← The Currently Reading Podcast
The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 7, Episode 37: Dumb Phones + Using AI To Enhance Our Reading Lives
01:05:24
On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: dumb phones and live shows Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately Deep Dive: how you can use AI to...
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- [00:00]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Foreign. Hey, readers, welcome to the currently reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
- [00:24]
Katie Cobb
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish debut dive, and then we'll visit the fountain.
- [00:34]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
I'm Meredith Mundy Schwartz, a mom of four and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And apparently I really do love meeting readers in real life.
- [00:44]
Katie Cobb
Yes, finally. And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And I'm harnessing my focus for reading. This is episode number 37 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here.
- [00:56]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
All right, excellent. So, yes, we do have some interesting things to talk about in our bookish moments of the week. But first, let me tell you, we are going to deep dive today on three questions that I think you can ask ChatGPT to gain some insight into yourself as a reader. And Katie, spoiler alert. We are going to be using our reading tracker for this.
- [01:18]
Katie Cobb
Ooh, that's exciting. So this is one of those deep dives where Meredith was like, I'm driving and you're just along for the ride. So it's kind of a surprise to me too, guys. I'm excited. Right.
- [01:28]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
I love it when you do that for me. So I thought I would do that for you for this episode. It's very fun. Meanwhile, Katie, you might want to make a PDF of the first worksheet of your reading tracker for 2024. Let's say that make a PDF of my reading tracker. Make a PDF of that. Yeah, that first worksheet.
- [01:46]
Katie Cobb
Okay. The reading.
- [01:47]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Anyone else who want.
- [01:48]
Katie Cobb
Right?
- [01:49]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yes.
- [01:49]
Katie Cobb
Okay.
- [01:49]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yes. Anyone else who wants to join us? That's going to be the first thing that you're going to need to do. So let's get into our bookish moments of the week though, Katie, I'm going to interrupt you by asking you, what's your bookish moment of the week?
- [02:01]
Katie Cobb
Okay, Meredith, My bookish moment. Between the reading that I have been doing about focus and distraction and the stories I've been seeing lately from Sarah over at Fiction Matters, I have become more and more obsessed with unlocking a phone addiction or getting rid of a phone addiction, really, and moving my life back into the real world. I've already used a number of techniques that are recommended by experts in this field who are all like, listen, this is hard and we fail too. So it's like, okay, well this is fine. This person does this professionally. They're still having a hard time with it. I've been reading articles, one was just shared in the Bookish friends group this week about digital dementia, how we're all getting dumber. Yes, that phrase was difficult to read. I have almost no notifications on my phone except for messages. I don't let anything ping my watch except for text messages and phone calls. I have it so that when I flip my phone face down, it goes into do not disturb automatically. So only the people who are on my like starred contacts can get ahold of me. If I do that, it is not enough. I can be like, okay, it's time for show prep. I am going to focus. I am going to only work on show prep for the episode we are recording tomorrow. Everything is set up for me. My mind wanders because I'm thinking about how to set up a book and what do I do? I pick up my phone and I see the notifications that are waiting for me on my phone. Or I click into an app because I'm letting my mind percolate. No, it ruins everything. It breaks the flow state, right? So I want more. Sarah has been sharing about a device that she bought called Brick IO. It looks super cool. It's like a little square that you put up somewhere in your house. You tap it and it will brick your phone. It will get rid of the apps that you don't want to use for however long it takes for you to tap it again. It's about $60, but it only works on iPhones so that's a no go.
- [03:51]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
So it basically, it basically turns your phone into a brick.
- [03:54]
Katie Cobb
A dumb phone.
- [03:55]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
A dumb phone, right.
- [03:57]
Katie Cobb
It doesn't work for me because I am an Android girl at heart. So I have been looking for other options. I ended up going with an app called Block It. It's an old fashioned timer interface. You decide when to start the app and how long you want to focus for. It bricks your phone except for phone calls because those are usually like emergent, right? During that time, no notifications at all. You can't even exit the app without using a parachute which you have to pay for. So you have to want to get out of that app and you decide how long that's going to be. But then you're stuck with this like useless block of technology. Right?
- [04:33]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
But you can use it for a phone call.
- [04:35]
Katie Cobb
If you can get a phone Call.
- [04:38]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
So you can't make a phone call?
- [04:39]
Katie Cobb
I don't think so. Although I like, I try not to get out of here at all.
- [04:43]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
So I'll bet you they've. This is so smart that I will bet you they have made it because that would be the thing that would be a deal breaker for me. Like, I get panicky thinking that I couldn't make a phone call, like for an emergency if I needed to.
- [04:56]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [04:57]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
That freaks me out. As a parent, as a person, that freaks me out.
- [05:00]
Katie Cobb
Well, I will look into that more. I. I don't like making phone calls, so that's not really an issue for me. But.
- [05:08]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
But, like, what if you needed to call 911 because someone's breaking down the door of your house? Which happens all the times in the books that I'm reading.
- [05:13]
Katie Cobb
Right. And in our real lives as well. You can get to, like, your lock screen, which has the emergency. The emergency contact thing. Right.
- [05:21]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Okay.
- [05:22]
Katie Cobb
So that's. Okay, that part is available. Okay, here's why. It's my bookish moment. We have talked before about the reading timer idea where you, like, put your phone in another room, you set a timer for 20 minutes and you let yourself sink into your book. This is taking that one step further. It cannot even buzz my watch from the other room. If somebody's harassing me about, you know, this new reel on Instagram or whatever it is. It is allowing me to completely disengage from the online world, making me more focused, allowing my brain to settle down, which gives me the bandwidth that you all know I have been lacking for quite some time with regard to my reading life. So that's what makes it my bookish moment.
- [06:02]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
And I've been looking down during this time, Katie, because what I've been doing while I've been listening to what you're saying is turning off notifications for a lot because I realize that I really am. I'm pretty good at staying focused. But that little micro moment where you read a notification, I'm a news junkie, so notifications from New York Times, cnn. If it truly was only breaking news, that would be one thing. But the reality is now the notifications for those things are like, breaking news. Pasta sauce is delicious.
- [06:36]
Katie Cobb
Like, and breaking news is happening all the time. Right?
- [06:40]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Well, exactly. Exactly.
- [06:42]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [06:42]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
True breaking news. Exactly. So I was turning that off because you brought up a great point for me when I need to focus. The. I mean, I do this so often now, and Partly, Jackson, my 13 year old is a part of the reason why I started doing this because he has really found that he does homework really well with music on. And he goes into this, like, kind of homework mode when he puts on his big, big, physical headphones that he only uses for this purpose.
- [07:14]
Katie Cobb
Right.
- [07:14]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
So everywhere else he's using, you know, AirPods or whatever, but for this purpose, he has big, physical go all the way over your ear headphones. And I bought AirPod Max's. No. What are they called? The Big Huge Apple. You don't know this because you're an Android girl. Anyway, I can't remember what they're called. They're like AirPod Maxes. Yes. But they're huge and they go over your ears and they're really pretty. And I use this for my work. So it is a sign for me because I do so much writing in my work, it's a sign for me that I'm in focus mode, but it's also a sign for the people around me that I'm in focus mode. So that physical act of doing that, and then I don't have music in my ears, I have brown noise in my ears because that's what works with my brain. But that physical act is something like when I do show prep, that's the first thing that I do. So I think we. You bring up such a good point that so many of us are trying to figure out, because this feeling of constantly have your. Having your attention be pulled a million different directions is so innervating.
- [08:20]
Katie Cobb
Right. Actually, I think I'm already telling you now that next week I'm going to bring both of the books that I've read in the last six months that are about social media apps, Focus, and the ways that we are interacting with the digital world and what it's doing to our brains. So look forward to that next week because I do want to have, like, a longer, deeper conversation about this.
- [08:41]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, No, I think it. It's something we, every one of us are dealing with and then even all the way down to our children, you know, so. Exactly. All right, well, my bookish moment of the week is that, of course, last weekend was the fabled bookshop in Waco. They had their Book Lovers Weekend, the first annual, the inaugural Book Lovers Weekend. And I didn't go to the whole thing. I went to the afternoon and evening of the Saturday. And that's where Elizabeth Barnhill, who of course does All Things Murderful with me behind our paywall in our Patreon content, we did a live recording of All Things Murderful in front of the group that Was there. Betsy came with me, which thank the Lord that Betsy came with me, because I was super nervous about this live recording. It's one thing I get nervous enough meeting people in real life, period. I get nervous to a certain extent going to the grocery store, and I will do everything that I can not to actually speak to people. Meeting people in person about reading, I've gotten more used to. And so that's okay. Recording the podcast in front of people with all of the attendant. What are people gonna think? How disappointed are they gonna be? What's gonna go wrong? How am I gonna look? They're gonna think I'm a crone. Like, all of these things go. They're all. They're all gonna wish that Katie was here instead of me. You know, all of this stuff. And so I was really. In my head. I had a massive panic attack on. In the car, on the way to the thing, which is, you know, that's what panic attacks do. Betsy and I are. She's. Thank God she was driving. We, you know, we're just going down the road talking about tons of things that I'm interested in. I'm so comfortable with her. I'm in a very relaxed state in that moment. That's when my panic attacks will often hit. And I went into this. I was just like, super panicky. I just very calmly explained to Betsy what was going on, because she could tell that something, you know, she's very observant to, like, my small things. She could kind of tell. And I was like, hey, if I've gotten really quiet, here's what's going on. And then she immediately. She's like, okay, so I've got some crackers right here. We've got some cold water. Let's put on the air chiller in your seat, because bringing your temperature down when you're having a pet. So she's doing all of these things that immediately help my physical things that are going on. And I just was so grateful to be like, get you a friend who understands your anxiety disorder, right? Who really gets how to not make it a thing, but just kind of snap into action. So really, really, really great. Then we got there, and it went really well. And the. The whole book lovers weekend was just done really well. Lots of, you know, bookish time together. Lots of time to be in the store. They got to shop. They got to shop with Elizabeth one on one. They got to shop in the store just with them a couple different times. They had several different meals. They got to hear publishers speak about what's coming out. They. And then Saturday night, they did a. An author dinner where there were multiple authors who ate at, like, one author at each table. So you got to, like, sit together and eat with an author. And then Jeff Sentner was there, and he is fantastic. He is really, really wonderful. Ashley Winstead was there. Katherine Sinter was there, and she was so, so, so fantastic. Vanessa Lilly and Steve Kavanaugh.
- [12:13]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [12:13]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
It was a great conversation that Elizabeth led. She asked some really good questions that you don't normally like. I really felt like Elizabeth's questions were very interesting, and they elicited great responses from the authors. It was just a really. It was great to get to meet and take pictures with a lot of the. The readers that were there, and the vibes were really, really good. So I'm so grateful to be able to be a part of that bookish community and to be able to meet readers. And it was just a really fun night. And it went or afternoon and evening, and it went really, really well. So thank heaven, because I really didn't want, like, our part of things to, like, not add to their book lovers weekend, which they had worked so hard on and done such a great job on. So I think it went okay. So that episode is actually available now in Patreon, if you want to join us as a bookish friend.
- [13:07]
Katie Cobb
Excellent. I am so glad that it went well. And I can co sign the fact that when you have anxiety, like, spiral out of control in your life, that the person you need is the person who understands it and they will get you through. And I can co sign the fact that whenever I meet bookish friends, I'm always thinking, gosh, they're totally just wishing Meredith was here, right?
- [13:26]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
I mean, aren't we all just so in our own heads about all of this stuff? Every single one of us? This is the way we're thinking.
- [13:32]
Katie Cobb
Yes, definitely.
- [13:33]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
All right, well, let's talk about some actual books. Katie, we're 15 minutes into this debacle, and let's talk about some books.
- [13:40]
Katie Cobb
It's not a debacle. We have so much cool stuff to talk about. We just can't restrain ourselves. It's great. That's true. Okay.
- [13:46]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
That's true.
- [13:47]
Katie Cobb
My first book this week is middle grade. I know some of y'all don't like that. You can skip ahead. But I'm excited to talk about a book called Alebrijes by Donna Barba Iera. This is a 2023 release. It's the newest book from the Author of the 2021 Newbery Medal winner, which was called the Last Cuentista. It is in English even though the title is Spanish. Alebrijas is a Spanish word. That book, the Last cuentista, released in 2021, was one of my favorites of that year. Although a middle grade book rarely breaks my top 10, I gave it five stars. I still think about it today. Four years later, it lives on my keeper shelf. This newer release is one that I picked up in the UK in late 2023 when I was there with my family. I waited a year and a half to actually pick it up, but it was a great choice for me. Much like with her previous book, Alebrijes is a middle grade dystopian novel. Dystopian sci fi novel. Earth was destroyed more than 400 years ago because we don't take care of nice things. It is barren, devoid of human life or activity. Except for one cruel city, Pocatel. They are barely scraping by, barely making it. So when someone breaks the rules, even when that someone is a child, like our narrator, 13 year old Leandro, they are banished into the wilderness. That wilderness is filled with spirits and worms. W Y R M s alone.
- [15:10]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
This 13 year old boy has to go alone.
- [15:12]
Katie Cobb
Yes, it gets worse. Ready? Monsters with terrible stories about them. Past from generation to generation. 400 years of this wilderness. When someone is banished, they're as good as dead. Even 13 year old boys. The city of Pocatel gives them a few days worth of provisions and they're never heard from again. So it's a dire fate. When Gabi, Leandro's little sister, is caught stealing fruit, he steps into the gap. He takes the punishment. But instead of that banishment leading to certain death, as they've all come to believe, his consciousness, his soul, is placed into a drone, which is an alebrije, which is a carved and colorful kind of small Mexican sculpture. I actually, I have one that looks like an elephant that I meant to get so I could show you what they look like. But they're very brightly colored. They usually have tiny paintings of additional bright colors on them. And they're kind of disjointed looking in the way that they're carved. They're not like natural sinuous animals. Very cool, right? He's put into this drone type sculpture and released as a bird into the wilderness, where he finds others of his kind who are attempting to build a better world. Leandro is then torn by the push and pull of wanting to contribute to the future and maybe start to make something new, write a new story and wanting to go back to his past, his little sister, and the terrifying but known world he left behind. It wasn't a great world, but he at least knew what was going on there. Right. Dystopian sci fi. Great. Delivers for me on the regular. This is one of those niche tropes that I don't get to read often, so I'm grateful to Donna Barba I. Guerra for writing another fabulous story. Those tiny, colorful birds in this book are fully human in their personality and their interactions with each other. And I loved reimagining the world in this way. The story is also told as sort of a book within a book as it's set up right at the beginning with this is the story as it was told to me by Leandro the Mighty. So we know he survives because he's telling the story to the storyteller.
- [17:16]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Okay, that probably makes it so that I can read this book because I just thought I can't. I just can't.
- [17:22]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, and that's like the very first sentence. Like Leandro is telling the story to the storyteller, so he's gonna make it. It is peppered with monsters and pirates and found family and human connection. All of those little pepper bits are a recipe for a great book. And Igera cooked it up perfectly. While I still love the last cuentista most, this one was also a hit for me. It's called Alebrijes by Donna Barba Iguera.
- [17:48]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
And it's got a great cover, which is so good. Cute owl on it. So Alebrijes is a L, E B R I J E S. Yes, of course. This will be in show notes, but just in case anybody's looking it up right now. I am going to borrow that for sure because it looks really, really good.
- [18:07]
Katie Cobb
It's so good.
- [18:08]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Okay, that was a really good one. I'm very like. I got very involved in your description of that book. So now I need to think about what I think I know. Okay. All right. I have a book that really worked for me too. As my first one I read. I'm going back into the backlist of one of my favorite authors. And this is a book called the Other side of the Wall by Andrea Mara. I'm going to be an Andrea Mara completist. So this is what I'm working on. Here's the setup for this one as we start our story. It's 3am and our main character, who's a very sleep deprived new mom, her name is Sylvia. She's staring out the bedroom window that she's in, into the darkness of her neighbor's yard, when suddenly she sees what appears to be a child's body floating face down in the pond that's in the neighbor's backyard. Sylvia races next door, only to find an empty pond and she's banging on the door of the neck of the house next door and nobody answers. So of course she's asking herself like am I just exhausted and sleep deprived or is there really something happening? To complicate matters, a local child has recently gone missing, which is part of the reason why Sylvia is so tuned into this, and Sylvia can't help but wonder if there's a connection. Not surprisingly, Sylvia's husband dismisses her concerns as just sleep induced imaginings. But her unease only gets worse when she begins hearing strange sounds through the bedroom wall and her daughter wakes up screaming about a man in her room. All right, this is Andrea Mara's first book and spoiler alert. I liked it even more than the other two of hers that I have read already. All Her Fault and Someone in the Attic, both of which I liked a lot. Both of which were 4.25 and 4.5 respectively. This is Irish crime fiction and Andrea Mara has become my new go to when I'm in this mood and I'm waiting for a Katherine Ryan Howard book to come out. I absolutely love her books. They strike that perfect balance of page turning, pacing with enough quality writing and characterization that it doesn't feel like just junk food. This is definitely up your alley if you love Katherine Howard and Lisa Jewell. As with both of those writers, Andrea Mara is playing with her construction. She's mixing POVs and timelines to create the puzzle that she's making. I love when this is done well, and she does it really well here. I grabbed this one on Kindle Unlimited, but I'm going to admit that I did find myself wishing the whole time that I had a hard copy of the book because I wanted to be able to like flip back and check on dates and times of things as I tried to figure out who the baddie was. And I had several people to choose from as far as who could be our resident baddie. Andrea Mara creates characters that you think you know, but then maybe not fully. And that tension is delicious. I'll admit that Andrea was one step ahead of me the entire time I thought I had it totally figured out, but then she reveals something else that makes me doubt myself. And then another thing lulls me back into my smug slumber and Then wham. She hits me with something else that makes me question my theory. And on and on until the perfectly crafted ending, which, of course made complete sense. And what was I thinking the entire time? I love it when authors of crime fiction can do that to me. Fool me if you succeed, fair play you, as our characters in this book would say. This is the Other side of the wall by Andrea Mara. And I should say, with all of her stuff, it's never gory, right? It's just twisty deliciousness. All right, what's your next one?
- [21:50]
Katie Cobb
Okay, my next one. It's one that we've talked about on the show before, Meredith, but every once in a while we do a reread and it's worth bringing again. I'm going to talk about Kindred by Octavia Butler. This is a reread for me. I've read it first in March of 2017 when it was already considered a classic at nearly 40 years old. Published in 1979, it's now rapidly approaching 50 years old and still holds up. Of note here is that ever since I said that 90s were only 20 years ago live on the show and it was not edited out because Megan also thinks that I check these dates obsessively before I write them in my notes because I'm like, no, wait, carry the one. Is it almost 50 years? I'm not sure. I can't.
- [22:33]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah.
- [22:33]
Katie Cobb
In relation to my own birth date, I still can't figure it out. It's ridiculous. The 90s were 30 years ago. Every single day, that fact surprises me. Moving on.
- [22:43]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Exactly.
- [22:44]
Katie Cobb
Kindred was a contemporary speculative fiction book at the time, so now we consider it a classic. But with the exception of a few period details that are specific to the late 1970s, this story feels timeless. I reread it in February of this year to see if eight years of saying that it's one of my favorite books of all time holds up. And it does. It was given to us as a pick on the indie press list. So I was like, I'll just dip in. I'll just like revisit her writing style. Nope. Blasted through the whole thing. Couldn't put it down. Even though I know the ending, even though I've read it before, even though I love this book. So here's the setup. Dana is a modern woman of the time. Remember 1970s? She is celebrating her birthday, her 26th, with her new husband Kevin. As she starts to feel a little light headed, the world dissolves around her and she is pulled back in time from their home in California to antebellum Maryland, where she sees a young boy, saves him from drowning, and learns his name before being pulled back to her present time. It is a completely terrifying and unexplainable event. Kevin saw her disappear before his eyes for a few moments, but she had begun been gone for at least an hour. None of it makes sense. Of course, that can't be the only time this happens or we don't have a story. Dana learns that Rufus, who is the son of a wealthy plantation owner in Maryland, is actually one of her ancestors from many generations back. He is prone to trouble, so Dana soon packs a go bag so she can grab it whenever that lightheadedness starts to overtake her and pulls her back in time. She puts together that when Rufus is in trouble is when she's pulled back to help him out of dire straits. The visits get longer and more dangerous and Dana has to keep herself and Rufus alive in the past so that she can live her future. God, this book is so good. It is absolutely unputdownable, sometimes horrifying. For example, without spoiling anything, the very first scene involves Dana coming back to the present with her arm stuck in the wall of her home, permanently changing her modern world life. That's how she starts this book. Octavia Butler is a goddess.
- [24:53]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
This book is an absolute masterpiece.
- [24:56]
Katie Cobb
Banger 100% all the way through. This was a book that I pressed into listeners hands in season two, Episode seven when we were pressing books every episode and one that I discussed with Mary when she first joined the team in a deep dive called Shook the Books that Changed Our Worldviews. It deserves that title. It deserves to be pressed. It deserves its spots on both of those lists. And just like Bernie Sanders, I am once again asking you to pick it up if you have not read this. If it takes multiple times hearing about a book before you're ready to dip in and give it a shot, let this be your sign. I could talk about Kindred. Maybe I'll just schedule it every year for the rest of my life. I will tell you all about Kindred until every single one of you has read it. It is so excellent. I love this book. It's Kindred by Octavia Butler.
- [25:42]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Definitely one that deserves a reread. And also, I mean, just the first classic I think about. If anyone's like, I really want to read a classic, but I don't want to be bored to tears. I mean this is perfection.
- [25:54]
Katie Cobb
Love it.
- [25:55]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
All right, my second pick is nowadays usually my nonfiction pick. And I Have that. Today I read a book called the Song of the Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History by Glenn Berger.
- [26:09]
Katie Cobb
Okay.
- [26:10]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
All right. Yes, the the Song of Spider man is the most expensive Broadway musical in history. So of course we've got America's favorite webslinger with music by U2's Bono and the Edge and direction by the visionary Julie Taymor of of course, Lion King fame. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, it turns out. Other Glenn Berger. He gives us a front row seat to one of the most spectacular train wrecks ever staged. The me the Making of Spider Man. Turn off the Dark. That's what it was called. That's what the actual musical was called. It was a 65 million dollar production that became famous not for its like being so fantastic, but for its seemingly endless calamities including multiple of the actors being taken to the hospital after on set accidents. All right. This book is a true inside story. I love this kind of nonfiction. Give me the juice, give me the tea. From a person who's been there the entire time. This was recommended by the aforementioned Katherine Ryan Howard on her Instagram and it was just like in a stack of books. And as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to grab it for our reading retreat because this is the kind of nonfiction that tends to go really quickly for me. That juicy insider story of something that turns into a total poo poo show. I love it. So I'm not what I would at all call a huge Broadway buff. I've seen a few shows, just the most cliched ones. I've seen Hamilton three times, so I know a teensy, teensy bit about what author Glenn Berger is telling us, but that didn't matter. You do not have to be a Broadway devotee to enjoy this book. But if you do love Broadway, you are really going to want to read this because there's just so much that you learn about how all of this stuff happens, comes together. This is really more at its base about something that most of us know something about. Because this book is about work, a workplace. This one just happens to be the making of a Broadway show. It's about how ideas happen and who gets credit for them. It's about how really talented people come together to create something big. It's about art, collaboration, but it's also very much about investors and making a profit and marketing and also just about what happens when your leader has some big dreams, but no idea what it takes to physically make those dreams happen in the very real world. Where things cost money and safety matters. It's also about the ways that humans can bring out the best and, and the worst in each other. I loved the fact that Glenn Berger does both of those things. He's not trying to take anyone down in this book. He is telling the true story about how all this came together. And this book is about how we can truly love someone and be driven completely insane by them. Many of us have had that. That experience in our lives and in our workplaces. So there's a lot we can understand here. This book's about the incredible director of the Lion King, Julie Tamar. And her story is about holding on to your vision. And also it's about sometimes you gotta be practical. It's about never giving up and also knowing when to fold them. It's about how Bono and the Edge are really two of the most talented, amazing, kind people ever, which is great. Like don't meet your heroes. Well, here we really find out that Bono and the Edge are great. They don't always pick up the check when they should, but really, really good people.
- [29:53]
Katie Cobb
Billionaires, it would seem.
- [29:56]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
It would seem to be. So if you've ever wondered how a big time Broadway show comes together, you gotta read this book. If you've ever thought maybe you want to star in a Broadway show, please read this book. And make sure your medical insurance is up to date. If anyone ever asks you to invest in a Broadway show, please, please read this book. This is book. This book is everything I love about nonfiction because it's utterly fascinating. This is the Song of the Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History by Glenn Berger.
- [30:29]
Katie Cobb
If you're considering investing in a Broadway show, may I consider. May I ask you to consider becoming a patron of currently reading podcasts?
- [30:37]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Exactly.
- [30:38]
Katie Cobb
It's much safer. Nobody ever gets hurt on set. We're doing great, guys.
- [30:42]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
We have 100% safety rating.
- [30:44]
Katie Cobb
We do. It's been more than six and a half years since our last incident. We're doing great. Great.
- [30:49]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
And also the other big difference, we actually deliver a product right.
- [30:55]
Katie Cobb
And it's not $65 million. Just down the drain. Down the Poo Poo show. Okay.
- [31:00]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
That book, that book is like, it's not super sizable. I think it's a normal size, maybe 350 page book. But that, that's a milkshake book. It was fascinating.
- [31:09]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I want this. Yeah, I. My phone is bricked right now, so I can't put it on hold. But I put a big star in my notes that I take while we're actually talking every week. So I'm coming back. We gotta circle back when we're done. Love that. Okay, Meredith, My third book this week is another one that you know. It's Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. I can't wait to talk about this book. Me? Yes.
- [31:34]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Just you.
- [31:35]
Katie Cobb
Just me. Guys, this is my book. I can't wait to tell you about it. This will surely be on my Top Books of the Year list, so we do need to chat about it. This one came out right at the start of this year and was featured on our March Indie Press list with an unlikely story in Massachusetts. Book boyfriend Bill joined us for that episode, which was super great. Again, if you like that content, that March Indie press list, go listen to that. That's fantastic.
- [31:58]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yes.
- [31:59]
Katie Cobb
He also called it one of his best books of the year, so I feel pretty vindicated in the way I feel about it. Here's the setup. This is a dual book story. In our first one we have Zellu, a disabled wannabe author who can't seem to channel Toni Morrison's writing as much as she would like to in the high literary books of her author dreams. When her life turns to crap all in one day. She's at her sister's wedding when she's fired from her job and her attempts at high literary have been rejected again by every publisher ever. She decides to take her vengeance by getting high and sitting down to write and she pens something just for herself. She doesn't care what anybody else thinks. She doesn't need Toni Morrison's voice in her head. This is just what Zalu wants to write. It's a totally out of character novel about robots and AI in a post human world and the prose just flows out of her, surprising Zelu, but nobody else. It becomes a smash success throughout this novel. We also switched to the other book. Rusted Robots tells the story of Ankara and Ijele, a Hume or a robot with a body and a ghost or an AI that has no physical form. Those two are attempting to find common ground before the two robot factions destroy one another in a war. In the human story, Zelu is surrounded by a large Nigerian family from two different tribal groups. They are not only different in their tribal makeup, they have differing opinions about her life, what she should be doing with it, what she is capable of or not, and what opportunities are right for her. Because she became disabled as a young girl, Zelu's life has been controlled often by her family. Zalu and her family alternate being pretty unlikable throughout the book. If you like one of them, you're gonna hate the other one and then it'll flip flop and you're gonna hate the family and you're gonna love Zelu back and forth the whole freaking time. Between their attempted control over her life due to her inability to walk and her dismissal of their concerns and utter disdain for the way her work is co opted by the film industry and pop culture at large, there is a lot of tension in this book. But for this reader, that didn't matter. Whichever story I was in during the book, I wanted to keep reading. I was concerned at the start that only one would be of interest to me, and I did not think that that would be the robot one. But both were richly layered and celebrated the power of story while also addressing the way that an author has to distance themselves from the work once it's out in the world. At the start of this book, Zellu is teaching a writing seminar about how the author has to die to their work, Death of the Author, in order for it to be taken in by readers. Once it's put into the world in a published form, it's no longer part of you. She is subsequently fired from that writing seminar, but the theory still stands. Once you've published your work, your role has ended. And so the title, plus the stories and the characters inside all worked together to bring that idea to life. Only through the death of the author can a story truly live. I loved this book. I gave it five stars. I highly recommend it. It is not for everyone, but it was absolutely for me. This is Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor.
- [35:06]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, and this is one that's really, really interesting because it is on so many people's best of, you know, best of the year list. I think we absolutely will see that. I really ended up struggling with this book. I finished it and I think it says a lot about the book that I was always, no matter how much I struggled with it, I was never going to put it down. So that says a lot about the book itself. I ended up giving it two stars. It probably will be my most hated book of the year, but I think I can see why people have such differing opinions about it. I can see I struggled mightily with finding a character that I didn't absolutely loathe all the way through and that for me, I don't have to have like a bunch of likable characters, but there has to be someone that I'm rooting for in some way and this book doesn't have that. So that just is something that I really struggle with. And also I was just dead bored by the book within a book by halfway through and I just wanted to claw my eyes out. I was so incredibly bored by it. But lots of people felt the complete opposite about it. So I didn't bring it as a current read because I didn't want. Because I knew that you were going to bring it and you were going to absolutely love it.
- [36:31]
Katie Cobb
Yeah.
- [36:31]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
And also I think this is one that is worth reading. I think it's a fantastic book club book. It's a great book to read in discussion.
- [36:40]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [36:41]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
I think that I also wonder if I would have liked it better if I had done the audio of it. I think maybe I could have gotten through the book within a book easier if I had done the audio of it than in print. But then the physical copy has so much to recommend. It's such a gorgeous physical copy. So that's. It's a really, really interesting one.
- [36:59]
Katie Cobb
I had Bumi look at the audio. I did it in print, but I had Boomi look at the audio and she was like, there's definitely two Nigerian names in the narrator list. And then these other ones are maybe Ghanaian and Kamarooni and like she could pull the last names and stuff out of each of the narrators. So there's at least four narrators. And so it seems like they really did high quality production with the audio, if that's of interest to you. I can't speak to it because I didn't listen, but I bet it's great.
- [37:23]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
That's if I could do it again, that's how I would do it. And I wouldn't be surprised if I had a different experience with it. It's also one of those book that I think three years from now it might be a five star read for me.
- [37:35]
Katie Cobb
Right. Yeah.
- [37:36]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I was bringing a really particular point of view when I was reading it. So. But I. But again was never going to dnf it. All right. My third one is a book called One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig. Here's the setup in this fantasy story we meet Elspeth Spindle who's a young woman. She's got a lot of secrets. She shares her mind with an ancient spirit that she calls Nightmare. She nightmare came into her brain as a result of surviving a mysterious magical fever as a child. She lives in this place where magic. If you're magical, you're immediately going to be killed. And so she lives in constant fear that someone's going to discover this. So she's hidden away by her family in the misty woods of a place called Blunder. But when she crosses paths with a mysterious highwayman at the King's equinox celebration, everything changes. The world that Rachel Gillig has built in Blunder is deliciously complex. This is a kingdom trapped under this magical mist. There are 12 Providence cards that bestow specific powers. And there's a brewing conflict between those who fear very wild magic and those who believe it will be the kingdom's salvation. As Elsbeth and the mysterious Captain Raven embark on a dangerous quest to collect each one of the Providence cards, the lines between monster and savior begin to blur. All right, I read this one because so many people have recommended it. It's romantasy and it's been really, really big, especially on TikTok in the last year. And I definitely see why it's become a huge fan favorite. I loved the main character, the predictably named Elspeth Spindle. That name just feels really like, oh.
- [39:18]
Katie Cobb
Let'S pick a name generator.
- [39:20]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Exactly. But I loved the character and I loved the enemies to lovers romance that's in the book, which is a feature but it's focus of the story. That was a plus for me. I loved the sure hand with which Rachel Gillig writes. She's got a beautiful way with words and has the ability to visually describe a scene in a lush sort of way. It was very dreamy. And what I really, really enjoyed was the magical construct in this story. It's based on the premise that the current king and the kings for generations before him are trying to complete a deck of what they call Providence cards. Each one of the cards has a special power that it gives to the holder, but that power also has a consequence which they call a degradation that the magic takes from the user. So it's all very detailed and I love a detailed magical construct. I also really enjoyed that there are 12 main families and they are all named after trees like the yews, the rowans, the spindles. I dig that kind of thing. It brings out the inner 12 year old reader in me. And there was a plot twist near the end that had me gasping out loud and rocking back, back and forth in my chair. So it really, really, really affected me. But this book is light. It's light in that it's not heavy on politics or war or political machinations. I know a lot of people complain that some other series are really fraught with those Kinds of things. So I wanted to mention here there's a lovely magical construct and clear goals that our characters are trying to achieve. It's also romantic but not super spicy. I think there's one scene in it and it doesn't name the parts. And it is a lead female character who works to solve her own problems rather than waiting to be saved. And then a male character with several green flags. So for these reasons, I have enjoyed handing this to the older teenage female readers who are in my life and they've loved this story. This first book does end in a cliffhanger, but I think if you know that going in, it won't bother you. The second one gets even higher Goodreads ratings and both are well over four stars on Goodreads. This is one Dark Window by Rachel Gillig.
- [41:31]
Katie Cobb
Is it a duology or. I believe it's gonna be. Do you know? Because we love a duology around here.
- [41:39]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, they're just two books.
- [41:40]
Katie Cobb
Yes.
- [41:41]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, it's a two book series. The cat, the. The. It's called the Shepherd King series. So. Yeah. And they've got beautiful covers. This is definitely for you. If you love Romantasy, that leans heavily into a fairy tale feeling and that's really a sweet spot for me.
- [41:56]
Katie Cobb
Okay.
- [41:57]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah. Like a curse of Darker, lonely.
- [41:59]
Katie Cobb
Yep.
- [41:59]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, that's what we've got here. So I loved it. All right, Katie, those are our six current reads. So now we are going to do something a little bit different. We are going to talk about. I've been using as we all have, not like this is special for me. I've been using AI more and more in my work to take kind of low key things that. To make those low key things faster. And also I've been using it to, to get me to what I call about 30 miles an hour on an idea instead of starting, if I have an idea, ChatGPT or Claude. I use Claude almost exclusively because for the stuff I do, Claude is like Claude's not where you go. If you want, like let's code something or let's do big mathy things. Cloud is really, really good. If you're more like the liberal arts major and you want to use Chat GPT And I use it because it gets me. I have a general idea and I can use it to get me up, to get my brain going. And then once I'm going, I'm at that 30 miles an hour, then things really take off from there. But sometimes starting from zero and getting to 30 miles an hour is what really is the heaviest lift. So that cloud's been really, really helpful for me to just get my juices flowing, get me in a direction, and then I'm going. It's also something that I've been using to see patterns in my thoughts or patterns in different things that I'm doing. And that's where I think it can be really useful in your reading life. So I am considering a course, Katie, you know this that we want to put out that's around the idea of Read or Know Thyself. Right. So I've been thinking a lot about what I want that course to include, how I want to put that together. And one of the things that we know about Reader Know Thyself is the more you can see patterns in your own reading, the more you can go towards what works for you and, and not spend time on things that aren't working for you. So ChatGPT or Claude or any of the LLMs can help us do this. So I have three questions that I think can be useful to just kind of give you a sense of some of the patterns I'm talking about in order to do this particular. I mean, you can, you can Ask Claude or ChatGPT any number of things, but I decided for the purposes of this deep dive that I was going to take my 2024 reading tracker. Now I happen to use the currently Reading Reading Tracker. You don't have to have that for this exercise, really. You just want to give the LLM the large language model. You want to give it an idea of what did you read and what did you think about it. That could be that just a list that you've done literally with your hand, you've put a list on your notebook, take a picture of that, upload that into Claude, make a PDF. I found you can upload especially to ChatGPT. You can upload spreadsheets. But I found that the easiest way for me to work with our spreadsheet was to make it a PDF. I tried a few different ways and that was just the way that I could quickly and easily get it to work. And so I made a PDF of the worksheet that includes the reading log. So the name, the name of the book, the author, my rating, it includes, I, I happen to cut and paste a bunch of notes that I, you know, what I think about the book in there and all the other data that I track. So I made a PDF and I put it into Claude and I asked it three questions. We will put these in the show notes. You don't have to be taking notes right now, but the first one is and Katie, I just messaged this to you in in our Our Message app. What patterns do you see in my so I'm asking Claude, what patterns do you see in my reading across formats and what might that reveal about my reading habits or preferences? So this is what Claude said to me. He said, looking at your 2024 reading tracker, I notice some fascinating patterns in how you consume books across different formats. You have a healthy mix of print, digital and audiobooks, and there's a clear pattern in what you choose for each format. Your print books tend to be the ones that you've thoughtfully acquired from indie bookstores or as gifts. These often appear to be books that you want to savor or keep permanently. Many of these also have strong visual appeal, like the Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World or books with Emotional Significance that you want to read slowly. Like the gifts of imperfection, your digital reads, particularly Amazon, Kindle and NetGalley, seem to fall into two categories immediate gratification, like thrillers you weren't willing to wait for, or advanced copies that you're reviewing. This suggests that you use digital reading as both a convenience tool and a way to stay ahead of publishing trends. Then he says, what's particularly revealing is your audiobook choices. You tend toward longer titles like the Stand or series continuations like your Robert Jordan reading. This suggests that you intuitively developed a strategy for tackling intimidating page counts through audio, which makes your daunting books more approachable. So it's very, very interesting to get that sense of what kinds of books are you automatically choosing in each format? You probably have a sense of that, but it might pull out some things for that are interesting. So Katie, did you put in your tracker?
- [47:29]
Katie Cobb
Yes, I put in the tracker, the PDF version of it as you asked me to create at the beginning of our show today. And then I just pasted in that exact question that you sent me and it gave me all kinds of interesting things. It does say you're an audio first reader, which I'm not surprised about. We all know because of my reading log that I read about 2/3 audio most years, even though I want it to go up. It had some interesting things about when I buy books because I mark off when I'm reading my shelves in my reading tracker. So it says print still matters for you. The number that you marked off as owned, TBR purchased or local indie bookstore indicates an appreciation for physical books, likely for enjoyment, collection or sentimental reasons. And that's exactly what it indicates for me. I also really love that, you know, it kind of sifted it down to what this all reveals about me as a reader. And it says that I am three things I'm Efficient and immersive Audiobooks help you fit reading into your life, but you're not sacrificing depth. You often pick complex or character driven books in audio form. Exactly. Yes. A lot of times I will pivot toward audio if I know that I'm not going to have the focus or the bandwidth to be able to really sink into a character driven book. But I still want to read it.
- [48:46]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Right.
- [48:46]
Katie Cobb
It's a way for me to get into the story. It says I'm a multimodal reader. I enjoy adapting format to mood time and setting audiobooks for commuting or chores, print for winding down, digital for quick reads or exclusives like fan fiction or galley copies. That's usually what I'm reading on my Kindle. And then intentional reading. Your use of local indie bookstores, participation in review programs, and broad genre coverage My wheelhouse is very large. All suggest you're an intentional, engaged reader who values both pleasure and purpose in reading feels very revealing.
- [49:17]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
It does, it does. Exactly. And again, none of these things are necessarily going to be things that you had no idea about in your reading. But it helps to begin to narrow us down as to who we are as readers. And again, you've heard me say a million times. I think that that is the key to an ever more enjoyable reading life. All right, here's the second question that I want you to ask, and that is, what does my star rating distribution reveal about me as a reader and reviewer? Okay, so for me, it says your star rating distribution tells a fascinating story about your reading selection and your evaluation style. The most striking pattern is your remarkably positive skew. The vast majority of your ratings fall between 3.5 and 4.5 stars, with very few books below 3. This suggests a couple things. You've developed an excellent book selection instinct. You know what works for you, and you choose books likely to deliver that. And you seem to be fundamentally an optimistic reader who approaches books looking for their strengths rather than their weaknesses. It says particularly telling is how you handle your 4.5 and 5 star ratings. These are reserved for ones that truly exceeded expectations, and they're often either part of a series that you deeply connect with or books that were in particularly immersive worlds. That's a really interesting connection that I hadn't made, but when I looked at my five star books. That was absolutely true. And also says you are a discerning but generous reader and you, you like to you, you really prefer to celebrate book successes rather than maintaining high critical standards. Which, to be fair, that is true of me as a book rater. I tend to be a fairly easy, fairly easy rater, especially between 3.5 and 4.5. All right, what does it tell you about your rating?
- [51:16]
Katie Cobb
All right. It says that I am a generous, enthusiastic reader. So I do give a lot of four stars. But it explicitly calls out that I show nuance and consideration within the 4 star range. I'm not just 4 stars means I liked it. 5 stars means I loved it. I do a lot of 4.25, 4.5, 4.75. And that's because those distinctions matter to me quite a bit. It says because you're giving out a lot of four stars or higher, you're excellent at curating your tbr, you know what you like. And I thought it was very interesting. It says you either DNF or avoid books that are not for you. You really hate read. Which is true. I'm not a very good DNFer. But also I don't think I'm picking up a lot of those books, books that I'm going to end up hating. And the final observation that ChatGPT made about my star ratings is that I'm motivated by discovery, not perfection. There's a wide range of 3.5 to 4.75 stars, and that reflects a reader who values a book's unique contribution, even if it's not flawless. Oh, I could put that. I could like tattoo that on my body. And it reflects a reader who has multiple reading goals, pleasure, education, connection, and escapism. That there are so many needs that reading meets in my life that it's not one thing. Right. I'm not like, well, all of my reasons for reading are fun because that's not what my reading life is for. And it absolutely can be your reading life. There's no should here. Right. Like anybody who's listening, I'm not saying that you should not have fun in your reading life, but my reading life has a lot of different goals to it. And ChatGPT found those right away for me.
- [52:52]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Exactly. It's very, very interesting to see it put together these patterns. And then one final question to have you plug into ChatGPT. Based on my reading patterns in 2024, what types of books appear to be expanding my reading horizons versus providing comfort? And what might that suggest about my reading values? So it told me that I have a balance between exploration and comfort. Your comfort zone, clearly, is mystery, and these appear regularly throughout your tracker and receive high ratings. What's revealing, Meredith, is that you are pushing boundaries. I notice deliberate ventures into poetry, philosophy, and spirituality. These often appear in your morning readings, suggesting that it is in the morning that you are more likely to read for growth rather than entertainment. Lean into that. And it also talks about how I'm reading more nonfiction. And it says another expansion pattern is in your buddy reads, which include more experimental horror and challenging content than in your solo reading. This suggests that you value community as a support system for literary exploration. You're more willing to take risks when you're reading alongside others, and it goes on from there. But really interesting to see that, of course, I could then follow up with, in both Claude or chatgpt, I could say recommend some books in these categories that are pushing my boundaries that I might want to consider. So I can ask it for some book recommendations along the lines like within that same chat, I can have it build on that and, you know, say, or say, recommend a couple other genres that. And with books with a couple of specific recommendations that might be new places for me to expand my horizon. So I think that's a really, you know, once you're in this chat, once you've created a chat or in. In Claude, I've created a project for these kinds of chats, and doing it within a project gives it the ability to kind of hold all of those chats together and, and build on itself and give me better and better responses. So these are just three places to start. And hopefully this will get your juices flowing as to other things that you can use your reading tracker for in order to see these patterns. And then of course, you can go back in time and you can compare 2021 with 2022 or 2021 with 2025, and you can just begin to see the differences and the patterns that emerge are really useful.
- [55:25]
Katie Cobb
Yeah, I love that. And I think it's really key to remember that it's called ChatGPT because it's supposed to be conversational, right? It's not supposed to be. You ask it one question now that conversation is done and you walk away. Although you can use it like that, you can just pull one quick set of recommendations. But if you continue to use the same little conversation that you've started with ChatGPT and say, okay, continue to refine this or with that same data, tell me something more about this aspect of it that's where the chat part of chatgpt really comes into play. Right, Right. For me. For that final question, it said that I have two main categories of reading, which is comfort Reads and horizon expanding reads. And again, not surprising, but cool to see it make it more plain for me. So comfort reads are romance, cozy fantasy, repeat authors, continuous series, audiobooks with narrators that I already have shown that I love in the past, and those are important to my reading. And then it calls out that I push boundaries with horizon expanding reads, which includes diversity in author demographics, nonfiction about hard things, genre bending or experimental formats. And the cool thing here is that it says one of the most important things in this part of your reading is that titles marked with indie press list show a taste for boundary pushing or under the radar work. I love seeing that because we have said that over and over again when we're preparing for and recording the indie press list is that these are not necessarily books that I would have chosen for myself. And yet when I gave them a chance, they ended up being a good fit for me, knowing that those are ones that I'm very easy to not continue reading or dnf. So I like seeing that. Okay, well, when one grabs you from the indie press list, even if it's not something that's normally a Katie book, it does usually end up playing out for you. That's cool.
- [57:19]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, absolutely. It's really, really useful insights and another reason why collecting this data. Again, whether you're just making a list of your, you know, title of the book author and your rating, or you're going deeper into it with something like a spreadsheet, it's another way that use that, that we can use that data to deepen our understanding of ourselves as readers. Which of course the goal of that is to choose books as we move forward that bring us more and more of whatever it is that we're looking for in our reading life. So hopefully again, we will include those three questions in our show notes and then we would love to know, do you have other questions that you've come up with or are you using AI to deepen your reading life in other ways? We'll do a post on Instagram about this and we would love to hear what you think about it.
- [58:13]
Katie Cobb
Indeed we would.
- [58:14]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Okay, let's go to the fountain. Katie, what's your wish this week?
- [58:17]
Katie Cobb
Okay, this is kind of a bookend to my bookish moment. Okay, so I'm like putting parentheses around both sides of this episode. I wish for an app that would let me get rid of a lot of other apps. This is an idea that's been percolating around in my head, especially with those focus and distraction books that I've been reading lately. I was chatting with my friend Candice about it this week. So now it's a little more developed. And now that I'm speaking it into the universe, I assume that next week somebody will announce, look, we made this app, and it's exactly what Katie said, because there will never be time for me to actually make it happen. Right. So we're going to pretend this app is called Currently Reading, because this is our show. We do what we want.
- [58:56]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Right.
- [58:57]
Katie Cobb
It is a social media app, but with the goal of getting you off your phone to do one of two things. First, actually read your book. Yes, please and thank you. Second, just like Meredith's bookish moment, meet up with other readers in the world. It is a paid subscription model because we don't want ads and we don't want the goal to be that you spend more of your time on this app. Right, Right. Which is you have to pay for the server and the app development somehow. So instead of saying, well, spend your time here and we'll sell your attention. No. Three bucks a month. You're good. Right? Paid app. It is an aggregator. It will have a combination. You would use it like a combination of other apps that you already have. It could pull in your books from storygraph or Goodreads. You can connect your Libro fm, your audible account, as well as your library cards. You can make friends on the app and connect with their social accounts. And then it would do some of the other things we've talked about. It would find your book twins for you. It could analyze your reading using ChatGPT and make a reader profile for you to help you find the people that most match up with you. It will move a book to the top of your TBR if you search for it on your browser, because, girl, you probably don't need to buy it again. It's probably somewhere in your house already. Right. If it's already on your TBR and you search it a second time, it probably already exists. And this is a very important part for me. It will connect to local bookish events, meetups with bookish people. All of that will be incorporated into the interface. Like some dating apps that say this person is nearby and wants to hang out. It'll be readers who want to talk about books instead. It will let you know if a book you read is being featured in a local book club or an author you've enjoyed in the past is doing a live event nearby. It's a catch all app, but the goal is to get you off your phone and to get you back into the world of books and the world at large and connecting with readers instead of doom scrolling. So that's my wish. That's what I want. Next week somebody will be like, guys, guess what? I just found this amazing app and it does all these things and I've spent so much time off my phone because of this one app. And I'm gonna be like, thank you.
- [61:04]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Awesome. We love it. Yes. I mean this, this, you know, go is sort of the social element that goes with the database element that I want so badly of, you know, all of the books that we've talked about and when they, we talked about them on the show and immediately being able to be like, oh, I'm, I'm thinking about One Dark Window and someone recommended it to me. Or I see on the app that somebody recommended it to me and I know that they talked about it on the show. I think that was a book that I was thinking I really liked. Boom. You would immediately be able to like, click play on the exact part of the exact show where I start talking about One Dark Window. It would just be so awesome to have all that together in one place. It would be really, really great.
- [61:49]
Katie Cobb
You can listen to that on the way to your book club meetup about it so that you have a better idea of like how you want to set it and what kind of opinions you had and whether they were the same or different from what Meredith thought about it. Oh, it'd be so great.
- [62:00]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, along the lines of knowing yourself as a reader, of course, in the readerly social media of this last week, everyone has been talking about www.readyyourcolor.com and this I, you know, for better or for worse, I love knowing myself as a reader. I love quizzes that tell me like the kind of person I am or of these 12 things, which I love, that I love a construct. I love a personality quiz. And this one is a readerly personality quiz that I think actually does a pretty good job of categorizing us in a new way. Now again, you can go to ReadyYourColor.com, we will put that link in show notes. It's like 20 or 25 questions that are really quick to answer. I think it takes less than five minutes to take this quiz. I'm a red reader. Did you take it, Katie?
- [62:54]
Katie Cobb
I didn't because I saw it and I was like, this looks so fun. I'm pocketing this for later. And then what do you think happened?
- [63:00]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
I can write it. You should take it. I will be interested to see what you are. But a red reader, of course, is exactly the kind of reader that I am. Read mostly for entertainment. There's, I think, six different colors. I've seen lots of people take the quiz and I have been not surprised. Like, I think it does a pretty good job of identifying the kind of books that you really, really like. So if you like that kind of thing, head over to ReadyYourColor.com and they make it really easy for you to share. That's another way for us to know kind of who reads in some of the similar ways. Again, it's not the end all, be all. It doesn't tell the full story of who we are as readers. It's just one other element that gives us an idea of the kind of reading that we lean into or comes really easily to us.
- [63:48]
Katie Cobb
So you could be like Enneagram one Red reader, Ravenclaw. Right. It's just part of your exactly profile.
- [63:54]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Yeah, exactly Right. So that's my wish that if this kind of thing is fun for you, go take the quiz. Tell us what color reader you are. Pink splash.
- [64:03]
Katie Cobb
Pink splash.
- [64:04]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
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.
- [64:14]
Katie Cobb
Find me sometimes Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Puttivong Evans. You can find her on Instagram at Most of megansreads full show notes with.
- [64:26]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
The title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com youm.
- [64:37]
Katie Cobb
Can also follow the show on Instagram at currentlyreading podcast or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com.
- [64:44]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
And if you want more of this kind of content, you can join us as a bookish friend on Patreon. It's $5 a month and you get a ton of content, you get a ton of community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also rate and review us on Apple podcasts and shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [65:04]
Katie Cobb
Bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [65:10]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
All right. Until next week, may your coffee be.
- [65:12]
Katie Cobb
Hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [65:14]
Meredith Mundy Schwartz
Happy reading, Katie.
- [65:15]
Katie Cobb
Happy reading, Meredith.