Season 8, Episode 20: Finding Bookish Twins + Organizing Our Recommendation Sources

Summary

Podcast Summary: Currently Reading

Season 8, Episode 20: Finding Bookish Twins + Organizing Our Recommendation Sources
Release Date: December 15, 2025
Hosts: Meredith Monday Schwartz and Kaytee Cobb

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Meredith and Kaytee delve into the joys and quandaries of navigating the vast universe of book recommendation sources. They explore what it feels like to find a “bookish twin,” discuss how emotional responses affect their reading habits, share their top recent reads (both fiction and nonfiction), and conduct a practical deep dive into how they track and curate book recommendations. The show wraps up with their “Wishes for the Fountain,” encouraging listeners to give themselves reading grace and sharing a podcast-listening hack.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Bookish Moment of the Week [02:07]

• Kaytee’s Moment:
  • Dinner conversation with bookish friends Lizzie and Jen about being so emotionally overwhelmed by a book that you have to set it down.
    • Kaytee does not experience this, saying, “If I'm obsessed with a book and I love it, I will do anything to keep reading. I'm like, children, fend for yourselves…” [03:09]
    • Meredith admits she does relate:
      • “I feel myself becoming invested to the point where I'm going to be vulnerable to that feeling. And that's, I think, where I'm like...sometimes I'll take a break because it just feels like too much.” [05:39]
• Meredith’s Moment:
  • Found a "book twin" in social media recs via Bookstagrammer Caitlin M. Lilly.
    • “...her videos are really, really high quality...we had all the same opinions on books...” [09:15]
    • Finding readers who match your taste “just makes me feel so positive about the world.” [10:27]

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2. Current Reads

Kaytee’s Current Reads

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin [10:45]

  • Classic, foundational feminist sci-fi novel — groundbreaking for its time and still powerful.
  • “This book is like philosophy mixed with science fiction...I loved the way that I had to think about the science fiction and the world building in this.” [14:52]
  • 4 stars; compared it to Hartman’s I Who Have Never Known Men; some slower, politically dense sections.

• Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves [19:52]

  • Nonfiction exploring the struggles of modern masculinity in education, work, and family.
  • Kaytee was wary but found it nuanced:
    • “I finished this book in September and now it's three months later and I still think about it every day as I look at the boys I'm raising and I consider how to make sure that I'm turning them into the best men that they can be…” [25:06]
  • Engaged with ideas like “redshirting” boys in school and the intersection of gender roles and education.

• I, Medusa by Ayanna Gray [32:40]

  • YA/New Adult Medusa retelling; lush, evocative, and feminist.
  • “This lush and evocative new adult retelling of the Greek myth fired on every cylinder. It was propulsive from first word to last...” [34:11]
  • Suitable for opening conversations with teens about consent and female autonomy.

Meredith’s Current Reads

• Life and Death and Giants by Ron Rendo [15:16]

  • Interwoven lives of small-town Amish, focused on Gabriel, a prodigious boy.
  • Deep emotional resonance; narrator perspectives include a veterinarian, Gabriel’s grandmother, a bar owner, and a coach.
  • “I read this novel with...emotional trepidation. From the very first pages I knew I cared way too much about these characters and I knew that author Ron Rendo was going to break my heart. And he absolutely did.” [17:22]
  • Docked one star for a jarring scene of magical realism.

• Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime by Val McDermid [26:19]

  • Nonfiction exploring the history and science of forensics.
  • “Easily one of the most interesting works of nonfiction that I've read. Not just this year, but ever.” [28:02]
  • Full of memorable real-life forensic cases, advances in technology, and transparency about the limits and ethics in forensic science.
  • Fun detail: Each page has a tiny illustration of a blowfly [31:02].

• The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper [36:33]

  • Interactive, illustrated, Agatha Christie-style murder mystery that readers solve by piecing together evidence.
  • Targeted at adults despite playful visuals; physical print is essential.
  • “It comes from Maureen Johnson...and Jay Cooper, who illustrated your guide to not getting murdered in a quaint English village. You know that book, and it's like if a mystery novel and one of those hunt a killer mystery boxes...had a baby.” [38:13]
  • Quirky format and abrupt ending – requires reader engagement to unveil the solution.

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3. Deep Dive: How Do You Track and Curate Book Recommendation Sources? [43:47]

Listener Question:
Rachel Kolbrenner asks for strategies on managing multiple sources (social, podcasts, groups) and keeping track of where one hears about books.

Kaytee’s Advice:

• Humorously suggests just using Currently Reading’s resources and search tools (“We made it so easy!”) [44:41].
• Realistically notes, “Whatever you do to keep track of who recommended a book has to be so easy that you can do it in, you know, two seconds without thinking about it. Because otherwise it will become too onerous...” [45:16]
• Suggests entering new books directly into a spreadsheet TBR with a “recommendation source” column before shelving them [52:04].

Meredith’s Approach:

• Uses screenshots on her phone when she encounters book recs, captions the images with the rec source (e.g., “Caitlin M. Lily”) [48:39].
• For print books, adds a post-it with source and date inside the cover [48:39].
• Her main use is for post-read data: assessing which rec sources (friends/bookstagrammers) match her taste [46:59].
• Extra: uses bookmarking functions (Instagram, TikTok) for rec posts [54:07].

Additional Tools Discussed:

• Storygraph’s tagging system for quickly marking rec sources [52:22].
• A forthcoming upgrade to the hosts’ reading tracker spreadsheet for better source tracking [55:41].
• Ultimately, both agree: Track only what is meaningful to you and don’t feel pressured to make reading into “work.”

Notable Quote:
“If you don't want any part of your reading to be work, I very much support that. And this is something that you should just completely let, like, just let it go. It doesn't matter. The book found me and it was supposed to, and that's all that matters.” – Meredith [55:32]

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4. Wishes for the Fountain [57:46]

• Kaytee:
  Wishes listeners will “give ourselves grace to start small” in implementing any reading life changes or tracking systems [57:46].

• Meredith:
  Excitedly shares a podcast app tip: On Apple Podcasts, you can set the play order to Oldest to Newest for binge-listening archives without endless scrolling [60:11].

  • “I am not kidding you that I had literal tears in my eyes when I figured this out...” [61:14]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Meredith (on emotional overwhelm in reading):
  “I feel myself becoming invested to the point where I'm going to be vulnerable to that feeling. And that's, I think, where I'm like...sometimes I'll take a break because it just feels like too much.” [05:39]
• Kaytee (on bookish twins):
  “When I feel those moments, I'm like, shh, Everybody go away. I've got to do the thing. I've got to be in it, you know?” [06:01]
• Kaytee (on raising boys):
  “It’s a joy and an honor to parent these boys and I’m grateful to the men I have around me who invite these kids into conversation regularly…” [25:47]
• Meredith (on forensic science):
  “She gives us examples of how they can also go really wrong...she’s committed to showing the full picture, including the controversy, the budget constraints… and the very real human costs.” [29:51]
• Meredith (on deckled edges and French flaps):
  “If there’s a book that has French flaps and deckled edges, it’s like a guy with great hands and forearms, like, please shut it down...” [57:11]

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Useful Timestamps

• [02:07]: Bookish Moments of the Week (Kaytee’s and Meredith’s emotional reading experiences)
• [10:45]: Kaytee’s first current read — Left Hand of Darkness
• [15:16]: Meredith’s first current read — Life and Death and Giants
• [19:52]: Kaytee’s second current read — Of Boys and Men
• [26:19]: Meredith’s second current read — Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime
• [32:40]: Kaytee’s third current read — I, Medusa
• [36:33]: Meredith’s third current read — The Creeping Hand Murder
• [43:47]: Deep Dive — Tracking Book Recommendation Sources
• [57:46]: Wishes for the Fountain (reading life grace and practical podcast tip)

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Tone and Style

Warm, candid, and practical—Meredith and Kaytee maintain their signature blend of close bookish friendship, book nerd enthusiasm, and gentle self-deprecation. Conversation is cozy but deliberate, with strong opinions, honest confessions, and supportive encouragement for all types of readers and organizational preferences.

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Summary for New Listeners

Whether you’re seeking your next “book twin,” wanting to tackle your messy recommendation-tracking system, or just enjoy hearing two friends dig deep into the emotional and practical sides of reading, this episode is packed with robust book discussions, heartfelt moments, and actionable tips for organizing your readerly life—without ever turning a bookish passion into a chore.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

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.

[A]

We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be small spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit the fountain.

[B]

I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And few things are as much fun as discovering a book twin.

[A]

And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And my reading life is rarely a full body experience. This is episode number 20 of season eight, and we are so glad you're here, Katie.

[B]

That sounds fun. Well, full body experience, this is a.

[A]

Whole discussion that I'm excited to get into. But Meredith, we got a comment on Spotify this week that somebody said they think you're saying a mom and a meanie.

[B]

Oh, that's interesting. And I was like, oh, I like.

[A]

It's kind of cute. I'm a mom and a meanie.

[B]

Well, you know, Jackson, so what I'm saying is a Mimi, because that's what my grandsons call me. Right. But Jackson, my 14 year old, will, when he's not so happy with me, he'll call me mean Mimi. Oh, no.

[A]

So it actually works a little bit. That's cute. It does. That's cute.

[B]

Yeah, 14 year olds are adorable. All right, Katie, let's talk about the fact that our deep dive today is going to be a reader question. It's a really, really good one. And it's about tracking and curating our recommendation sources. And I feel like for any of us who track our reading, this is a piece of the puzzle that is squidgy and hard to manage.

[A]

Gosh, seriously, it is a challenge.

[B]

It really is. So I can't promise any big answers, but we will at least chop it up.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

All right. But first, let's get to our bookish moment of the week. What have you got for us, Katie?

[A]

Okay, this is a bookish moment that just happened last night. And in the moment, I told these girls that they were going to hear about this on the show. So I went out to dinner with two local bookish friends, Lizzie and Jen. Hi, friends. We grabbed tacos and then we just sat and chatted for two hours. And of course, it turned to books, as it does for all of us, when we're with our. Our book buddies, our book besties, right? At one point, Lizzie stops the conversation and says, do you guys ever read a book and then have to set it down? Because it's just overwhelming to you. Not that you don't like it or it's too scary, but it's just too much. All of a sudden, and I'm looking at her like, no. If I'm obsessed with a book and I love it, I will do anything to keep reading. I'm like, children, fend for yourselves, right? I am not interested in chores or parenting or whatever else is happening. But Jen jumps in and starts agreeing about getting an itchy feeling in her chest. She keeps, like, itching her physical chest. And Lizzie says, yes, she feels it in her mouth. Like when you eat too many sweets in a row and you have to take a break. Listen, they saw my face and heard my what in the world is happening? With YouTube reactions. But I just don't get it. I don't get it. I get having feels about a book. I'm notoriously feely about books. I will cry. I will laugh out loud. I will. I will grasp it until my knuckles turn white. But the idea of loving a book so much that you have to stop reading it because it overwhelms you, not because you need to take a breath or. Or because you want it to last longer. Cause I asked all these questions, but just, like, I'm just gonna set that next to me. I'm not okay with continuing right now. And I see your face, and I said, look, I'm gonna talk about this on the show. And there's at least an 80% chance that Meredith is gonna say, yep, absolutely. I get it. But to me, this sounds bonkers. I don't understand it. So tell. Am I right?

[B]

It's interesting that you say that, because I am gonna talk about a book today that I kind of had that feeling about. And for me, it's not necessarily because I'm loving it so much, although I. The book that stands out in my mind that I felt that most about was the 10,000 doors of January. I did kind of feel so overwhelmed with how perfect it was that I was just like, oh, I just kind of gotta. I just need to take a break for a second because it really. You know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But this book I'm going to talk about today was really less that and more. And I get this periodically where I'll be like, oh, this is gonna get me emotionally. Yeah.

[A]

Is that where you feel It.

[B]

I feel it. Yes. Where I'm like, I don't like. I don't like to have a lot of feelings.

[A]

We know it's okay.

[B]

I don't like to have a lot of. Especially I like good feelings. I don't like sad or neck, like, sad or melancholy feelings. And then this book and books like it, even though they're really good. I feel that moment getting ready. I feel myself becoming invested to the point where I'm going to be vulnerable to that feeling. And that's, I think, where I'm like. It's kind of like some people when they read horror books, they feel the same way. Where they're like, I'm Tiffany, tiptoeing closer to the horror. I'm tiptoeing closer to that feeling of emotional gotcha. And I don't. I'm not comfortable with that.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And sometimes I'll take a break because it just feels like too much.

[A]

That too muchness. I. I just don't get. I don't get it. That's not a thing that I experience. But I felt. When we were having the conversation, I was like. I'm pretty sure Meredith is going to.

[B]

Say she gets this, which is interesting because I would have thought you would say that. I. That I don't feel that way.

[A]

I don't know what it was. It was the way that these two were playing off each other. And I sat there and felt totally outside the conversation. They kept looking over at me and laughing like, katie, you just think we're crazy. And I was like, no, I love you, too. I genuinely love you. And I love that this is a thing that you experience and that you get each other so well in this. But I. I just don't like when I feel like, oh, there's. There's a big. Like a big resonance coming in this book. I want to push my body into the story. Like, I want to lean into it really hard. And it sounds like exactly opposite of what now the three of you are talking about. And it doesn't have to be. And they said this, too. It doesn't have to be. Like, this is going to be one of my best books of the year. It has this thing in it where I can't even. I can't even finish reading it because it's so. It's in my teeth. It's in my chest, it's in my mouth. Like, it's this feeling that's overwhelming to me. It's just a moment will catch you, right? And I'm like, yeah, When I feel those moments, I'm like, shh, Everybody go away. I've got to do the thing. I've got to be in it, you know? I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I don't like those big feelings. It's the same thing that will mean, like. Like, I could be shopping, you know, going to a bunch of little shops in a cute town or whatever, and just, you know, kind of, like, browsing or whatever, and all of a sudden, like, a Sarah McLachlan song will come on the speakers, and I will. And I will. I will leave. I will, like, run like I'm being chased. Like, that's how, like, music will affect me like that. Not just Sarah McLachlan, but, like, sad or melancholy music. It. I just, like. It's just makes me want to run. It makes you want to run. Like, not just, like, saunter away, but, like, sprint away. I really. And this kind of sometimes does the same thing, but with books, it's a little bit different. So it's an interesting thing to think about. It's an interesting thing to consider. I'm sure that our listeners will have some opinions about if they. This is either gonna resonate or they're gonna be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I feel like there's not gonna be a lot of middle ground.

[A]

Right, right. Like, I. I find that, but sometimes it makes me this and sometimes it makes me that. I don't think so. I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

It'll resonate or not. Well, my bookish moment of the week is something that happens to me very rarely, and it happens rarely enough that it was my bookish moment of the week, and that is that I ran across a. Well, first of all, it's rare that I find anybody that I find on TikTok for books on Booktok that I really want to follow, because I love TikTok, but I don't spend a ton of time on Booktok. I spend a lot of time on Bookstagram.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Booktok tends to skew younger than what would be, like, my book twin, but this woman whose name is Caitlin M. Lilly, at least that's her handle on Instagram. I think it's her handle on TikTok, too, but that's her handle on Instagram.

[A]

Instagram.

[B]

And she's younger. She's probably 28, 29. I don't know. But we are. I'm convinced that we are book twins. When I ran across this woman, I got completely sucked in because her videos are really really high quality. But also she has a way about her that really makes you want to listen to what she's saying. She's very good at social media videos, which is a very specific talent, I'm convinced. And she really does it very, very well.

[A]

But.

[B]

But then as I listened to her talk about a lot of books, I'm like, we had like all the same opinions on books until most recently. She talked about God, God of the woods. And she didn't hate it, but she didn't love it. I was like, really? I'm really, really surprised about that. And she gave her a Demir. I'm surprised, too. No, I didn't, I didn't. But what I didn't say is I thought we were book twins and that, that one. Because you know how when you're deciding on a book twin, you. You have a few books that are kind of your. Yeah, it's like a madness test.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Like you have a few books that you're like, if you hated God of the woods, then we're not going to be book twins. You know, that kind of thing. But we have so much crossover. So I wanted to mention it a, because I do really admire people who are very natural in that milieu. I think that's really interesting. And also because if you're my book twin, I think she might be a great follow for you. So again, she's on TikTok and she's on Instagram. Caitlin M, Lily K, A, I, T, L, Y, N. The letter M. Like Meredith. Wouldn't it be weird if it was Meredith?

[A]

Or Monday?

[B]

It's probably not. And then Lilly L, I, L, L, Y. So we'll put that in the show notes. But anyway, I love it when I find a book twin. It just makes me feel so positive about the world.

[A]

Yeah. And that works perfectly with our deep dive today because. Yeah, finding good recommendation sources. It's a thing. Exactly.

[B]

It very, very, very much is a thing that adds a ton of goodness to your. Your reading life. All right, K, get into our current reads. What's your first one?

[A]

All right, my first one is back list. I am going to talk about the Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Okay, this is a classic novel from 1969 that was absolutely groundbreaking. When it released nearly 60 years later, it finally ended up on my TBR and on my current reads. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote 23 full novels over the course of her career. And sometimes you just have to start somewhere. This one has the best title, so reader Roulettes says, that's what I'm choosing. Although the Lathe of Heaven is a close second. I think that's a great title. So this is what I grabbed. It's also considered to be the first work of feminist science fiction and was widely recognized when it won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. So I was excited to dive in. In this world that she's building, a single human is sent to the frigid planet of Winter, aptly named. There he meets the inhabitants who have found a fluid understanding of gender. There's no sexual prejudice and no preconception about what type of being belongs with any other type. And this is like the defining characteristic of their society. As an ambassador. His goal is to invite this planet and its people into an intergalactic confederation and help them with the transition to being part of this broader civilization that has been being built over centuries. But in order to incorporate a civilization, you have to understand it first. So rather than diving right in on this diplomacy, he spends his time finding commonality and understanding between his own upbringing and views and those of the people of Winter. This book is like philosophy mixed with science fiction, which, frankly, is true of a lot of science fiction. Right. We observe other worlds, and that allows us to take a broader look at our own, like a good comedian. And Le Guin does that masterfully here, while they're not the same story at all. I found myself feeling the same sense of otherworldliness that I felt in the pages of I who have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Hartman that I Talked about probably six months ago. Now. That one was published 25 years after this one. So it may have been informed by or in conversation with this work. But they felt like friends somehow between the two of them. Because the central journey here has to do with ambassadorship and diplomacy and a diplomatic mission. There's a lot of politicking these pages. And for me, that's not my favorite part of science fiction. Or fantasy, for that matter. When there's wars or, like, we have to negotiate a lot. Ugh. Miss me with that. It's also interesting to me that when we look forward from 1969 and think about Ursula Le Guin sitting down to write this novel and her thinking way ahead in the future, she thought that by the time we managed to master interplanetary travel, we would still be struggling mightily with the patriarchy on Earth. Like, I wanted to see more progress at home before we tried to integrate with civilizations across the universe. This guy is an ambassador to another planet, which means we can travel to other planets successfully, and he's still like, oh, it's so weird that men aren't in charge. Gosh, that's bizarre. And it's like she couldn't even wrap her head around this idea that hundred however long it would take to master that science that we wouldn't have figured out some of these other societal things in the meantime. However, this book is complex, it requires attention, and it's also really readable. I did not love the narrator, whose name is George Guidal, but he did grow on me throughout the story. I just wish it would have been a better experience to start with for him. Le Guin has a really large series called Earthsea that is widely acclaimed as well, but I would be happy to take suggestions for other novels on where go next with her. Maybe if Bill Largent wants to chime in. I always love his recommendations. This one, I loved the way that I had to think about the science fiction and the world building in this. So I did give it four stars because it had me so wrapped up in the story, even with the elements that I didn't love or that I found a little bit slow and laggy. So this was the Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

[B]

I love that you read like a classic in the genre.

[A]

I love.

[B]

I just love going back, not like to the 1800s or whatever, but like 60 years and like digging into what did we think? I think that's fascinating. What did, what did science fiction look like 60 years ago? Yeah, I would definitely like to read more really readable books that were written that long ago, right?

[A]

Yes, exactly. All right, what's your first one?

[B]

All right, my first one is that book that I was unexpectedly talking about during your bookish moment of the week. And that is a book that has been a lot of places. It's called Life and Death and Giants by Ron Rendo.

[A]

I almost bought this yesterday. I was told to by everyone.

[B]

Sure. Here's the setup. In the small town of Lakota, Wisconsin, where Amish and English communities exist side by side, an unmarried Amish woman delivers an 18 pound baby boy that no one quite knows what to make of. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what everyone thought. The baby is Gabriel Fisher. And he isn't just large. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and possesses extraordinary athletic abilities that set him apart from the get. After his teenage brother raises him on a struggling farm, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who try to hide him away from the modern world. But when you're nearly 8ft tall at 17. Anonymity doesn't last and that is all I think you need to know about this book. The setups everywhere give you so much too much. I went in completely blind and I think that was really, really the way to do it. So Roxanna asked me to drop everything and to read this book with her and I'm really glad that I did. We had just finished Katabasis, a book completely devoid of characters that I could care about and so Life and Death and Giants was its perfect opposite. Where Katabasis left me cold, this book surrounded me with people that I immediately loved. I read this novel with what I described earlier, what I call emotional trepidation. From the very first pages I knew I cared way too much about these characters and I knew that author Ron Rendo was going to break my heart. And he absolutely did. This book is told through four distinct narrators. The the veterinarian who delivers Gabriel, his Amish grandmother Hannah, my favorite character the local bar owner who bridges the Amish and the English worlds and a football coach. I loved dear sweet eight foot plus tall Gabriel and I really loved the characters around him telling his story because you'll notice that he is not one of the points of view that we get. Each voice is distinct and I thought really well realized so that you feel like you're sitting across from them at a kitchen table while they share this extraordinary tale of this extraordinary life. For a football loving mom like me, this was a book I both loved and read with trepidation, knowing where the story might take me. Proceed with caution football mamas, because there is some stuff I also loved learning a lot more about the Amish community in the modern world. Rindo doesn't romanticize or simplify their world. He shows it with all the complexity that it really has, exploring tensions between faith and doubt, tradition and change, and living with the sacred and the secular. Grandmother Hannah's struggle with deep gaps in her faith felt especially honest and was the element of the book that I resonated with the most. Now I will say that there is one scene toward the end of the book that bypassed emotional and went all the way to histrionic hyperbolic and that one scene took the book down a full star for me. It felt completely out of place in an otherwise well calibrated novel. I will say this is a book that I liked more right as I read it and finished it than I have as I've considered it since. You know how some books do that. The more I think about it. The less, especially, like the last quarter of it, the out of the blue magical realism that just felt so shoved in and just wrong to me. It's gone down in my estimation as I've considered it since I finished it. But when I finished it, I felt really positively about it. But for that one scene, isn't it. I think it's very interesting, as some books do that one direction or the other, but this is Life and Death and Giants by Ron Rendo.

[A]

Okay. I mean, it sounds like a Katie book. Yeah.

[B]

I really think that this is one that you would really like.

[A]

Yeah. And it was one of the bookish friends posted. You know, if Katie hasn't read this, she should. And then I said, do I need this right now? And Elizabeth was like, yes, go get it. And like three other people said, katie, go right now.

[B]

Yeah, Elizabeth really, really liked it. And I do think that it would be a really big hit for you, and I would really love to have you read it and bring it to the show because I'd really love to talk about it with you.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. Okay, Mom. I'm going to make it happen. It'll happen. All right.

[B]

What's your next one?

[A]

My second book this week is almost the opposite of what you were talking about, because I had some feelings about it when I finished it, but it's just. It's stuck in there and there's things happening in there. So this is my nonfiction this week. It's called Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. I heard about this one from Jonathan Haidt, who I've been following ever since I finished the Anxious Generation. Time has no meaning, so it was either early this year or late last year, some number of months ago. I was a bit wary going into it, though, because the subtitle is why the Modern Male Is Struggling, why It Matters, and what to Do About It. And it feels to me like that is not totally true. I was worried I'd be picking up a Woe is me Feminism is ruining everything book. But I'm also raising three boys as a single mom, so it matters to me that I'm raising them as full humans and not struggling modern males. Right. The best they can be. So I grabbed it anyway, but I went in kind of holding it at arm's length, thinking, we'll see what's in here. Here's the setup, and I'm going to beg of you to stick with me because it still sounds like I'm setting you up for a mantrum, which is my new favorite word from Phoebe Robinson, Portmanteau of Man and Tantrum. Here's the setup. Boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects maths, reading and science. He's British Maths. In the us, the wages of most men are lower today than they were in 1979, while women's wages have ris across the board. Boys are falling behind at school in the uk, suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45. Three big facts, right? Boys are falling behind at school and college because the educational system is structured in ways that put them at a disadvantage. Men are struggling in the labor market because of an economic shift away from traditional male jobs. And fathers are dislocated because the cultural role of family provider has been hollowed out. It no longer has the same resonance. The male malaise is not the result of a mass psychological breakdown, but of deep structural challenges. Structural challenges require structural solutions. And this is what Reeves is proposing in this starting boys at school a year later than girls, getting more men into caring professions and rethinking the role of fatherhood outside of the nuclear family. He says feminism has done a huge amount of good in the world. We now need its corollary, a positive vision of masculinity that's compatible with. With gender equality. And that last sentence is where he got me, where I was like, yes, feminism. And also what happened to the men in that equation. So here's the thing. We know this, right? We have seen what toxic masculinity does to our culture, to the boys we're raising, to men in the workplace and the ones we're in relationship with, even if we don't consciously note it, although we probably do, it's still notable when there's a male teacher in most fields, and it's still notable to mention when someone is a male nurse. Like we add the male on there still. And it's certainly noteworthy when a man is a single dad. It's pointed out ad nauseam because caregiving and family raising and teaching all have been cast as traditionally female roles. And that has done and continues to do a disservice to the young men we're raising that feel like those career paths and those options for life are still off the beaten path. I thought it was really interesting to read this book and follow Reeves's logic on what he called red shirting boys. This is mostly about the education system. So this is a sports term, and I'm not a sportsy person, but it refers to athletes delaying their participation in sports for a year so that they have a bonus year to develop their skills and improve to the level of maybe the rest of their teammates. Redshirting boys into kindergarten would make it standard practice to have boys enter the school system when they're already six years old instead of just five. It gives them time to develop mentally, socially and emotionally before that structure is imposed on their days. And for boys especially, it levels the playing field with girls and reduces diagnoses of ADHD and other learning difficulties. Because we're not saying sit here, be quiet, do the thing. Boys and girls brains are different, but it isn't standard practice. And if it's practiced at all currently by parents, it's usually on the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Those parents might be able to afford an extra year of full time childcare or preschool. So it widens a gap that already exists. But making it standard practice gives interesting food for thought, especially for those of us with younger boys in our lives, like Amimi with two grand boys, right? The fact of the matter is that I finished this book in September and now it's three months later and I still think about it every day as I look at the boys I'm raising and I consider how to make sure that I'm turning them into the best men that they can be fully developed, capable, able to access their emotions, understanding that caregiving is not a female exclusive role or right or responsibility. All of those nuances to the male, female binary or non binary that we've been conditioned to and programmed to accept for our entire lives. It's a joy and an honor to parent these boys and I'm grateful to the men I have around me who invite these kids into conversation regularly like Shad being their bonus dad and being like yeah, I'll teach you how to shave and also we could talk about sex and also you don't have to be a dude bro. To have these conversations is really special and amazing in a way that I just couldn't have foreseen before this past couple years of my life. So I loved this book even though I went in ready to ready to hate it because of that subtitle because of every the only little things that I knew about it heading in. But I trusted Jonathan Haidt enough who led me gently through the anxious generation to say okay, well if he's recommending this book, I am also interested in what he has to say. I will continue to think about it. I will continue to hope for and work toward changes like this in our society. This was of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves.

[B]

Very, very interesting. There's so much to consider there. That is very fascinating.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Raising Boys is. It's a not for the faint of heart.

[B]

That's definitely true. And red shirting here in Texas is really standard practice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. My second one is also nonfiction. Maybe the best nonfiction of the year for me, which is part of the reason why I wanted to be sure to bring it in today's show. Our last regular episode of the year. This is Forensics the Anatomy of crime by Val McDermott. And if life and Death and Giants had me leaning back, this book had me leaning forward.

[A]

I was.

[B]

I was leaned so far forward with this book. Here's the setup. Renowned Scottish crime novelist Val McDermott, who I love, love her books, turns her attention to real world science that has inspired decades of her fiction. In this fascinating work, she draws on her own experiences, riding along with forensic experts and conducting extensive interviews with top professionals in different forensic fields. And she traces the evolution of forensic science from its earliest beginnings in ancient China through to the cutting edge techniques of today. Each chapter tackles a different forensic discipline, from entomology and toxicology to DNA analysis and facial reconstruction. And she blends fascinating historical cases with modern applications that show both the remarkable capabilities and the serious limitations of each method. All right, three things that you need to know about forensics. The anatomy of crime. First is that this is easily one of the most interesting works of nonfiction that I've read. Not just this year, but ever. As I said, I'm a huge Val McDermott fan. I spotted this on the shelves at Foyles when Betsy and I went to London this year, and I picked it up immediately. What I didn't expect was how completely it would draw me in. The second thing was that McDermott has a gift for making complex science not just accessible, but genuinely page turning. Each chapter, as I said, tackles a different branch. She mixes that hard science with these real cases that illustrate exactly how these tools work in practice. Her journalistic background really, really comes through because she did embed herself with these forensic professionals. She visited autopsy suites and fire scenes, conducted extensive interviews. And you can really feel that on every page, you're learning fascinating details, like the fact that the first known forensic autopsy was performed on Julius Caesar, where a doctor determined which of his 23 stab wounds was the one that was actually fatal. Or that the first person convicted of a crime based on fingerprint evidence was actually a woman, and it was in 1892. She had killed both of her two children. So that she could be with a boyfriend. These are the kinds of details that make you want to stop and share them with whoever's nearby. And I did. My family was not at all annoyed by how many things I thought were going to be fascinating.

[A]

A little nugget, yes.

[B]

Third, and this is really the thing that stayed with me. McDermott gives us two major takeaways that completely shift how you think about crime. The first one is something we intellectually know, but we don't always sit with. It's so much harder to get away with a crime now than it was even a hundred years ago. The advances in forensic science have fundamentally changed what's possible. But the really fascinating part. McDermott argues that we are on the cusp of yet another massive leap forward. She predicts that we're heading toward a future where DNA can be extracted from a crime scene and immediately tested and matched to databases or right there on site. So imagine what that does to the timeline for catching criminals. She even suggests that this technology could essentially end some crimes like burglary, because people would be caught before they even had a chance to fence their stolen items. It's really interesting to think about. What I especially appreciated is that McDermott doesn't just show us how these sciences solve crimes. She gives us examples of how they can also go really wrong. The longest chapter in the book focuses on forensic psychology. And while it's helped investigators get closer to finding killers time and time again, it's also led to many wrongful convictions. She's not trying to tear down the field. She clearly has respect for the people who are doing this work. But she's committed to showing the full picture, including the controversy, the budget constraints that mean many investigations don't go through, the forensic workup that we see on tv, and the very real human costs that can be had when things go wrong. I loved every single page of this book. It made me a better mystery reader, or maybe it just made me a more difficult one, because now I'm armed with actual forensic knowledge, and I can spot plot holes that would have sailed right past me before. If I were going to write mysteries, this book would be my textbook of choice. Also, there's a little tiny blowfly on every single page, and I just really loved that element.

[A]

Does it move like if you. It's not like a stop motion where you could, like, flip it? No, I mean like a flip book where if you flip through the pages, the fly would.

[B]

Oh, my God. I don't know. I should try that. Yes. I'm gonna Try that. I never would have occurred to me to try that, but I will. I will try that. Because they are in kind of very specific places. Maybe that is true, but I just really love that element.

[A]

I bet it's a book. I bet it moves around.

[B]

I'm gonna check that. Also, it does have two different names for. It's called Forensics, both in the UK and here. But the subtitle is different. And I believe that mine, the Anatomy of Crime is from the. I know that it's from the book that I bought in the uk, so the one in the US The. The log line might be a little bit different, but if you love true crime, if you read mysteries and you want to understand the real science behind the fictional investigations, I would definitely recommend this one. This is Forensics, the Anatomy of crime by Val McDermott.

[A]

Oh, it sounds so good.

[B]

It was so good.

[A]

I want books like this for everything. Like, I want. I want this, but for science fiction, so that I don't have. Because you know how I get where I'm like, but what about gravity on these other planets? Like, I want somebody to write through. Here's. Here's what it looks like. Here's the textbook for writing science fiction. Here's the science, you know.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that would be really interesting.

[A]

I would read. I would read all of them. I want it for romance. I don't know what that would look like. Probably the Kama Sutra. I'm not sure I want it for horror. Like, what does demon possession. I want to know that. I want to know the science behind it. Like, and I realized that the science is made up. Like, that's fine. But I want, like, the answers to those questions that are going to bother me anyway.

[B]

Yeah, that would be very useful.

[A]

It really would be. And I always want to learn all the things, so it would work out perfectly. Okay. My third book this week doesn't have any answers in it because it's based on Greek mythology. I'm going to talk about I. Medusa by Ayanna Gray. Yes. This is so good. It is possible that you, dear reader, like me and so many of the rest of us, read stone blind within the past few years because Meredith told us to. And then maybe you, like me, started thinking about getting a Medusa tattoo or at least admiring the ones that you saw on others. I have seen at least three Medusa tattoos since I finished Stoneblind. Maybe you've become slightly obsessed with this myth and the ways we can tell it now with new eyes and with a different view of womanhood than the ancient Greeks had. If so, please allow me to introduce you to I Medusa this is a YA to new adult retelling of the classic tale. Here's the setup. Meti has stunning immortal sisters and gods for parents. Even if they are minor gods, she has always been least important, a footnote to their stories, especially as she and her sisters start to come of age. Everyone knows they will be snatched up first in marriage and give the greatest boons and honors to their spouses. But each of the girls dreams of leaving their island and setting out for adventure. When the goddess Athena sees Meti's brilliance and passes over her sisters to ask her to join the temple as one of Athena's priestesses, Meti is thrilled by the chance to leave home for the big city. However, when she reaches Athens, she gets her first taste of the outside world. In some ways, it's been opened up to her as a kaleidoscope of color and possibility, but it's also clear that she has been kept sheltered and ignorant of what it means to be a woman walking around in a woman's body in this world. She has no understanding of the ways that women and men interact with each other, and she certainly does not understand what the God Poseidon could want with her, especially with regard to sex and wanting. Meti's fall from grace is swift and brutal, shattering the future that had been laid out before her full of possibility and adventure. As her very self is reshaped, so is her story, one from possibility and adventure into one of myth and heartbreak and rage. This is not my first book of Ayanna grace, and while I did enjoy the other one I read by her, which was called Beasts of Prey, I strongly felt with that one that the first 30% should have thoroughly shortened to maybe five pages. However, this lush and evocative new adult retelling of the Greek myth fired on every cylinder. It was propulsive from first word to last. I love that we got to meet Medusa just as she's coming into adulthood. Much like other retellings of this tale, Gray does not shy away from the realities of rape and sexual assault, so that is important to note here. But the way she approaches it with young Mehdi Medusa also being ignorant of those pieces of this life means that this would be a really great option to start conversations with our own teens and young adults. It doesn't just jump in assuming that you know everything about why a terrifying event like that would happen in a young girl's life. So it approaches it In a different way from some of the others that I've read. I absolutely loved this. It made me love the story of Medusa even more, even though it has that undercurrent of rage and feminism and reworking that this myth has always deserved. Absolutely adored it. This is I, Medusa by Iyana Gray.

[B]

I'm so glad that was good because I have seen that and been tempted by that multiple times.

[A]

It has. It got. It got the star treatment. It has these gorgeous sprayed edges, and I got a galley of it. So I'm like, well, I think I need it. I need this one.

[B]

You gotta get it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. Well, speaking of a book that the actual physical print book is really the way that you have to go. This is what I have here. This is called the Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. All right, here's the setup. I am absolutely here for this interactive murder mystery from Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. Set in November 1933 London. The creeping Hand Murder puts you in the detective's role when Scotland Yard hits a wall with an impossible crime. Because, of course, this happens all the time. They draft a rank amateur who just seems to have a lot of potential.

[A]

That's how I think of myself. The reader.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

No, it's me. It's me personally.

[A]

I love it. Oh, it's Meredith Monday Schwartz. Got it. Yes. Right.

[B]

No, probably just any reader, and that's my personal dream. But okay, so we've got. In this scenario, we've got seven strangers, including a poet, an earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and of course, a lothario. They each receive poison pen letters that expose their darkest secrets and summon them to a posh West End townhouse when American novelist Roy Peterson is stabbed to death right in front of the other six guests. Yet somehow no one sees the murder happen or knows who did it. Detective Chief Inspector Harold Jenkins turns the case file over to you. Jenkins just gives up and says, please help me.

[A]

Come on. Jenkins.

[B]

Yeah, he just. He's got no. He's got not a clue. The crime is so utterly baffling that it seems to have been committed by a disembodied hand rather than any person. You are the detective. And Scotland Yard needs your help. All right, this is something a little bit different. It comes from Maureen Johnson, who we know from the truly devious series.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which I really love, and Jay Cooper, who illustrated your guide to not getting murdered in a quaint English village. You know that book, and it's like if a mystery novel and one of those hunt a killer mystery boxes from a few years back. Had a baby. And that baby was illustrated by someone with a delightfully twisted sense of humor. This isn't your typical mystery where you're just along for the ride, because like I said, you're. You're literally been given the case for this. Poor Jenkins has thrown in the towel. So what you're getting is crime scene photographs, witness statements, newspaper clippings, and all the evidence that you need to crack the case for yourself. Donson and Cooper have created this theatrical interactive experience where you examine everything and piece together how this murder could have possibly happened with nobody seeing anything. It's so impossible that it's like a disembodied hand. The creeping hand. That's where it gets the title. You get to interrogate, via their statements, this wild cast of characters. And at first glance, I will say that the illustrations by Jay Cooper, it had me confused as to exactly who the book was meant for. Was it like middle grade or ya. But very quickly we realized this is definitely for adults because there are mentions of like a bacchanalian like, gathering and affairs. And while the illustrations kind of are playful and almost caricature, like, the content is decidedly grown up. So let's be very clear about that here. And the format makes you feel like a kid in a murder store, which would be my version of a kid in a candy store.

[A]

What does a murder store have in it? Nuisance?

[B]

Well, I mean. Well, I mean, maybe, but also, you know, evidence and pads for taking notes. And you're trying to piece everything. Lots of magnifying glasses.

[A]

Oh, obviously. Yes.

[B]

Jeez. Now, I do have to mention if this book has a we. I really enjoyed this book. It was really a ton of fun, which is saying a lot for nanny Graham. One to to say that it really was fun. But the ending is. At least in the copy that I had. The ending is really abrupt. The book just kind of drops off. And then I had to figure out that it was time for me to solve the mystery and that when I was ready, there was this sealed envelope on the back that had the solution in it. They definitely need to make it clearer because if you weren't paying attention, you could accidentally think that this was a part of the mystery. But then, like, all of a sudden, you're just pulling it out and it's like, here's what happened. So a simple. When you think you've solved it, open the sealed envelope would have helped tremendously. So it's not rocket science, but here we Are. I had a blast with this. Even though that abrupt ending happened because it. That didn't dampen my enthusiasm. It's really quick. I worked through it in an evening. Super enjoyable. It's the perfect slightly nerdy way to spend a Saturday night. Especially if you're a nerd like I am who shouts at mystery novels when you figured out who done it three chapters before the detective. If you love the interactive elements of Hunt A Killer subscription mystery boxes. And if you really like Myrtle more than anything, and if you really like Agatha Christie, you're the person for this book, which means it's for me. So this is the Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. And I wanted to include it today because it might just be the perfect last minute gift idea for that hard to buy for person on your list.

[A]

Did you solve it, Meredith? Were you right?

[B]

I did solve it. Yes. I was right. Yes, yes. But I do have to say that it wasn't like simple.

[A]

Right, right. It was a bit of a challenge, which is why you. It was a good one. Right. Like, yeah, you don't want it to be like, well, duh.

[B]

Right, exactly. It's a bit of a challenge, but also solvable. Like they let you play along. So it was really quite a bit of fun.

[A]

Oh, good, good. And that's the one that has the end papers that you want as wallpaper, right?

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. The whole, the whole. You have to buy this. I mean, I don't even know if they sell it in any other way.

[A]

You.

[B]

You have to buy it in print. It's. It's very well done. I liked it.

[A]

Gosh, if they sold it on in like a digital format, it would be even more likely that you'd spoil it because you'd be like, click, next page. Oh, there's the solution done.

[B]

Like, I mean, yeah, it just wouldn't be any fun in any other format, I think so hopefully. I haven't even looked, but I'll bet you they don't even sell it in any other format. All right, so this is a great example of a book. The. The Creeping Hand is an example of a book that I can't remember where I heard about it. Which leads us to our deep dive, which is a question that comes from Rachel Colbrenner, one of our really good bookish friends. We love Rachel. She says this. Hi, Meredith and Katie. I had a deep dive topic that at some point you likely have discussed, but I think it's something that you should circle back around on since I think it might have changed a bit. My idea is a deep dive around book recommendation sources and how to track them. I don't mean who are your book recommendation sources, but how do you decide how many people you follow for good recommendation sources? Like how many are enough or too many? Where do you find out what they're reading and what they thought about it? It used to be super easy with just friending or following on Goodreads or just follow on Instagram, but with those spaces expanding to storygraph, book podcasts, discord groups, Facebook groups, BookTube, Book Talk, Book club or lit society recommendations, it's really hard to remember where I'm getting the recommendation from and it feels overwhelming to track it anymore. I think it's a bit of a conundrum and I think it would make a good deep dive topic. Thanks, Rachel Kolbrenner. And there is no question, Katie, that this is a good deep dive topic. Even though I really want to say here at the outset that I at least feel like I don't have any big solutions because I'm not a mess in very many parts of my life, but I'm a little bit messy in this part of my life.

[A]

It's a problem like there's not a. There's not a perfect here. I do have a solution. It's facetious, but we're going to go with it anyway. The short answer is that if you only use currently reading for recommendation sources a, you still have a broad variety of people, right? You've got me and Meredith and Roxanna and Mary and you could maybe have Elizabeth Barnhill and Rebecca Hoffer and Boomi and like there's still a lot of people. And then you add the bookish friends so you don't have to worry too much about this. You can use the search on the website to find the book you want to read. You can see who talked about it. You can find what they actually said with the timestamp, or you could read through transcripts if listening again isn't an option. Like, y', all, we made it so easy to find all this information and then you don't have to take note of it at all. You can just be like, well, currently reading knows and you just search that title and it's right there for you. I solved it, right? All done.

[B]

That's the answer. Just don't listen to any other podcasts.

[A]

Yep, just. Or don't. Don't take their recommendations. You can listen. We love our podcast pals, but. But we have the best recommendations for you. That's true.

[B]

But from a realistic point of view, I do think that people will probably avail themselves of some of these other. Some of these other things. So, Katie, do you have a. Currently, and we have talked about this before, but I do think these things do change over time. That's why I thought Rachel's idea was a good one that, you know, have you found something that's working for you right now so that you can keep track of where you heard of a book?

[A]

Right now, what is working for me is only Past Katie. And that is a problem because Past Katie was not great at keeping track of recommendation sources. So I'm actually, I'm not adding that much to my TBR right now because I'm mostly choosing my next book based on what's already in my house or on my E reader or whatever, like in my libro FM queue rather than, like, going out into the world and letting people be suggestive at me about what I should be reading. But past Katie was not good at this, and it's a problem. The thing that hangs me up that I think hangs up everybody with regard to that is it has to be so easy that it's too easy not to do it. Right. Whatever you do to keep track of who recommended a book has to be so easy that you can do it in, you know, two seconds without thinking about it. Because otherwise it will become too onerous at some point. And that's because. Exactly. Right. Like Rachel was talking about, you could follow Caitlin m. Lilly on TikTok and Bookstagram and then maybe she has another substack and maybe she has a blah, blah, blah, and you don't know where it was that she talked about that book. So even if you said, I got this recommendation from her, who knows if you'll ever find that thing again? Right?

[B]

Okay, let me tell you, let me use that specific example to. To walk you through what I do, because I would say I'm about 75% on tracking where I. But there, I mean, 25%. I have no idea.

[A]

They're just gone. Yep.

[B]

So it's. That's really far. Like, in my mind, that's really far away from as good as it should be, especially for someone who talks about books for a living. So I'm not at all perfect, but I'm pretty good. And when, let's say I hear about a book from Caitlin M. Lily, that's a perfect example. And I don't really care if I heard about it on her TikTok, her substack, or her Instagram. For me, the result I'm looking for is figuring out. I want, I want this information solely so that I can track it in my reading tracker, solely so that I can get the data that I need that says, hey, you know what? This is how I know that Elizabeth Barnhill works. You know, her recommendations work really well for me, because the data bears that out. So that's the only reason I care. So I think whenever you're thinking about this kind of thing, you have to think, what's the result that you're looking for from caring about this issue at all. So the only reason to care is, is if you're tracking it and then so that you can act on that in some way, or I guess maybe you also might care because you want to give credit to that person. If you do that on Instagram, if you have a public facing something, you want to be able to say, this, here's where I heard about it. Either way, I. If I'm on Caitlyn and Lily and she talks about a book that I hadn't heard of before, and I'm like, ooh, I want to go check that out. I will hop over to bookshop.org or fabled or whatever, and I will check out that book and I will screenshot it right then. And that screenshot will go into my photos. I go into photos and I put a caption and that says Caitlin M. Lilly. And that takes more than two seconds, but less than 10 seconds. Okay, so it's, it's not perfect, but it's not bad.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And that is how. That is literally the way that I. That plus in my print books, whenever I receive print books in, I put a post it on the inside with the month and the wherever I got the recommendation. If it's, oh, I just browsed at the store, great, I'll put the store. But if it was like, no, I bought that from fabled, but it's because I heard Katie talk about it on the show. Then I'll put your name there because the result I'm looking for is whose taste is matches matching up with mine. So those are, those are my, like, tried and true. That has gotten me to the 75% mark.

[A]

Okay, so let's say you have all these screenshots. Is that your tbr? Like, do you flip through that album on your phone? Or how do you actually decide to move something from this screenshot album with the names tagged into. Now I'm actually reading it.

[B]

Yeah, that is because that what I would do there is I would figure out what format do I want it in. So if it's the book that I'm legitimately interested in reading, I'm going to add it to one of my formats. So I'm going to first see if my library has it, and then I'm going to place a hold from it from the library.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then it's going to come to me, and then I'll do a book flight on it. If it's a book that I'm like, you know what? I think that would be really great on audio. I'll just go ahead and get it on audio. I'll, you know, that kind of thing. So. Or if I'm going to get it on my Kindle, I'll just go ahead and get it in my Kindle in. In whatever way. So I kind of like, I guess my TBR is the. All the stuff I've gathered to me. So when I go to decide on a book, I'm not like going to my screenshots and being like, what book should I get? I'm going to what mood am I in? Okay, what format do I need? Because I always have one going in each format. And then I go look at kind of what's in my library in that format. Library with air quotes.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Does that make sense? Because now the TBR thing is another place. It's a little bit messy and, like, not exactly completely dialed in. So these are kind of married. But if you start with anytime I, there's a book that I'm like, ooh, I think I want to read that. And you write at that point, grab the data point of where you heard about it. That's where I found the most success.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Because if I wait till I actually read it, it's not happening. The likelihood that this sieve, like brain that I'm walking around with right now is going to remember is slim to none.

[A]

Right? So I have. Since the first time that you talked about the screenshots idea, I've gotten better about that. And usually the thing I'm best at is when I get new books in, whether it's from going to a bookstore or from ordering them or however they come into my house. There used to be a lot of book subscriptions that were happening here. That doesn't happen anymore. But whatever it is, they go to my bookshelf, but they do not get shelved until I have logged them appropriately. And I try to do that. It depends on how frequently this is happening. But like, on the weekend of whenever that happened, or within the week of whenever these books were coming in. So I might have a couple batches where I can say, okay, well that stack came from literally a bookshop. And these ones I ordered from Fabled, and those were from the indie press list from a couple months or from last month. And they're actually going on to my tbr. But at that time I put them into my TBR list on my spreadsheet, which has a spot for recommendation source, and I can pull it directly over into my reading log whenever I do read that book. Right.

[B]

Which is a great way to do it. If I, if I were on the ball enough, that would be really the most perfect way to do it.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

Because then it's already always entering into that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yes, that would be brilliant.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's a, that's a when meredith doesn't have 72 jobs situation.

[A]

Yeah, it's all aspirational. All of this is aspirational. Don't even talk to me about how well my spreadsheet has been going the last few months in this life. It's not great. But I also have in the past used tags and I know there's lots of readers that do this either on Goodreads or storygraph. Storygraph tags are even easier. There's a little button that looks like a tag. You click it and you can type in whatever single word you want. And as long as you comma separate them or hit enter, it adds it as its own tag. The one I'm best about using on storygraph is Katie. And it's spelled really strangely because it's books that Katie Proctor and I read together. So it's a squish together of our names because we spell them differently. So it's this weird K, A, Y, T, I, E, E. Like it's very strangely spelled way of using Katy. But that one I'm like religious about using because storygraph is actually very data robust. I can click that tag and then I can look at my average rating for anything that I've tagged as Katie. I can look at the genre breakdown of any way, any type of books we read. I can look at the length breakdown, whether we usually pick fiction or nonfiction, whether we choose fast paced, slow paced or medium paced books. And all of that is within that tag because storygraph is so good about the that data. So I do like that as that can be very quick add to tbr, click the tag, make sure your tag is in there correctly. That's probably five seconds, right. As long as you're doing it. And it can get really clunky depending on how many recommendation sources you want to keep tagged. Like, do you want currently reading or do you want Meredith, Katie, Mary, Roxanna? Then it gets longer and longer and longer. So basically I think the key here is figuring out the quickest way to. To get that data. Yeah.

[B]

Another really quick way that I, that I have has been kind of a great backup for me is I get really, really just liberal with the bookmark on. On Instagram. So if I, if, you know, if there's a post about a book that I really want to read, I will just bookmark it and put it in my books I want to read.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and then I can.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Then I can go back and check that out, which I think most. I mean, TikTok probably, I'm sure TikTok has the exact same functionality that you can do that, you know, so that's, that's another way that you can just like super quickly be like, I want to remember that this is where I heard about this.

[A]

Yeah. That one can get a little squishier too, if, if it's a collection of things, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like a video cut several books. Like a video with 10 books in it. Or here's my top 10 books of the year and it's. Each one's on a different slide. Which one was I actually bookmarking? Who knows?

[B]

I know it's not. It's not. None of this is perfect. Which is why I really, really would love to hear from our listeners. I would love to hear, what are your strategies for tracking your recommendation source? Or do you not. I think if you don't, there's a lot of reasons why people would just not care to track their recommendation source. I mean, I really do think that it's a key element that can add to your reading life. But if you are all about not tracking anything because you don't want any part of your reading to be work, I very much support that. And this is something that you should just completely let, like, just let it go. It doesn't matter. The. The book found me and it was supposed to, and that's all that matters.

[A]

Right? I am, for 2026, I'm working on a much more robust recommendation sources tab and data within the reading tracker. And that's mostly based on a suggestion from Kelly, one of our bookish friends who I could spend hours talking spreadsheets with. So she has done something within her spreadsheet that she wanted to share the wealth, but it's Basically keeping track that one person talks about books all the different ways. Right. So you could have Meredith just as the name. You could have her Instagram. You could have currently reading, and you could have also, it will pull in the most recent books you read by that recommendation source so that you can see, like, okay, this person is working well for me. There's also all the stats that are already associated with it. But I agree. Either it matters to you and you're really trying to hone in on and curate the best TBR and reading life that you can possibly make, knowing that these people are the best fit for you, or it doesn't. And that's okay. You can also decide that keeping track of my recommendations for this is costing me mental energy that I don't want to develop, to devote to. This doesn't matter, right?

[B]

Doesn't matter. I found the good. I found a book that was good. I read it. I loved it. Moving on.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Or it turns out anything with French flaps always gets a nod from me. Great. Go find books with French flaps and be merry. It doesn't matter if. If that's how other people choose their books.

[B]

I love French flaps.

[A]

I do. I do love French flaps. It's almost a half star up just for French flaps, which is if there's.

[B]

A book that has French flaps and deckled edges, it's like a guy with great hands and forearms, like, please shut.

[A]

It down on buttons.

[B]

Shut it down a little bit.

[A]

And you're like, I'm lost. I'm lost to you. Yep. All right.

[B]

Well, I don't know how we got to deckled edges, but I'm glad we got there.

[A]

Deckled edges are a recommendation source. Right.

[B]

Sometimes I really will be like, of all these books that I have in my pile, let's just. I'm definitely getting the ones with deckled edges.

[A]

Yeah. Why not?

[B]

All right, Katie, let's talk a little bit about our wishes for the fountain.

[A]

Okay. Mine is directly related to what we were just talking about. I wish that we will all give ourselves grace to start small. So here we talk a lot about our reading lives, the way we want to make them work, the way we like, the things we want to change, the things we want to be better or the best ways to do any certain thing. And we love that you all ask us about, like, how can I optimize or systematize or prioritize my way to reading bliss? That's. That's our love language. We love that from you. If there were a magic potion that we could do all these things for you. Life would be perfect. And that's what we're doing with the Fountain Wish. But we can also just start small. Start by tracking a few things. Start with a TBR cull of only five books or identifying just three people that next year you might want to listen to on your recommendation. Source and see what that does. You don't have to start with, I will religiously track every single book and where I bought it and how much it cost and who I heard about it from and whether or not I loved it. You can just reach toward a small glimmer of light. Not everything in our reading lives has to change us forever or be practically perfect in every way. Mary Poppins. We can start small, give ourselves grace to try one new thing, and go from there. Pink Splash. I love it.

[B]

Very, very good advice. Very good advice. Total cosine. All right, mine. I'm actually ridiculously excited to share this because it solved a problem that I have had for literal more than a decade.

[A]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

In my podcast listening.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I feel like it's very possible that I'm the last person to figure this out. So I'm going to talk about this with great enthusiasm because it was a problem and it's now been solved for me. If you're like, oh, sweet baby, I figured that out 110 years ago. I don't need to hear from you. Just pat me on my parasocial head and move on. I have never figured out because one thing I love. And we hear people say this about our show a lot. I found your show. Of course. I wanted to go back to the beginning. That's hundreds and hundreds of episodes. I do the exact same thing when I fall in love with the show. I want to go all the way back, and I just want to listen to it all the way through. But, Katie, so let me tell you. I use Apple Podcasts for my podcast player, which we know, the vast majority of people who listen to our show use Apple podcasts. It's still the biggest podcast player. I had never figured out how to be able to do that in a way that was not incredibly difficult.

[A]

Like endless scrolling.

[B]

Yes. Every single time. Every single time I went back to the show, I had to endlessly scroll. And then. So then pretty soon I'd be like, okay, maybe I'll do that one or two times. And then I'm just like, screw it. I can't. I can't do it. There's a very easy way to fix this. All of you who knew this already move yourself on. But for the three of you who are left, here's how you fix it. You go to. You go to the show, and then you go to the three dots at the top, right when you're on the show that you. That you want to change the order of. And then you pull that down and go to settings. And then one of the settings is the play order, and you select oldest to newest. So then every time you go to that show, it is automatically you can. And you can also select like to only show you the unplayed ones. So every time you go to that show, it's going to pull up the next one that. In order that you need to listen to, going from the very beginning of that show all the way through current. I am not kidding you that I had literal tears in my eyes when I figured this out or when I realized that there was a fix to this.

[A]

Amazing.

[B]

I don't care. Like I said, maybe it's just a couple of you who didn't know this, but it fit. It made my podcasts listening so much better. There's a show that I got, a British show that has hundreds of episodes. It's called Crime Time fm, that I got so involved in. And I was like, well, I have to go back to the beginning. This is the show that I will forever remember, was the show that helped me figure out how to do this.

[A]

Okay, Meredith, the only terrible thing about this is that we are 370 episodes, however many episodes in. And so somebody is gonna have listened to all those episodes and get here and say, damn, I've been scrolling for eight years. Forever. Forever. It could be.

[B]

Or there's just like, literally, I'm the last person to figure this out. But just in case, just in case.

[A]

You listed, like, six steps to get to that. It's like, go to the show, go to the document.

[B]

Go to the show, go to the.

[A]

Document, go to the. Yeah, that's hot.

[B]

It's four steps. But once you know how to do it, like, you'll never forget it, and it's super, super easy. So my wish is that somebody out there would benefit and maybe even tell me that you benefited from this information. That would actually really be a lovely.

[A]

Little Christmas present for words of affirmation that we know and love.

[B]

Ping. Splash. 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.

[A]

And you can find me, Katie, at Notes on Bookmarks 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.

[B]

The title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps. So you can zoom right to where we talked about it and can be found on our show notes and on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com it's great for filling.

[A]

In your recommendation sources. You can also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com and if you love this.

[B]

Content and you want more of it, we have so much more for you. You can become a bookish friend and join us for just $5 a month. You get a ton of content, you get a lot of really fantastic community and you keep this show commercial free. It's very much worth $5 a month. It'll make a huge difference that in rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, shouting us out on social media, all of those things help us to find our perfect audience.

[A]

Yes, right now our bookish friends are gifting bookish friendship to their besties. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.

[B]

All right, until next week, may your.

[A]

Coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable.

[B]

Happy reading, Katie.

[A]

Happy reading, Meredith.