucson in March is perfect weather. I cannot guarantee that it won't rain, but I would put it right now in January at like a 99% chance of being sunny and gorgeous. I can't wait to go to signings at events again this year. Meet you all in person. Please come to the Tucson Festival of Books and let me know if you're going to be there. Pink Splash.
- [61:35]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
I love it. Okay, excellent. All right. I want to say I found an app that or it was recommended by a bookish friend that I really, really love. It is called the Agatha Christie Reading List app. It works on desktop and on mobile. It has synopses of all of her books. It has some salient information about all of the books and it has a dead simple way of keeping track which ones you've. You've read, which ones you've purchased and are waiting for you to read. You can, you can. It has a check, you know, a checkbox feature for those things. It also gives you the ability to get some good, you know, little nuggets of history. It helps you remember what each book is about and you can filter by detective. So it's really useful. It's really well done. It's just simple. It just is an app that works and I love it. Katie, you also were so kind to create a similar checklist in my reading tracker that that was bespoke for me, which I really, really appreciate. I can't tell you how much I love checking off. I now have three places where every time I read an Agatha Christie, I check it off and I could have 10 more and it would make me happy. So I love it. I love it so much. So this is the Agatha Christie Reading List app and if you are trying to make your way through her works like I am, you will find it.
- [63:02]
Katie Cobb
Really, really easy and so satisfying to be able to check those things off. I love it.
- [63:07]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Very satisfying. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me I'm Meredith, Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram and you can.
- [63:17]
Katie Cobb
Find me, Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putamong Evans and you can find her on Instagram at most of megansreads full show notes with the.
- [63:29]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
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.
- [63:40]
Katie Cobb
Can also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com and if you want more of.
- [63:48]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
This content, you can join us as a bookish friend for $5 a month. You get a ton of content, a ton of community, and you keep the big show, the one you're listening to now, commercial free. You also can rate and review us on Apple podcasts and shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect aud audience.
- [64:08]
Katie Cobb
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [64:14]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
All right, until next week, may your.
- [64:16]
Katie Cobb
Coffee be hot and your book be unput downable.
- [64:19]
Meredith Monday Schwartz
Happy reading, Katie Happy reading.
- [64:21]
Katie Cobb
Meredith.