← The Currently Reading Podcast
The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 7, Episode 27: Booktube + Finishing A Book Well
00:52:00
On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: booktube and libraries enabling our hobbies Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately Deep Dive: how to...
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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.
- [00:24]
B
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit the fountain.
- [00:34]
A
I'm Meredith Mundy Schwartz, a mom of four and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I am still finding new ways to get book recommendations.
- [00:43]
B
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And the library is bringing me inspiration in spades. This is episode number 27 of season seven and we are so glad you're here. So many sevens.
- [00:56]
A
Yes, for sure. And Katie, I am all about my library these days. I am just book after book after book is coming to me because of that ability to use my library. It's just the best thing for my reading.
- [01:09]
B
Reinvigorated. We love that.
- [01:11]
A
Yeah, for sure. All right, we are going to talk today in our deep dive about how to finish a book. Well, we've had a conversation about how to start a book. Well. Well, now we're going to talk about what we do when we finish a book and what we think you should be doing too. And, and we're going to have an announcement of an interesting new thing that we're going to be doing to help you out. But before we do that, we are going to talk about our bookish moment of the week. Katie, what have you got this week?
- [01:39]
B
All right, Meredith, lately the library has just been enabling me in a lot of ways. Thankfully, it is saving me tons of money, which is why we love the library. Right. I love looking for crochet patterns online because I'm not an animal. Right. Every hooker loves being online looking for crochet patterns. I love that crocheters are called hookers. So I will be working as often as possible.
- [02:03]
A
Yep.
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B
But there's something about sitting down with a beautiful printed book with color photos and getting a feel for a project. That way you can see how long a pattern is, how many pages it takes up if you have a printed one in front of you. So I will check out pretty much any crochet book I can get from Amigurumi, when you make little creatures or animals like Woobles. Right. To home decor to stick wearable things. I'll check out stuff on a theme like outlander crochet or Harry Potter crochet or modern crochet. This is just like when we encourage y'all to go check out cookbooks before you buy them. So, you know if you're actually going to cook from it or a gardening book to see if it has good ideas for how you want to redo your backyard or whatever it is. This is just another fun reminder that no matter what you're into, you can always find ways to deepen or broaden that knowledge for free in the shelves of your library. Home repair, gardening, arts and crafts, you betcha. It's all over there. And I am so grateful for the many people that love crochet so that the library collections are robust. And I always have something new to find there.
- [03:09]
A
Yes, that is a very good use for the library. Is to get. Is to get. For me, it's knitting for you crochet, you know, because those books are really expensive. So, yeah, you want to be sure that it's going to be a good investment. And, you know, I love a good coffee table book or a good, you know, that the library is a great place to just go over there and be like, every time I go to the library, I'm just gonna get one of these, like, books that I wouldn't normally buy for myself, but that I would look at a bookstore and be like, ooh, that looks like a fun thing to spend some time with. I forget about that section sometimes, Katie. That's a good use for the library.
- [03:43]
B
Yeah. And it's fun to just walk the shelves. You don't even have to have an idea of what you want. You can just look through it and decide. It's so fun.
- [03:50]
A
Absolutely. All right. My bookish moment of the week is that we got a recommendation in the Bookish Friends Facebook group for our Patreon subscribers. Mandy Cool is one of our fantastic Bookish friends. And she posted a link to a YouTuber, a BookTuber, who was at Meg with books. That's the YouTube channel. And she was doing. She did like a. A year. What she called a year of recs, Year of recommendations. So every month of last year, 2024, she read a certain number of books from different recommendation sources. So, like, one month was another booktuber. One month was Bookstagram, One month was Friends and Family. One month was her own, like, where she chose her own books. And so she did 12 of these. And her final win of the year was she went and sat down with. She's in England and she sat down with a book. Bookshop a bookseller from a bookshelf called Mr. B's. And she sat down and I guess at this bookshop, anyone can do this, where you go in and you have like a half hour of conversation with the bookseller. They ask you all of these questions and then they go, you know, you kind of like keep yourself busy for a half hour and then they come back and they present you with an entire stack of physical books and then they kind of tell. Tell you why they think this might be a good fit for you. So it was a fun, fascinating hour and 20 minute booktube video. I watched it like it was a freaking movie. I was so into the entire time. It's really. Yeah, it was really well produced. I actually ended up subscribing to the channel and then watching a few other of her episodes from the Year of Rex. It was interesting to see which month she went back. So she. She gets the recommendations from the source and then she reads three of them. Like chooses three, and then she reads them and then she comes back in the same video and tells you what she ended up rating those books and what she thought about them. And it was just a very. It was like, I was like, why isn't this on T? Like, why isn't Netflix doing this? I'm so into it. Well, the fact is it's on BookTube, so I love this channel. I'm totally into it. This is Meg with books on YouTube. Thank you, Mandy, for the recommendation.
- [06:07]
B
So good. So that was the one where you commented. Is she my book twin? Right.
- [06:12]
A
Yes.
- [06:12]
B
Okay.
- [06:13]
A
Yes.
- [06:13]
B
Just making sure I'm remembering that same post. Perfect.
- [06:15]
A
Yes. And it turns out that we. Yes, I got a. From her, like, stack that she got from Mr. B's that were. There were several works of, like, British crime fiction that I had never heard of before.
- [06:26]
B
So sweet spot, as we know, madly.
- [06:29]
A
Making orders at Blackwell's.
- [06:30]
B
Right? Yay. Free shipping.
- [06:32]
A
Yeah, exactly. All right, Katie, let's talk about our current reads. What are you reading right now or what have you recently read?
- [06:39]
B
Well, this wasn't even that recent, but it kind of goes with a theme lately. I'm going to talk about all along youg Were Blooming by Morgan Harper Nichols. This is a poetry collection written by a millennial poet that you can find on social media, Meredith. But I think it's worth highlighting, especially during Black History Month for sure.
- [06:57]
A
And I actually really, really like this poet.
- [06:59]
B
Morgan Harper Nichols is also an artist, a graphic visual artist, and makes some really stunning artwork. This collection, this little book all along youg Were Blooming is printed in full color and includes one page and two page spreads of illustrations and lovely poetry and some prose. The artist, the author, the poet Morgan has a whole vibe of beautiful images paired with inspiring words that are filled with grace. She's not the kind of poet that critiques the world as it is or asks us to step into our power as women, but rather imagines the world as it could be. All along you Were Blooming would make an excellent gift book for any number of holidays, but especially Galentine's day, which is February 13th. It's coming up right after this episode. Errors, not errors. I read it last year with two of my favorite girlfriends and there were days when we just sent images of the poems we were reading that day and said this one is just for you. Like little love notes to each other. It made it extra meaningful to share that collection that way. I absolutely think there's a time for feminist rage poetry and I am for it. I love feminine feminist rage poetry and maybe that time is now, but this is more like getting a bouquet of flowers placed lovingly on your dining room table. It is full of kindness and grace. It does have a few Christian undertones to it, which is worth knowing if it's going to bother you as a reader or as a gift giver. So I did love this one, but I'm also not a regular poetry reader. As in it's not a real developed habit of mine. I would like it to be, but when I try to make myself read more poetry, it doesn't work out that great for me. If you want to try poetry though, this is a great entry point. Easy accessibility, really giftable, lovely to hold, lovely to read. This is all along you were Blooming by Morgan Harper Nichols.
- [08:46]
A
Yes, as I said, I'm a. I've been following her for a long time. Really, really love her Instagram account for sure.
- [08:53]
B
What's your first book, Meredith?
- [08:55]
A
My first book I have been saving for almost a year because I really loved it but I wanted to bring it exactly the right time. This is a book called Oscar wars by Michael Shulman. The tagline is a history of Hollywood in gold, sweat and tears. So in Oscar wars this is non fiction. Michael Shulman goes into the history of our little golden man and the conflicts that he has been creating going back to the very beginning of the Oscar of the Academy awards back in 1929. So Schulman pulls back the COVID on the behind the scenes going on as Hollywood, you know, big power players, both producers Directors, actors, all the behind the scenes people as they have their fight and their all the things that go into the movies that we know as Oscar nominated movies and talent and also the actual telecast itself. Some of this history you already know, like we all know about the big debacle between moonlight and La La Land, the, the Academy Awards. Many of the stories in this book had never been heard before and it's all very juicy. All right. One of the favorite things that Johnny and I do every January, February and March is we wait till Oscar nominations come out and we watch as many of the best picture nominated movies as we can. We've always loved to watch the Oscars and since I was little, I've actually really loved them. So the idea of how the business and the fashion and the pop culture and all of that comes together in one evening is like catnip for me. And of course, actually one of the things I learned about and when I read this book was how much campaigning there is that happens behind the scenes and that that campaigning is both expensive and full of drama. So I was delighted when I was listening to a podcast that actually had Michael Shulman, the author, on. And I knew immediately that if there's a book entirely dedicated to everything about the Oscars, I was going to read it. It's very well researched. It goes, like I said, way back into old Hollywood, giving you insight into how these things happened from the very beginning. And it gets into some of the biggest, juiciest controversies and spectacles of the Oscars over the years. They talk about those horrible Oscars which were the 1989 show, like it's known as the worst award show ever and how all of that came together. And Michael Schuman also has an amazing chapter on Harvey Weinstein and how Miramax and DreamWorks went head to head with Shakespeare, in love with Saving Private Ryan. I had no idea about all the behind the scenes fighting. There's also a very interesting chapter on how race has come to play over the history of giving the Oscar awards out. But my favorite chapter is the one that focused on that award show from 2017, that famous year where moonlight and La La Land went head to head and La La Land was announced as the winner. And then live on stage, we all realized that Warren Beatty had gotten it wrong and that it was moonlight who had actually won the best Picture Oscar. In this chapter, we find out exactly how all of that happened. To say I was riveted is an understatement. So if you like movies and you like the Oscars and you look forward to them every year, like I do. You also love to know the behind the scenes. Then I think you will love this. This is Oscar wars by Michael Shulman.
- [12:33]
B
Okay, I'm interested. I feel like I would really like this. Also, I would like a companion book that's like, Book wars. And it could be about Goodreads, it could be about the Pulitzer. It could be about the National Book Award. But, like, the. The machinations that happen behind that. Because I like the bookish elements of that. But I want to know, like, the juicy drama, not like. And then the trolls came and they voted for the same book, everybody.
- [12:56]
A
Exactly, exactly.
- [12:58]
B
I want the. I want the good stuff.
- [12:59]
A
Well, if you like movies, this is a great one. And I will say that it is on Kindle Unlimited, so it's an easy one to just. Even if you just want to dip into just a few chapters that are of interest to you.
- [13:10]
B
Okay, we like that. All right. My second book this week is Whale Fall by Daniel Kraus.
- [13:16]
A
Okay, good. I wonder. Yeah, I've heard that.
- [13:20]
B
Yes, it's true. I enjoyed it more than I expected it to, though, because I knew it was weird before I went in. So I'm gonna tell you about it in case the right person finds this one, because they also don't know what to expect. Jay Gardner is our main character. His father died a little while ago while completing a dive in the Pacific Ocean. Northern Pacific, off the coast of California. Meredith, you would love that part of this. The entry is perilous, and it's beyond a long shot that he would actually find his father's remains. But Jay is determined to lay him to rest in this way. So he tries to repeat his father's last dive. He goes in through this beach called Monastery Beach. Diving is prohibited there. It's important to him, so he does it anyway. As he starts his dive, he's looking for traces of his father's last moments on Earth. And he also relives memories, mostly difficult ones, of his relationship with his dad. His dad had high expectations for his son, many of which were not met as he grew into a man. So as Jay combs the ocean floor, he's distracted by those memories, which is why he accidentally meets up with a giant squid, which becomes an extra perilous situation when the giant squid's only natural predator, the sperm whale, swallows the animal with Jay wrapped in its tentacles. This is a Jonah in the whale situation. With only an hour left in his oxygen tank, Jay is not only running out of air, he's running out of time. He's diving deeper than the human body can reasonably handle, which can impact mental acuity. Everything's a mess. What happens for the remainder of the book is like a survivalist fever dream in the stomach of a sperm whale surrounded by the body parts of a giant squid. Jay's father's voice accompanies him on this journey to hell. And each chapter starts with how much pressure is remaining in his oxygen tank to keep the clock ticking forward again. This book is weird. It requires many suspensions of disbelief, starting from chapter one. It is also not going to allay anyone's fear of the ocean ever. So if that's something that you struggle with, this is not the book for you. Remember a few weeks ago when I talked about Orbital and I said it was about people living mundane but profoundly significant lives? This is kind of the opposite of that, but still it worked for me. I loved the way that this extraordinary circumstance, not mundane, led Jay to understand the mundane parts of himself that he never would have on land. This is kind of like magical realism, speculative fiction. Even though on storygraph the genres are listed as science fiction and thriller. It is propulsive, like a thriller with that air countdown especially. But there's a lot of woo woo in here that makes that means it's not for readers of into the Drowning Deep, but more like something Laura Tremain would really love. She also loved into the Drowning Deep, but she loves that kind of like weirdness to her reading sometimes. It's interesting. It's unbelievable. It's weird and woo woo. I truly enjoyed the reading experience, which I did on audio in a single day. I have thought about it so many times since I read it and I'm glad I did. This is Whale Fall by Daniel Kraus.
- [16:27]
A
Okay. I'm glad that you did that one. I. I continue to think that it's probably not for me, but I can absolutely see that it would be perfect for a lot of readers.
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B
Yeah, I would say this is not a Meredith book. I did pass it along to my dad, who likes to be a little thrilled by his reading. And he and I both are certified open water divers, so that's a fun connection for the two of us.
- [16:50]
A
That's very fun. I love that. All right, Katie. I have to.
- [16:55]
B
Lesi.
- [16:56]
A
Big, big lesi. I just wanna. This book doesn't even come out until March, but I just wanna talk about it to just get it off my radar. It's just like, oh, let's just.
- [17:05]
B
Okay.
- [17:07]
A
Remember when I really loved the Tainted Cup?
- [17:10]
B
I Do I do remember that, Meredith.
- [17:12]
A
Remember, it was my second favorite book of all of 2024.
- [17:16]
B
And not your favorite for some reasons.
- [17:18]
A
But it was my second favorite of the entire year, that of books. Well, so immediately as soon as I got approved for the arc of the second one in that series, A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, you can imagine, I immediately downloaded that sucker because I couldn't wait to be back in that world. Here's the setup for this second one. A Drop of Corruption in so we're back in Yarrowdale, which is a canton or in our story, a city at the far reaches of the Empire, and a seemingly impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has vanished from inside a very locked, very heavily guarded tower room. The Empire calls in their version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Our main characters, the brilliant and eccentric detective, Anna Delabra and. And her loyal assistant, Dennius Cole. But what initially appears to be a locked room mystery quickly turns into something far more sinister because our duo discovers that they're dealing with a murderer who can seemingly walk through walls and wards like a ghost, and who might be targeting the Empire's most crucial magical resource, the shroud, where they harvest Titan blood for its volatile magical properties. So the stakes here are massive. And for the first time in all his years of working with Anna, Dennis Cole is worried that his mentor may finally have met her match. All right. I really, really wanted this book to be good. As I've mentioned several times, the first book in the series was one of my favorites of 2024. I love these books as they are a combination of murder mystery and fantasy that is right up my alley. So how disappointed I was when after a solid first 15% of this book, which presents a really interesting locked room mystery and a reintroduction to my favorite detective duo. And then the book quickly evolves into something that is both overwhelmed by its own complexity and exceedingly dull. I read this book and I read it and I read it, hoping beyond hope that at any point the narrative was going to straighten itself out and bring back some of the elements that I loved from the first book. I wanted the fun banter between Anna and Denias Cole. We don't get that here. Everything is so serious all the time. I wanted some of the interesting fantasy elements, this incredible plant magic construct that I loved from the first book. The legend and the ferocity of the titans of the Leviathan. We get none of this here where there is discussion of magic. It's simply in its most scientific terms. And then the book just becomes so weighed down by a very complicated political plotline that spirals into itself to the point of collapsing the entire narrative. By the time I got to the end, I was just exhausted and very much wanting to move on to a different story. So it's not that this book is like written in a bad way, but I do know that it doesn't have the wit, the joy and the imagination of the first book. It doesn't have the problem solving and the mystery solving of that first book. All it does have is 480 pages of taking itself way too seriously. Unfortunately for me, I think Robert Jackson Bennett got too much in his head and it made me want to get right out of it. Oh, I'm so disappointed. Really wanted a win in one of my favorite series this year. This is a drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett.
- [20:52]
B
If I have been very excited to read the Tainted cup and it's been sitting on my shelf with its pretty ribbon in it with my bookmark right where I stopped during the indie press list. Pre read. Can I read it as a standalone?
- [21:05]
A
Yes, absolutely. 100%. There's no cliffhanger there. You just, I mean, for me, I just jumped into this one not because I needed to like see what was going to happen. I just wanted to be back in the world and with these characters.
- [21:17]
B
Okay.
- [21:18]
A
I stand by the fact that A Tainted cup is just one of the best books I've ever read. I love it from the first page to the last. It's genius.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah, I loved the chunk that I read last year. So I have been, I have been anxiously looking forward to it.
- [21:32]
A
And when he comes out with the third one, and I'm assuming that he probably will, I'll buy, I'll re. I'll read it because I really, I. I want this series to be something that I can look forward to. So I would dip into it again.
- [21:46]
B
Well, and there are times when we're like, you just gotta get through book two. Yeah.
- [21:50]
A
Could be.
- [21:50]
B
It happens. It happens. Okay. My third one this week is a graphic novel. It's right for perfect for this time of year. It's Lunar New Year. Love Story by Jean Luen Yang, illustrated by Lewin Pham. This is a. It's ya, I guess. A young adult graphic novel with just the right amount of darkness to make it super propulsive. Val is our main character. She's part of a family that suffers from a curse. No one has ever had any luck with love for generations in her family. And this includes her dad. Her mom left shortly after her birth, even though they made her on Valentine's Day and therefore called her Valentina, their baby is a tribute to romance. But that's not enough to make romance a reality for this couple. Because of this family curse, her dad has told her that her mom died for her entire life. So at the beginning of the story, when she finds out that mom is alive, she's just gone. She starts being haunted by St. Valentine, the gray ghostly Bishop, not the cute baby Cupid that we are all picturing.
- [22:53]
A
Two different things, right?
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B
Gray ghosty Bishop. It looks like his face is melting off. He's very creepy and I love it. I'm here for it. St. Valentine decides to make a deal with Valley. She has one year to discover if her heart is capable of love without breaking. If not, she agrees to give her heart over to him, this creepy ass ghost, for him to keep it safe. She will never fall in love, but she will also never suffer from it being broken. But then she meets a pair of lion dancers at the Chinese New Year Festival in town, and the bargain she made seems like a bigger risk than it did before. Could this be her chance to break the family curse? Or is she destined to live without any heart at all with a creepy ghost as her companion? I love the creepy ghost.
- [23:38]
A
Yes.
- [23:39]
B
Okay. This book is gorgeously illustrated. Lewin Pham was an illustrator as at an animation company for a period of time, and now she has lent her talents all over the place to really incredible graphic novels. This one is a great way to gain a bit of familiarity with the traditions around Chinese New Year. And as we're recording, we just entered the year of the Snake and that's what brought this book back to the top for me and to the show for all y'all this week. I hope other readers pick it up because I loved that it wasn't just angsty does he will he won't me, blah blah blah blah blah from the teenagers in this book. Instead, it's like a curse and she is trying to figure out a lifelong decision in this magical realism way. Jean Luen Yang, the author, is also the author of a book called American Born Chinese, which has since been turned into a Disney plus series that you can watch. Like, he also writes and creates stories that are very visually appealing, very propulsive, very easy to get into. This one was no exception. I actually picked this one up last year at the Tucson Festival of Books in March and read it probably over the summer, but picking it up right at the beginning of the Lunar New Year, which is now is the perfect time to read it. And we're also again heading straight into Valentine's Day. So if you like that dark and ghosty version of Valentine's Day more than the sweet little cupid with the love hearts and the arrows, this is going to be the book for you. It is Lunar New Year Love Story by Jean Luen Young.
- [25:11]
A
Excellent. That actually sounds like a really good one.
- [25:14]
B
That's fun.
- [25:14]
A
All right, let me take a look at my third book, which is a book that I really, really liked and also a total wheelhouse book for me. This is the Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson. Here's a setup. Sixteen years before our story starts. A two year old Belle. This is our main character. Belle witnessed her mother, Rachel Price, disappear, or at least she was present for it. She doesn't have any memory of it. She was only 2, but now she's 18. And Belle has spent her entire life living in the shadow of this very famous cold case with Rachel long presumed dead. But when the Price family agrees to participate in a true crime documentary about the disappearance, the unthinkable happens. Rachel Price returns. The core of this story is Belle's investigation into her mother's incredible story about where she has been all of these years. Because something about Rachel's story is just not adding up for Belle and she needs to figure out if her mother is lying and if she is, why? And more importantly, could Rachel be dangerous? Okay. I'm a big fan of Holly Jackson. I read her Good Girl's Guide to Murder series when as that came out and I loved all of it. I had recently tried a couple other books outside that series by Holly Jackson. Hadn't necessarily worked for me. But when Mary Heim pressed this book into my hands and said, I really think you need to try Holly Jackson again with this book, I knew that I would trust her and jump right in. And I'm so glad that I did because this book was a full four and a half stars for me. This is exactly the kind of book that I love from Holly Jackson. This is propulsive, fast. It's got a smart plot that had me guessing the entire time. It also has a strong, smart female main character who in this case is 18 years old and lots of other characters both to root for and several characters to hate. And it's those hateful characters that Holly Jackson does really well because you never quite know when they're going to pop up in the story or where in the story they're going to pop up. It's Never exactly where you expect them. I read this book in just two sittings over the course of a couple of hours because it's that kind of book, even though it's over 400 pages. When I talked about it on all things Murderful, I mentioned that I had said to my husband on a Sunday afternoon, you know what? I've done my chores. I'm just gonna sit here and crush the rest of this book, because it is that good. I want to say, though, that the first 15% of this book was fairly slow. Took a little while for the the story to warm up for the main character, Belle, to grow on me. I didn't fall in love with her as quickly as I did that other main character, Pip, from A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. But Belle did grow on me in the long term, and by the end, I was very invested in her having a good outcome. So if you're looking for a super fast airplane book or the perfect book to buddy read with your older teenager, this one would give you a lot to talk about. This is the Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson.
- [28:24]
B
So good. I love it when an author can pull us back in with a new title or series.
- [28:29]
A
Just a really, really good one. All right, Katie, those are our six current reads, so let's talk a little bit. We're going to do kind of a mini deep dive here on how to finish a book. Well, we got to thinking about this as we were thinking about all of the conversation around, you know, the beginning of the year, when people are thinking about how they want to track their reading and how, you know, that leads to a lot of other kinds of conversations about kind of grabbing the things about our books and our reading that are working for us or our bookish experiences and noting them somewhere so that we can use them in some way going forward. And so around that conversation, we started talking about, well, you know, what is really important is that we kind of define what finishing a book well means. So, Katie, for you, what does it mean to finish a book well?
- [29:27]
B
Yeah, I. The first thing that I thought of when we decided to do this deep dive is that I have made it a point, especially since starting the podcast, to not finish a book on the run, which that goes in quotes, because there's a lot of things that on the run could mean. I don't physically run anywhere. So that's never what I mean.
- [29:49]
A
Right.
- [29:49]
B
Ever. But it could mean I'm not bringing a paper book to a waiting room if I have seven pages left. Right. That's not the one I'm bringing with me. I'm not going to bring my Kindle to sit in the car while my kids go to a class. And I will check my audiobook time and my drive time to make sure I'm not going to finish it. With 15 minutes to go in my drive or even an hour to go in my drive. I either want to finish it when I'm pulling into the garage or I will start a brand new one and finish it later when it's going to match up better. Because I want to be able to take a beat when I finish a book. And that's hard to do if you're ootin a boot, as they say in the frozen north. Right. You can't just be like, okay, done with that one, moving on to the next one if you, if you want to take stock of your reading experience. And so being out and doing that, being on the run and doing that is not an option for me.
- [30:49]
A
Right, exactly. And I think that that is a really useful place to start. This is the kind of the conversation about, well, why can't you just finish a book and move on to the next one? And I think what you just said is absolutely true. There's a moment when you finish a book that I think a couple of things can happen if you put yourself in the right mindset and situation to finish a book. Well, the first thing is I, I think all of us, and I know this is true for me, sometimes I just need to take an actual couple of minutes to think quietly about the book that I just finished. Like actually not doing anything for just a minute. Now, some books stun you into that, right? Like some books, you're like, I'm gonna, I just, I need a minute.
- [31:39]
B
Like, nobody touched me. I gotta hold on.
- [31:41]
A
Yeah. Where you've got that weird far off look about you until you're done. But I think every book can benefit from a couple of minutes afterwards of thoughtful contemplation.
- [31:55]
B
Sit and stare time.
- [31:56]
A
Sit and stare time. Exactly. And then, then right on the heels of that is, okay, we just finished the book, so we have an opportunity to grab some important things right now. But we, but this opportunity is not going to last.
- [32:14]
B
Right.
- [32:15]
A
So I have talked many times about the fact that what I. So I don't ever finish a book really late at night. That's kind of for me the equivalent of being out and about. And also the things that you described as being out and about for me, oftentimes what I will have to do is I will have to say, okay, I have just, I have like one chapter left. But I'm also getting kind of sleepy and I want to know what's going to happen. But I know exactly what's going to happen. If I, if I finish it, I'm going to like close the book and go to sleep and I will have missed an opportunity. So I will save that last seven pages, that last chapter and I will say I'm going to finish this tomorrow when I can finish it well, with a clear head, giving it some thought. And then as soon as I finish the number one thing I must do that I never don't do, if I'm in the car, I will take, I always take a picture. So if I, if it's an audiobook and I finish it in the car, I will snap a picture of it on the screen of on my car. I will, you know, whatever format I'm reading it in, that's what I'm taking a picture of. Because that does a few things for me. Right. I automatically have a date and time stamped onto that photo. Okay. So no matter what else happens, I know that I finished that book on that date at that time.
- [33:36]
B
Yeah.
- [33:37]
A
And I also have grabbed the format that I read it in. Okay. So I don't have to worry about forgetting those two things. Those are there. I've grabbed it immediately. I find that in Apple Photos. If I do a search for the word book, it's going to pull up all of my. Even if I haven't tagged it with book, which it is great if you can take that step and like tag it with some keywords. But photos is pretty smart. Now the app Photos is pretty smart. So I find that it will pull up my book covers even if I don't do that. But I do that automatically. And then of course I take that next step, which I do, I've been doing since before we had the show. And I voice memo myself about my thoughts about the book. So those are the thoughts that primarily, let's say that's 90% of what you guys hear when I, when I talk about that book on the show. It's about 90% what I thought the moment I close the COVID on the book, it's as fresh as it can get. Now there are definitely times where I have further thoughts after I've written those initial and I'll be like, oh, I forgot I wanted to mention this. And I'll go back and I'll add and make myself sound better when I script it for the show. But Overall, in about two minutes of voice memoing, I will capture about 90% of my overall thoughts and feels about that book. And I send an email to myself later on. Of course I can use all that for the show, but most importantly that then create those emails that I email to myself and I title them book journal dash, the name of the book. And I give it the same title every time because I've written a rule in my email that every time my email receives that subject with those words in the subject line, it goes straight into a specific folder. So I don't even see it until I go to look in that folder. So at the end of every month, when I go to that folder, I see all the books that I've read that month and here are my notes on them and here's a picture so I can remember the format. And I also is date stamped because I've done it right then. So even if I wasn't a podcaster, this is a great way to finish a book because now I have everything I need to grab that moment of finishing that book when all the feels are freshest and put it into my. I use the currently reading reading tracker. But even before that, I was grabbing that and just putting that into a simple spreadsheet and then I could grab. Then I knew exactly how many books I read. I could also search those notes. The notes give me great keywords for when I want to search for locked room or I want to search for. Or the word ghost or the word gory or the word creepy clown. I don't know the note.
- [36:31]
B
Yeah, puppets.
- [36:32]
A
All of that is a. You know, it helps me to search for those things. So how do you end a book? How do you finish a book?
- [36:38]
B
So I'm going to rewind back to where we tossed it back to the other person. And I'm going to say that I don't like finishing on the run because there's like a 10 to 20% chance that I'm going to cry at the end of any given book, right? I feel like being out of my space robs the author's work from me. Getting to fully experience those emotions. If I'm in the doctor's office, waiting room, in the dentist, wherever I am reading. I don't go to only appointments. But those are the places that I might be finishing a book on the run. I might hold myself back from whatever I would have otherwise experienced if I had finished it well in my own space or in. And that doesn't have to be My own space. It could be in a hotel room, it could be wherever. It's just not in a public setting. Right. It also gives me that sit and stare time. I can collect my thoughts a little better. I know. Meredith, we've talked about you using these voice memos to log as soon as you finish. I give myself about 24 hours to go over to Storygraph, mark it as read. If. If the day has passed, I will rewind the date counter. But I'm never having to go back, like, oh, did I finish it last week? Was it Thursday? Never have to do that. I either it's red on that date that I click red or the day before. That's as far as it ever gets back for me.
- [38:00]
A
So how do you make sure that you remember to do that if you're doing it maybe 24 hours later? Because that part of it, for me is that I'm, like, terrified I'm gonna forget to do this with a book that I've read.
- [38:11]
B
I just. I guess I'm on storygraph a lot, so I always can see my currently reading shelf.
- [38:17]
A
Okay.
- [38:18]
B
And because as soon as you open storygraph, either on your phone or on the website, the first thing at the top is what you're currently reading.
- [38:27]
A
Okay.
- [38:27]
B
So then every time you. So if you see a book you've.
- [38:29]
A
Finished up there, right?
- [38:30]
B
That one I finished last night.
- [38:32]
A
That's what's cueing you, is that you're seeing. There's some place where you are putting every book that you are currently reading. And so. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.
- [38:41]
B
Yeah. And. And storygraph is my email for you, Meredith. So it is holding those very first thoughts, especially because when I made that transition over, I decided I was going to be far more private on storygraph than I was on Goodreads, which became hard for me in the middle years. So we. I used to do really big reviews on Goodreads, like, write two and three paragraphs about books that I read. And then we started the podcast, and I felt like I was spoiling myself. Like, oh, I already know Katie's thoughts because I follow her on Goodreads. I don't need to hear that on the podcast. So then I stopped writing anything. I would be like, this was fine, right? Fun. Fun, fine. I don't know why.
- [39:19]
A
I never. Yeah, I never put any comments on Goodreads for that exact reason. Like, I don't want to, like, spoil myself.
- [39:24]
B
Spoil yourself, Exactly. So I don't have friends on storygraph, which is how I wanted it. When I went over There I wasn't at in Goodreads for the social aspects. I don't care about that like feed when you first get into the the app. So that was actually a really good fit for me. And now I can put more information into that story graph. Review everything I write over there. At the end of the month when I go to my reading Tracker, I copy that review, I paste it in, I might add more in my Reading Tracker. And that's when I build out the rest of my robust stats around my reading. I make sure that the genres are all coded correctly. Any kind of diversity that I'm tracking is all coded correctly. I've got the publisher and the recommendation sources in there. And because I've been better about keeping track of my TBR this year, like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, that's actually going a lot better too. Everything is coming up roses with StoryGraph.
- [40:14]
A
StoryGraph is the key.
- [40:15]
B
With StoryGraph and Reading Tracker Tracker melded together, they are like a perfect little marriage for my reading life. Yeah, I love that. So I have less of that, save my thoughts for the show. I can actually put them there where they belong and then use that to plant seeds in my Reading tracker. It's like my garden bed. And then going forward, as we've talked about before, once a month is really how I schedule my reading tracker. So that's when I'm pulling that information over and making sure that, that, that every column I have chosen to track is filled in as much as possible.
- [40:52]
A
Right? Yes, exactly. And that. And I do that same thing at the end of every month. I go in and you know, take maybe 30 minutes and enter my, you know, my books from that month. And it's so satisfying. Like I said, I put that in my calendar. That gets done at the end of every month and that's just. And then at the end of the year, I'm not looking back and being like, oh my God, I have eight months worth of stuff that I have to enter. Which is terrible because every time you really need to do it once a month, if you let it build beyond that, it starts to become. Starts to feel overwhelming. And it's so useful to do. We want to do everything that we can to help people be able to get the. All the benefits of tracking your reading, which includes something new that Katie, that you are doing that I think I'm going to probably jump in on. If that's okay with you, Katie. I'm just horn in on it with you.
- [41:46]
B
So fun. Yes. So starting in 2025 this kind of came up when we unveiled the Reading Tracker. I do this big Zoom tour, which I call Open Houses, and I did three of them last year. There were like 150 people that showed up to get a tour of the newest features of the Reading Tracker. And offhand comment on one of those, I mentioned the idea of having office hours once a month. So that's what I'm calling them. Once a month, I send out a zoom link. It's usually on a Saturday sometime, although it varies so that I can grab people in different time zones. And I have office hours like a professor at college. So I agree to be there for this two hour section of time if nobody shows up. This is my gift to myself. I sit there and I log my books exactly as I meant to do. That hasn't happened yet. Instead, every time I have people show up and maybe they broke something or maybe they want a different feature that they're very excited about for their spreadsheet, or maybe they want to see how other people are using this map or this chart or how they're getting that information. So it becomes this kind of collaborative effort and accountability hour. Anybody who's not there to get their spreadsheet fixed, they can hang out and hear bookish conversation and get a little nerdy with us. And they're adding in their own reads for the month so that come December, they're not sitting there saying, dang, I stopped in February. That was bad planning. Past. Katie, what were you thinking? Right, right.
- [43:13]
A
And now I just have too many to, you know, to catch up. It just seems like way too much. So this is the piece that I jumped in on is that I was like, well, I kind of would love it if every, like, if I know every single month, I'm going to take that 30 minutes to enter my own reads. So maybe, you know, it would just be more fun if it was like, hey, I'm gonna do it at this date and time. If you want to jump on at the same time and just, you know, know that like, hey, she's doing it, I might as well do it. Other people are going to be doing it. So people can be chatting or you cannot chat at all and just be, literally just use it as accountability for getting that done. Even if you say nothing at all and you're not on camera, none of that. You just completely use it as accountability. I think that could be really, really useful. So this will be kind of an extra perk for our bookish friends, which of course it's $5 a month on Patreon, you get the Reading Tracker to.
- [44:08]
B
Keep your membership current. Because we do say, like go ahead and join us at the end of December or early January and grab that Reading Tracker and if that's all you need, like, go with God, be well. Right. But if you want that accountability or that happy hour vibe of let's all get together and be nerds together, that's something that you're going to get every month if you stick around, which is awesome.
- [44:29]
A
Yes, it's definitely worthwhile. So, Katie, I'm assuming what will happen is you will announce on the, in the Bookish Friends group that this is when we're doing like this date and time we're doing the Reading Tracker stuff, the accountability tracking, you know, all of that. And you'll let us know.
- [44:47]
B
Yeah, it's been actually the one I did for February, I just got to do yesterday again had about 30 people show up. I played in spreadsheets. This is going to come up later in my fountain wish as well. But it is, it's like a thank you from past Katie to future Katie to say this is time set aside especially for this. And now I know it's going to get done every month the way that I hoped so.
- [45:08]
A
And also this is a great opportunity even if you do not use the currently Reading Reading Tracker, just use it as your half hour of accountability to track in whatever way you do track pen and pen and it's drop in. Yeah, exactly. Like whatever you want to do. So it's a great, it's a great opportunity for that. So. All right, good. So that's a lot of words about how we finish a book. Well, and I think this is one of those pieces that really does. If you can get yourself into a few simple habits. Even if all you do is take a picture of your book when you're done, even if that's the only thing that you do that in and of itself could be the way you track your books. You will, you'll be so much further along. Even if that's the only thing that you do is just snap a picture.
- [45:59]
B
So true. So true. And that's how I feel even about taking pictures at the bookstore. If I'm like, this is a book that might interest me in the future. And then when I'm going through my camera roll, oh, I forgot that I saw that book. Maybe it's time to add it to tbr. I can tell from the shelves where, which bookstore I was at, whatever it is. So also very useful. Just take more pictures of books. Actually, that's the first piece of advice here.
- [46:25]
A
Exactly. I'll bet you a million dollars also that you could take a bunch of pictures of books and, like, load it up into ChatGPT and be like, what book should I read next? Or, like, even better, take a bunch of pictures of books, because you can do this with your reading tracker. Dump it into ChatGPT and say, like, find some through lines in my reading, like, describe me as a reader and come up with some really interesting things. So, again, lots of reasons to do this. Okay, Katie, let's get to those fountain wishes. What is your wish this week?
- [46:55]
B
Okay, mine's about nosiness. So I wish I could just poke around like a squirrel in everyone's reading life. So at least once a month, like, we're talking about, but usually far more often, I get to poke around in the spreadsheets of the bookish friends and see what needs fixing. That's usually why I'm there. One of my favorite things about that, though, is getting to see what they're reading and what they thought of those books. It's like virtually perusing someone's bookshelves. This also happened twice to me at recent events in person. Okay. At a work party for my best friend, I was talking to somebody who mentioned his audible cue and what he's been reading. He got out his phone and he let me scroll through his audible. It felt like going through someone's underwear drawer a little bit. Like, it was a little bit private.
- [47:35]
A
But that's how I feel about, like, email inboxes or like search history sessions.
- [47:39]
B
Yes. Oh, search histories. Don't even. Don't even get me started on those. But it gets me. It got me. It gave me some insights into his reading life. Right. Like, I'm like, oh, you're like a starter of books, but you don't necessarily finish them. You're like a taster of books. He was like, oh, my gosh, you're right. That's absolutely an adjective that would describe me. And I never would have thought of it that way. But getting to poke around a little bit gave me some insight into that. And then I had a friend who showed me her trello board at her birthday dinner two nights ago to see what she's currently reading and hear what's working for her in her reading life. So it's that cross between the bookshelves and the underwear drawer. And while I regularly partake in one of those things, which is the bookshelves one, not the underwear drawer one, I wish I Could do it far more often because I love the socially acceptable nosiness piece of it. So I wish it was more socially acceptable to be nosy. That's my fountain wish this week. Pink splash.
- [48:31]
A
That is going to be a little bit hard for us to make to change that.
- [48:36]
B
No, I think I'm going to turn it into Patreon content. I'm going to make it happen.
- [48:40]
A
I love it. I love it. Yes, it is very fun when people, because lots of people do let you into their reading tracker.
- [48:46]
B
They do.
- [48:46]
A
That is super fun. All right, well, my wish is that every single person who loves to read has a reading retreat on their calendar. This is on my mind because as we record here, today is February 2nd. By the way, my oldest grandson's third birthday. Today, Jeffrey is turning three. Happy birthday, Jeffrey. And at the end of February, we, me and my three bookish best friends are going to a reading retreat. And we started out, it was a three day retreat and then we were like, oh, that's not enough time. We need four days. And then last year we're like, oh, that's not enough time. We're going for five days this year. And we are just. I'm just so looking forward to it. And so it, to me, it's the perfect kind of time spent with friends because it involves a lot of time with people that I love and also a lot of time by myself. Reading. It is absolutely perfect. So my wish is that everyone would either plan a solo reading retreat and get it on the calendar for this year or take the leap, plan a reading retreat with a couple of friends. We have created a brand new schedule of events. Betsy has done that. She's done it. Great job. We have a logo and a theme for this year. We're going all in. So that's my wish, that everyone would have a reading retreat planned. Ping, Splash.
- [50:04]
B
And do y'all have merch? I mean, not for people, but like for yourselves. Are you getting hats, sweatshirts, you know, pajama pants? What are you doing?
- [50:12]
A
I. Betsy is planning all of this stuff. So it has not been unveiled, but if I had to guess, I'm thinking we, we're going to have something. She always does.
- [50:22]
B
Stanley cups.
- [50:23]
A
An amazing job of planning some commemorative stuff. And we, we really, really love it. It's just so much fun.
- [50:29]
B
I love that. So fun. That's my other future wish, is another reading retreat on my calendar.
- [50:35]
A
Yes, exactly. That's the key, is getting it on the calendar. Right. 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 at Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram and you.
- [50:47]
B
Can find me Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putovong Evans. You can find her on Instagram at most of Megans reads full show notes.
- [50:58]
A
With the title of every book we mention in the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes or on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com youm.
- [51:10]
B
Can also follow the show at Currentlyreading Podcast on Instagram or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com.
- [51:16]
A
And as we discussed, if you want more bookish community, more bookish content, and if you want to keep the show commercial free, join us as a bookish friend. It's $5 a month on Patreon and I think it will help you do all three of those things. You can also 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 audience.
- [51:39]
B
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [51:45]
A
All right, until next week, may your.
- [51:47]
B
Coffee be hot and your book be unput downable. Happy reading Katie Happy reading Meredith.