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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 8, Episode 25: Get Your Eyes Checked + All Things Special Editions
00:54:03
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Foreign.
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Hey readers, welcome to the Currently Reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
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We are light on the chitchat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit.
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The fountain for maybe almost the last time ever. Are we going to visit the fountain?
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You're just going to have to deal with it.
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I'm Meredith Mundy Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And if I was going to murder someone, I'd probably use poison.
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A
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And my reading counter is my most popular accessory. This is episode number 25 of season eight and we are so glad you're here.
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B
Those reading counters are really, really handy. I loved starting back at zero at the beginning of the year, right?
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A
It's so fun.
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B
So, Katie, we are going to do a deep dive today. I don't think we've ever talked about this before. We are going to do a deep dive today on what makes a special edition special or what makes you buy a special edition. We're talking about hardbacks and the huge number of hardbacks that are now coming out with special features. So we're going to talk about what we think about that. That is going to come a little bit later. But first, let's get started with our bookish moment of the week. Katie, what is yours?
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A
All right, Meredith, as you know, because I have been in your messages just crying my eyes out about it, my reading year has started out very slowly. And it's not because I don't want to read. It's because I am spending every waking minute working in people's spreadsheets and sharing the spreadsheet and hanging out in spreadsheets. And I love spreadsheets. And also I am suffering. So my reading year has been a little slow. However, that slower start meant I had a little time to consider how I wanted to share my reading. This year I opted to reinvigorate my Bookstagram. I went back and, gosh, in 2025, I probably shared 20 photos total on my Bookstagram. I decided at least that I will share every time I finish a book alongside my reading counter, which i3D printed at home. If you remember, this is like a Short form version. A little callback to when I used to share behind the paywall in episodes of Katie Reads. Too much. Like, literally everything I'm reading is gonna show up on my grid this year. And I'm saying this out loud because that builds accountability so that hopefully I don't the wagon two weeks in. But I like to see the interaction, the excitement. However, that reading counter has been the thing that most people have commented on. They're like, oh, great book. Hey, where'd that reading counter come from, y'? All? I made it at home. It's 3D printed at home. I love it. I am sending them to friends as gifts. I do love my dear besties, but no, we will not be selling them. They take many hours to print and design. They're just very cute. So that's my bookish moment. It's a lot of fun.
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B
They are cute and I bought mine on Etsy.
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A
Yeah. Other people are making them and you can get customized, personalized, very cute ones, but not from me.
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B
That's totally fine. All right, good. Well, I wanted to mention something that I want to make sure that all of you know about for my bookish moment of the week. But then I also have a separate podcast recommendation for my fellow murder False. Okay, so first I was super happy Katie, and it was something that you and I had a great amount of fun talking about. We created the quiz that we've always wanted to create. Right. What is your reader type? Now, I've wanted to do this forever, but I don't have a very mathematical mind. So the actual execution of like a two by two axis. And if you pick this and if you. If your answer is this and this. That was all really intimidating from for me. But we figured it out. And if you go to the currently reading website right now and you look up in the navigation at the top, you can take our quiz. And there are four different reader types and it's. I've been pretty surprised with the results. They've been pretty spread out. I kind of thought two of them were going to be the most popular. But we're pretty spread out amongst the four reader types and we've had thousands of people take it already, so really excited about that. So if you're interested in your reader type, go to the currently reading website, which of course we will link in the show notes.
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A
Of course.
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Go take the quiz. Okay. My bookish moment of the week proper is that our bookish friend, Sidra Jeffreys, one of our favorites, she always knows what is going to interest Me. And she sent to me a podcast done by the Smithsonian. It's called Side Door. Okay, first of all, anybody who loves museums, especially the Smithsonian, you are going to love this podcast. It is genius the way that they are taking their superpower and using podcasting to amplify it in a new and interesting way. So from a marketing perspective, I love what they're doing here. But she pointed me specifically to an episode that is about the golden age of arsenic, which is in the, you know, in the 18. Roughly the 1850s and on, there were a lot of deaths via poisoning. A lot. And most of those poisoners were women, and most of the poisonees were their husbands. This is what happens when women don't have a lot of options, apparently. But back then, of course, also you couldn't figure out if someone just got really, really sick or if they had died of poisoning. So this podcast walks you through all the different kind, like some of the different kinds of poisons that were used, some of the different cases that made the newspapers at the time, and then also how they developed some tools to be able to figure out if somebody had died of poison. So it's super interesting. Very well done. It's like a hot 30 minutes, too. Like, it's not super long, not overly sciency, but very, very interesting. Especially for my murderful friends who love their historical mysteries, this is a really, really good one. So that's the side door podcast from the Smithsonian, and this one is called the Golden Age of Arsenic.
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A
Nice. I love it.
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I love it. That was really fun. So thank you to Sidra for pointing that out to us. All right, Katie, let's get into our current reads. What are you reading right now?
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A
Happily happy to discuss current reads. My first one this week is called Aftertaste. The author is Daria Lavelle. Okay. This one released in May of 2025 and was quickly everywhere. So of course, I turned the other way. I did put it on my TBR though, because of our friend Brady at booksbybrady on Instagram. And so when recommended it to me directly by sending me the book trailer, which I love book trailers. Even if I don't want to read that book, I want more book trailers, right?
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I want every book to have a book trailer.
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So when he sent me the book trailer, I moved it up my tbr and then I bought a copy on my road trip last summer. I did finally read it right at the end of the year, and as a foodie, it was a delicious read. Here's the setup. Kostya is our main character. He is haunted by the ghost of his father, or he wishes he was. His father died when he was young, right after emigrating from Ukraine to Brooklyn in New York City. Ever since then, young Kostya started to feel ghosts, but not the one that he really wanted to see. When he is struck as a young adult by this time by a very clear flavor profile, while talking to a man about his dead wife and is able to make her appear in the room and chat with her despondent drunken husband with a carefully crafted drink, he thinks he might be onto something. Can he harness this power and make it possible for others to visit their deceased loved ones? And even more importantly, can he have one last conversation with his beloved father? While he's not sure of the process or the techniques or how to actually make it happen, he is dedicated and he's sure that New York City is the place to learn. So he gets pulled into the food scene with all the Gordon Ramsay, yelly kitchen esque ness of Hell's Kitchen that we are born to crave. Anybody who watches the Food Network, you want a chef yelling and probably spitting and just berating people, right? Psychotic head chefs, intense knife skills with various injuries and flavor profiles that leave you breathless or pondering or wanting more. As his skills start to improve, his otherworldly talents also begin to morph and change. And what started as a story of love and loss and grief becomes something a bit more intense and a little darker. I want to be clear here that I'm not talking about a saccharine book like the Five People youe Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. That is not what this is, okay? This is not looking at the afterlife and gaining closure, but instead something closer to a food based thriller that really moves at a clip. Kostya gets into the food scene by any means necessary. And if that means we have a killer mob boss and Russians pulling the strings behind the scenes and obscene amounts of money flying around, then so be it. But this cast of characters is fantastic, especially, especially Kostya himself. He's relatable and forthright. He wants to connect with others. He has a good heart. He wants to help those who are grieving with this strange gift he's been given. Daria Lavelle. This is her debut novel and it kept me turning those pages quickly. And in fact, I did with this one what I haven't done in quite some time. I dipped back and forth between the paper and the audio because it was one of those books that I couldn't put down. I just wanted to read more and more and keep going at all times. I gave it 4.25 at the end because I had some qualms about the way things wrapped up, but I didn't regret reading it for a single second. I'm very glad that Brady pressed it into my hands. This is Aftertaste by Daria Lovell.
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B
Do you know, I feel like I've never heard of that book, but it sounds really good.
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A
It's like black with blue. No, I feel like it was.
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B
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just said black with blue. And then all of a sudden I feel like I got it. I didn't know what it was about. So now that you've mentioned that, now it sounds interesting.
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It is interesting. And I didn't really know what it was about either. I knew it was foodie. That was it.
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B
Okay. All right, good. Well, that one might be one that I need to read. All right. I also have my first book also is one that is very page turning by an author that I'm really starting to like quite a bit. And this one is Voices in the Snow by Darcy Coates. So here's a setup. Our main character is Claire, and Claire is driving through a snowstorm to reach her aunt's house. And when all of a sudden she's like, she's already in a snowstorm, but all of a sudden, she starts seeing that there are abandoned cars littering the road. Okay, this is a catnip trope for me, by the way. Abandoned cars littering the road. I'm always going to want to find out what happened. There's children's toys scattered in the snow. It's very. It's very freaky. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, radio in her car is going weird. Like, you know, she's on the phone with her sister. And her sister's obviously very like, trying to yell something at her, but the recept out. So all of a sudden, she knows there's something really wrong. But then right at the kind of fever pitch of all of this, everything goes black. And when Claire wakes up, she is hurting. She is like, bruised, she is very disoriented, and she is in a stranger's gothic mansion. She's told by the stranger who is there that she crashed and that he saved her life and brought her back to his crumbling mansion, as one does. Yes, this guy's name is Doran and he seems kind enough and he's gentle as he's kind of, you know, ministering to her. But something about the house feels really wrong to her. The blizzard, of course, has now trapped them together. And Claire, between being injured and the blizzard, she has no choice but to wait it out. But here's the thing that makes my skin crawl. Doran insists that they are alone in the house, but Claire knows that is not true. Okay, I picked this one up as a palette cleanser between some heavier reads, and it was exactly what I wanted it to be. Darcy Coates, as I said, is an author that I am. More. I'm reading more and more of her back list, and I've loved everything that I've read by her. This is an interesting genre mashup. Really, really keeps you guessing because we start with what feels like this very dystopian setup, and then we pivot to this isolated gothic mansion that may or may not be haunted. And then the winter setting, we've got a storm and so blizzard, you know, you can't see anywhere, can't go anywhere kind of thing. We're trapped, right? So we've got a lot of things going on at the same time. But Darcy Coates is really good at dropping breadcrumbs through the story. You think you kind of know what direction it's headed, but then she completely sort of comes at you from the left. And there's some other elements that comes into play that I hadn't considered before. I won't go into specifics at all because, of course, I don't want to ruin any of the fun for you, but there were several things that genuinely surprised me. And I will tell you, this is not your standard haunted house story. There's something much more unsettling happening here. And the way that she blends this apocalyptic horror and that gothic atmosphere very much worked for me. We're recording right now in January, which is really one of only two months of the year where we get really cold here in Texas. And so it was the perfect time for me to read it. The pacing is propulsive. I actually read this in just a single sitting and very much Cheeto chapters. Every time you get to the end of one of these short chapters, you're like, oh, I can just read for another two or three minutes. And I Cheeto chaptered my way through the entire book. So this is. This reads fast. It keeps you white knuckling your Kindle, if that's what you're looking for. This will be perfect for you. Now, this one is not my favorite by Darcy Coates. That award goes to Gallows Hill, which is absolutely phenomenal. And just reaches amazing heights. This one I did give 4.25 stars to. Definitely worth my time. It had me eager to read more of her backlist. So what I would say is if you love that trapped with a stranger tension, trying to figure out, can I trust this person or not? This is going to be for you. And if you love the winter storm element in your horror, this will definitely be for you. Fair warning, this is book one of four in what's called the Black Winter series. The story arc of this particular book does conclude satisfyingly, so you're not ending on a cliffhanger. But there definitely are larger mysteries at play. So if you love it, you have more books to explore that larger mystery too. That's kind of the perfect way for a book one to be for me. This is Voices in the Snow by Darcy Coates.
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A
Oh, my God, so many of the things you said. I was like, can I. Can we just pause? I'm just gonna go get that book right now. Just really quick. Just really quick.
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Whatever you think from what I told you is gonna happen, I guarantee you, you don't know what's gonna happen.
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Perfect. Even better.
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Exactly.
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I love it. Oh, I need it immediately. Okay. But we're professionals and I have to keep recording, so I guess I'll do that instead. My second book this week is Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson. So this is a collection of essays that is was first released in 2023. It's not brand new, hot off the presses, but it's becoming ever more popular right now. I did read it with Katie, my reading partner, and we collectively agreed that it was not fun to read, but necessary. This book tracks a historical narrative in our present time. It is nonfiction in which Heather Cox Richardson, the author, connects the dots all the way from the founding fathers through the 19th and 20th centuries and into our present time. She helps her readers to understand the trajectory, that big arc that led to weaponized language, falsified history books and courses, and how the wealthy became the powerful in a government that was supposed to be by the people and for the people. Like we all learned in school, when we look at our history and we know where we've been, it's easier to see the road ahead and where we're going. So while this book released in 2023, like I said, and even since then, things have changed and pivoted and don't look the same as they did, the way she breaks down the historical record and creates that through line that you can follow and is what is relatively concise. Makes it easy to not just follow, but hard to refute. I did mention in our Top Books of the Year episode that in 2025 I also read a 900 page history book as my longest book of the year, which was called these Truths by Jill Lepore. But this is a 300 pager and it painted nearly as full of a picture with a broader brush and fewer minutiae. Anyone who's interested in dipping a toe back into the learning that many of us, myself included in this statement, abandoned after history was no longer a required subject in school, this is a great place to launch from when I started homeschooling my kiddos 11 years ago. this point, a long time ago, it gave me the opportunity to relearn and refresh what I had learned before. I used to say that history was my least favorite subject. I thought it was dull and dry and boring. And I'm not saying that that's true for anybody else. I'm saying that's how I felt. However, I am now in the never get tired of a new historical perspective camp and this one was excellent. It really added to my understanding of our history as a whole. Katie and I both rated it very highly, four and a half and five stars, and I will happily read more from this author in the future. It is in essays. Like I said, so roughly one essay a day makes for good reading rather than trying to binge it all at once. Even though, like I said, it's relatively short. This was Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson.
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B
I feel like that line right at the top where you said it wasn't necessarily it wasn't fun, but it was necessary. I actually follow Heather Cox Richardson and almost daily will be kind of reading out loud from her daily posts to Johnny or whatever. And almost always not fun, but really necessary would be how I would describe it. I like her a lot. I love her groundedness in American history.
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A
Yes, and that context. So well versed.
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Yeah, she's really, really smart. I love it. Okay, all right. My second one is a work of poetry. This is Two Cures for Love by Wendy Cope. This is a selected poems collection spanning three decades of poet Wendy Cope's work from 1979 to 2006. Pulls together pieces from three previously published collections and a handful of published poems that were published here for the first time. But what makes this special is that Cope herself has fully annotated the poems so she'll identify verse forms, references, dates of composition, and the things that inspired them, which gives a real behind the scenes look to her process and to the poem itself. I really loved it. So Cope is known for being accessible and funny. Two things I know I am always really looking forward, looking for in my poetry. And there is no question that that is the tone that she hits in this collection. So, three things that you need to know about this book. So Wendy Cope is sassy in the best possible way. She's organic and has a kind of this is who I am kind of sass, not I'm trying to get likes on Instagram kind of sass. Second, this poetry collection will have you both laughing out loud and getting a little misty sometimes and sometimes within the same poem. And third, I loved it so much that I read the collection twice. This has become my favorite book of poetry so far in my search for the poet of my soul. So Cope's voice, she is by turns serious and silly, which means some poems rhyme and are short, almost like limericks. But her ease with naming a very specific love for a very specific thing, human, animal, natural, resonates with me over and over again. Yes, she's sometimes irritated with the men in her life in some of these poems, and she is not afraid to be frank about it. The wonderful title poem, Two Cures for Love, is very, very short and tells you everything that you need to know about her. It says, number one, don't see him. These are the cures for love. Number one, don't see him. Don't call or write a letter. Number two, the easier way, get to know him better. Oh, that's the entire poem. That's the kind of wry wisdom that had me nodding along and immediately texting lines to my husband. But here's what I love about her. She doesn't stay in that kind of place. This isn't a whole book of poems about her being irritated with whoever she was in love with at the time. She also has poems that are very tender about her significant other or her family or about the state of the world. She's got tremendous emotional range. Wendy Cope understands that we contain multitudes. Though she's now 80, she feels like a soul sister to me. That ability to hold both the frustration and the tenderness, the silly and the serious, in one slim volume. To me, that's the mark of a poet who gets it. I found myself smiling, nodding and sending many poems to people in my life who I knew they would resonate with. The accessibility of her work. The way that she writes in these clear. This clear conversational language never gets in the way of the emotional impact. So if you are Intimidated by poetry or you think it's not for you? I wonder if Wendy Cope might just change your mind. This is Two Cures for Love by Wendy Cope.
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A
I love that. And I'm going to ask the question that other people are thinking, which is, if you feel you may have found the poet of your soul, will you keep searching? Or is this a true love forever with one poet for life type situation?
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Yeah. No, I'm not going to stop reading poetry, mostly because I have just found that it has such a great place in my reading life. So I'm really happy to have found. I think I'll probably end up with like 10 poets of my soul.
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Oh, good. Okay.
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And so I think I've found one kind of like my poet council, like Laura Tremaine's life council. I think I have 12. One slot.
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Yes. All right. I like it.
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Yeah.
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A
Okay. My third one this week is called the Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel. And listen up, if y' all are lovers of stories about strong women, about sisters, or about world travel, or about paleontology and archaeology, this book is the one that you're going to want to pick up this episode. This one first released in 2023 as well, much like my previous current read, but it made its way onto my shelves when the paperback was released and the publisher wrote to us to ask if we wanted a copy. I wrote back a little petty and I said, that depends. Does it still have the adorable baby mammoth on the front cover of the paperback version? Because if the answer is no, I don't want it. And the answer was yes. So I sent her my address, because sometimes we need adorable baby mammoths to get us into a story, even if it's called the Last Animal. And we are the type of reader who doesn't want to read about the last of any animal. Like myself. This book, like much of my 2025 reading, is literary and reflective and science fiction. And I liked that combination of factors. It was not just one thing. We mostly hear this story through young sisters. Their names are Eve and Vera. They are being dragged along after their brilliant mother on an Arctic expedition because their father recently passed away. So not hanging along is not an option. Their mom is serving as a lab assistant. Despite her very capable education, she is a woman. So she gets to do the coffee bringing and the note taking, even though she knows about the things as well. When the girls are poking around, trying to stay out of trouble, but failing, they accidentally discover a 4,000-year-old baby mammoth in the permafrost which is perfectly preserved but recently exposed due to climate change. And the girls and their mom get a surprising offer to head to Italy on what is essentially a covert mission involving heists and espionage. You might think this is turning into a thriller or a spy game, but instead, it's a story of family and feminism and the ways that we protect the. The creatures in our communities and the ones on our planet. Did it make me want a baby mammoth? Yes, it did. Do I still want scientists to screw around with genetic sequencing, find a way to make me a dog sized elephant? Also, yes. Despite the number of books I've read, including this one, that are about messing with genes and how humans are not gods and we cannot be trusted with such things, y'. All, it's not a good idea.
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B
It isn't. We. If we didn't learn. If we learned one thing from Jurassic Park.
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Jurassic Park. I know, I know. In Jurassic park they make a tiny elephant and I'm like, can we just do that part without the dinosaurs, y'? All. We shouldn't. It doesn't matter. I still want it. This book was heartfelt, even when it was literary. And sometimes those things feel like they're in conflict with each other. Right? Like, literary means you're going to be sad and nobody's getting a happy ending. That's what literary means sometimes, especially to this reader. But it's not like that. It reminded me a bit of Bear by Julia Phillips, but with a kinder core, especially in the relationship between the sisters. Yes, they are sisterly to each other in that sometimes they want to knock the snot out of the other one, metaphorically, but they love each other deeply and they are super in the other's corner at all times. And I loved that relationship as well as the one with their mom, plus an elderly woman that we meet about halfway through the story. All of it just really spoke to me and I ended up really enjoying this one. This is the Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel.
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B
I do. I have seen that cover, and I do think that it's. It's a great, great cover.
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A
It really is.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Right.
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B
I'm glad that that worked for you. And so much more literary that you're bringing to the show.
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A
So weird. I mean, a reader does what she. What she does, right? And that's what worked for me. So here we are talking about it.
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B
All right, well, that's perfect for my third book because that falls exactly into the category of the heart wants what the heart wants. Even sometimes when you didn't know you wanted it. I read a book that I'm curious to know, Katie, if you've ever heard of called For Whom the Bell. B E L L E Tolls by JC Lin. Have you heard anything about this book? It's a TikTok, darling.
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A
No. Well, I'm still not on TikTok. This is the most boomer thing about me.
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B
It's a fun thing to say. It's a TikTok, darling. That's a fun.
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A
No, I don't know. For Whom the Bell Tolls.
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B
Here's the setup. Our lead character, Lily, dies of cancer in the first, like, two chapter two paragraphs of the book.
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A
Okay.
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B
And she wakes up in the afterlife. But it is not at all what you've been picturing. This is a place where deities are waiting in line at coffee shops and all manner of characters are just flitting around between the realms like it's no big deal. And Lily, armed with years of retail experience and a truly impressive level of wit and sarcasm, finds herself inexplicably drawn to the one place that everyone avoids. She. Although she's not sent to hell.
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A
She.
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B
Is drawn to hell, but it's not the hell you're thinking of. She basically goes there and quickly realizes that, you know what? These gates to hell need more. Better customer service, better organization of the process. Sorting souls into their proper circles with zero patience for nonsense. Because, as you can imagine, when people find out that they are supposed to go to hell, you can imagine they become real, Karen. Like, real quick.
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A
Right?
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B
So Lily's gonna get that fixed up. And the people who are running hell in the gates of hell are very happy to have the assistance. Well, while she's there, she meets Belle B E L, a demon general who happens to have wings and a tail and the kind of voice that makes you forget all kinds of things. And they develop a really sweet friendship, and it becomes something deeper. And before long, Lily is building a life that she never expected, complete with found family and this new love that's like nothing she's ever experienced before. All right, Katie. Every once in a while, my brain becomes an unfriendly place, right? I just can't find safety in my thoughts. And in those cases, I need an emotional support book that's going to wrap itself around me like a weighted blanket and let me exist in this other space that does feel safe. That is this book of our bookish friends in our currently reading bookish friends group. Henrika recommended this book to all of us, and I'm so grateful that she did, because I would never have picked it up on my own. But that would have been a real loss because I loved it. What's interesting here, as with quite a bit of cozy fantasy, is that not a lot happens in this book, but it's big. It's 620 pages.
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A
Oh my gosh.
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B
And not a lot happens. Air quotes. But I read this in two days. Like I gobbled it. A lot happens, if you know what I mean. Like, it's like not a lot happens, but a lot happens. It's like a lot of cozy, comfortable, good vibes. This book is such a mood, and by that I mean a genuinely good mood. I enjoyed my time in this space so much. As I said, I burned through 620 pages in two days. One of my fastest reads ever for a book of over 600 pages, which tells you something about what a milkshake book it is. So this is cozy fantasy romance. Yes, the romance is part of things here and it does get fairly spicy. I would give it three chili peppers. But the love story and the friends to lovers element matter so much more than that physical component, which is really not a gigantic part of the story at all. There's so much fantastic found family woven through this book and so much about finding redemption and finding belief in yourself and really deciding, you know what. It's really about finding your own worthiness, which is something that I struggle with. I struggle to feel consistently worthy. And Lily in our book, she does too.
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A
Yeah.
- [32:15]
B
And this place that she goes in the afterlife is everything that she needed for it to be. For her soul to figure that piece of things out. So it's, it's all good vibes, especially in the first 30%. The World Building of this afterlife is so, so good. I'm not going to go into details and I've purposely been really detail free about it because I don't want to steal the joy of you going in and reading it for yourself. But suffice it to say, if I could organize the afterlife, this is exactly the way I would do it. It's clever and creative and just different enough to completely fresh take on heaven and hell and everything that happens afterwards. So as I said. Well, I didn't say this part. It's a TikTok, darling, which I just like that phrase. But also, you did say that it's. This book started out not as a book, it started out as a series of skits on TikTok. You know those skits that they do where one person plays all the different parts yeah, but they have like a different wig or whatever, like Shauna the mom. But J.C. lin was just a creator like that. And then she created so much of this world, and it got to be so popular that she wrote an entire book about it, which I. I love the way that that happened for her. So obviously there's a trigger warning here. We know from literally the first sentence that our lead character, Lily, is dying of cancer, and then she does die of cancer very quickly. And the book is not focused on that. But because it comes up so quickly right in the front, I don't want it to sneak up on anybody. I don't want it to punch you on the face. In the face. If that's something that is really tender for you right now. So I just want to say that there. It's not a spoiler, but it is something you want to be careful about. If that's. If that's kind of a tender spot for you, I'll say this is definitely one of those books where if you don't love it in the first five pages, it's probably not going to be for you. There are a lot of moods that I could be in where this book would definitely not be right for me, but I happen to be in a specific mood where it was absolutely perfect. It just. It needs the right vibe and it needs the right moment. I think if you loved the Spell Shop or Legends and Lattes, there is a lot to love here. Or especially if you thought, I really like Legends and Lattes, but I wish it were just a little bit spicier, then you're definitely going to want to check this out. This one is pure fun and so many good vibes. This is For Whom the bell tolls by J.C. lin.
- [34:47]
A
It sounds perfect.
- [34:49]
B
Honestly, really, really fun. Katie, I think you would very much enjoy it.
- [34:54]
A
I think I would, too. I think I would, too.
- [34:56]
B
And I'll bet it's good on audio. I don't know. I didn't listen to it, but I did see some clips of the. The boy narrator and the girl narrator, and their voices were very, very good. So it might be really good on audio. But I read this one. I just raw dogged this one in print. The 620 page from my library. I just was like, give it to me.
- [35:17]
A
Amazing.
- [35:18]
B
Yeah.
- [35:19]
A
So good. I love it.
- [35:21]
B
All right, so those are our current reads. And now let's talk a little bit about special editions. We've never talked about this before.
- [35:32]
A
No. And this actually, this is a conversation that Holly started with the two of Us. Meredith, she sent us a reel from. I went and found it. It's Doc of the Dark Arts, all one word. And he discussed the differences in two books that are both marketed as special editions. And she said, you girls, I would like you to talk about this.
- [35:52]
B
Okay. Yes. Yes. And because we. The reason I think we've never talked about it before is because in all the years we've been doing the podcast, it hasn't been as big a deal as it is now.
- [36:02]
A
It has changed drastically over the years, for sure. Yeah.
- [36:07]
B
Right. And I think we. I could be wrong about this because I'm not an industry expert, but it feels. Feels to me like at least a milestone along the road. Here was Fourth Wing.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah. I would agree. In. In my personal reading life history, I have a number of subscription boxes that I've brought to the show over the years that they were very specific, almost always fantasy. And what you were subscribing to was a special edition each month. Owlcrate does this. Fairyloot was one that I subscribed to for a long time. I had one called Satisfaction Fiction for a period of time, and they were deluxe special editions. And that kind of set the bar for me. I think it became mainstream and very big in the reader world at large. Like, I'm not paying extra for this. I'm finding it on the table at Barnes and Noble when 4th Wing released. I agree with you there. Yeah.
- [36:59]
B
Because right around the. Not very long after Fourth Wing, with all of that hullabaloo about the first printing and the dragons on the edges, that was, you know, that was really like, oh, my gosh, when I. And that was the first time I cared about what edition of a book that I had like that. Right. Like, purely for the special edition. And then, Katie, the first year that you and I went to Europe, you probably saw like, I did that. I felt like when we went to London the first time in 2023, there were so many special editions there that we didn't. We weren't getting here. So they were on kind of more of a leading edge, I think, than. Than we were. And then when we just went back to London, I felt the. In foils. I felt like 50% of the books that were on tables and everything of all genres were sprayed edges. End papers that were interesting. Something being included in the book that wouldn't have been included before. So clearly publishers have decided this is. This is something that's worth their. Their money to print these books.
- [38:04]
A
Yeah. But I do think there's kind of a A readerly divide. Right. Because books in general have increased in prices, I guess. I guess this episode, I'm just being the boomer. But I was just recently whining to Shad about how you used to be able to get a hardback for $18 and now just a regular hardback is 30 and a paperback, a new release adult paperback is 18 with no special treatment on either of them. Right. So we're already spending quite a bit more to have a paper copy of any book in our home as we're sitting here right now, Meredith, I can see your Louise Penny collection behind you, including the special edition of Still Life for the 20 year anniversary.
- [38:52]
B
20Th anniversary.
- [38:53]
A
Exactly right. And so we also have this divide in the reader community, or not even a divide, but a choice that we all get to make as readers. As do we want to get the Thrift Book $3 paperback because that book's been out for 20 years, or is this a book that matters to us enough that we want the beautiful, not just $30, the 35, 38, $39 version which has four color sprayed edges, nice end papers, maybe a dust jacket that you can flip inside out and see additional art of some kind, maybe an additional map or a four color something inside of it. There's a lot, there's many layers to what can make something a special edition. Additional content like you mentioned. Right, right, right.
- [39:41]
B
Character lists that are done in a really especially beautiful way, or time or family trees that are done in an especially beautiful way. That was a lot of what I saw when I went to London this last time was a lot of middle grade being done in very, very beautiful special editions. I think for me, first of all, anytime more money and attention is being given to printed books, I feel like that's a, that's a good thing. Right? That feels like a positive sign for readers. And I like that we're getting them beyond just fantasy. Although fantasy does really lend itself to a lot of this. But I. Even in the mystery and thriller genre, we are getting more of those, I think for me, I know, I mean, don't get me wrong, I can be very, very tempted by a special edition. I love me some sprayed edges, but now that they're getting kind of everywhere, I think it's going to force me to make more of a choice and say, okay, but is this really a book that I need a special edition of? It was a no brainer for me when the 20th and 20th anniversary edition of Still Life came out. It's a very, very beautiful edition of A book that is very, very important to me. I know, for example, they're putting out a brand new, brand new editions of the Wheel of Time series. So there's a whole bunch of people who've been loving those books for decades who will pay a premium to be able to have a copy, even though they might have four other editions on their shelves. Because it's a favorite, favorite book. But I don't know that I need like the latest Emily Henry in a special edition, for example. But I don't want to stop anyone else from getting that.
- [41:25]
A
Well, and that's the thing is that sometimes it's not even a choice you can make anymore. Right. Like the, the hardback version of Emily Henry now comes with sprayed edges. Everybody's getting sprayed edges, whether you wanted that or wanted to pay for that upgrade or not. Right. Sometimes even paperbacks are getting that. I'll tell you what, when the, when the box paperback set of the Hunger Games came out with sprayed edges on paperbacks, I was like, I can't buy that fast enough. I want that so badly. Otherwise, exactly the same. But the color of the spine of the book matched the paper side of the book as well. And I love the way they look on my shelf and I love touching them and they make me happy in a way that the Shelter shoddy many times Read copies of those same books do not. And I treat them differently. And I kept both copies. Right.
- [42:19]
B
That's what I was going to say for my Louise Penny or for my Account of Monte Cristo or any of my books that I care the Homemaker. I have multiple editions of those books and they serve a different purpose. Like the still life is face out on my shelves. Right. It's something that you see as soon as you walk into this. I'm recording in my library right now, and it's an art piece in addition to being a special edition of the book. But I still have the very first version that I ever read on my shelf because that's. That was the first book by her I ever read. So there's room for me. I worry that special editions are by the end of 2026 going to be overdone to the point of them not being special at all anymore.
- [43:04]
A
Right. If everything is special, then nothing is special. Right, Exactly.
- [43:09]
B
So but who are we to decide, you know what? The market will decide that, and that's great. So what I know that I'm going to do in 2026 is if really, really interesting special editions come out for books that I have really Loved or already on my keeper shelf. Those are the special editions that I'm going to prioritize. And I probably am going to not prioritize hard copy special editions. If it's a book that I just am not sure it's how it's going to land with me.
- [43:36]
A
Yes. And I think that's what I have decided for myself as well. I stopped subscribing to a lot of those boxes. Even though I loved getting the books, I loved unwrapping them, I loved seeing all the special features to them. But they weren't necessarily books that I wanted to keep forever. And oftentimes they were not books that I had read. So I didn't even know when I picked them up. You know, what, what does this art reflect? And why is this special anyway? And it is fun to go through that process of the reveal from. Okay, I see this insignia on the page edges. I see now how that's revealed in the book itself. What a cool feature. But for me, if I'm looking at a special edition, if it's not something I've already read, I'm not planning to buy the special edition of that book. I will save the specialness for the things that are special to me.
- [44:27]
B
Although we did just immediately jump on the Poet Empress special edition version, which we did not have to do.
- [44:35]
A
And that textured cover. That cover feels like no other book in my shelves. I want to touch that cover all the time. It has something. Maybe it's crazy, I don't know.
- [44:48]
B
I can sit here all the live long day and say I'm only going to buy special editions.
- [44:54]
A
But we had both read at least 5% of that book before we decided.
- [44:58]
B
Right. We knew that we. Yeah, we knew it had legs. We knew it had legs. That's true.
- [45:02]
A
It's true.
- [45:03]
B
So, Katie, I think one thing that would change this for me and I don't know if we're going to see this much because from a math perspective, I'm not sure the math maps for publishers, but the point that the clip that Holly shared with us, the point that the guy was making was that there's really two kinds of special editions. Right. One that's very like it's maybe just got some additional color on the COVID but everything else about it is the same. Maybe the edges are sprayed, but everything else is the same. But a true special edition doesn't only have the bells and whistles on the edges and the COVID but it might have something additional inside. It might have something that the other versions simply don't have that becomes more interesting to me, I do have to say. But I still think they would have to give us the option of a regular hardback or a true special edition so that like to. To have there be something that you can only get if you buy it in that format.
- [46:02]
A
Right.
- [46:02]
B
That's interesting.
- [46:03]
A
Yes. Yes, I agree. Like a bonus chapter or an epilogue or a chapter from another character's point of view or something. Or even extended author's note at the end that talks about the writing process and how this. Yes. Went from being a TikTok series to becoming the book in your hands. Like that kind of info. Yeah, Bring it on. I love that stuff.
- [46:27]
B
Exactly.
- [46:28]
A
Exactly.
- [46:28]
B
So hopefully publishers are going to. I think what we'll definitely see from them is we'll see more and different iterations on the special edition. And again, I think that's only a positive thing for the book industry.
- [46:41]
A
Yes.
- [46:42]
B
All right, Katie, let's visit the fountain. Should we? Shall we?
- [46:47]
A
I think we should. We should.
- [46:49]
B
All right, what's your wish this week?
- [46:51]
A
All right, my wish hearkens back to some of our previous iterations of currently reading. So I'm going to press a book into our listeners hands as my wish this week and I'm very excited about it. And as you gave us your current reads, I am actually gonna make a few connections between one book that you talked about and the book that I can't wait to to remind you all how much we loved it. I'm going to press Hench by Natalie Zena Walshatz.
- [47:18]
B
Oh, I love this book.
- [47:19]
A
This book is such a favorite. This book was on my favorite books list of 2022 and it's time to officially press it into the hands of our listeners. If you've been sitting there thinking working for a supervillain doesn't seem like such a bad gig, especially if you could do it using spreadsheets and accounting software. Okay, maybe that's just me, but that's would mean that this is the book for you, Right. Even if you aren't Katie Cobb or Meredith. This book is for you if you enjoyed the Boys on Amazon prime, or if you've ever thought that a dark and complicated villain was easier to root for than they should have been. This book is for you if you've enjoyed books by John Scalzi, those humorous peeks behind the curtain of strange situations, or the Renegades series by Marissa Meyer. And this book is for you if you've ever found yourself pounding away at menial office work just to make ends meet or just to hold on to your insurance. This book is not for you if you're turned away by blood and guts or viscera of any kind. It is humorous and propulsive and delightful, but it has a wide river of darkness that really works for some of us and does not for others. And that's okay. The very simple, basic setup is that we're following Anna, who has a boring job working for a terrible person as a tem. But when her life changes due to disability after an encounter with a superhero, she starts to question everything she thought she knew about job security, good and evil, and what it really means to fight for justice. It is whip smart, unforgettable. And while it's been mentioned in the big show in 10 different episodes since we both read it in January of 2022, it's never been pressed into your hands. So it is time to do that now. This is Hench by Natalie Zena Walshatz. And I'm going to connect it to For Whom the Bell Tolls that Meredith was telling us about earlier, because it's that kind of behind the scenes. Can we make this work a little better? Whether it's for a supervillain or in the afterlife, if you liked one, I bet you'll love the other. Hench by Natalie Zena Walshatz.
- [49:17]
B
Katie, I'm so glad that you pressed this. I think about Hench all the time. And there's a new one coming out. The sequel called Villain is coming out in May, so I'm super excited about that one. Although I am worried because I liked Hinge so much. I am a little bit worried that I'm not going to like the follow up, which happens to me. Happens to all of us.
- [49:39]
A
Yeah.
- [49:40]
B
So big fingers crossed that Villain is going to be really, really good. I love Hinch so much. I love that look at. Well, okay, but are super superheroes actually as great as we've made them out to be? Because they're kind of irresponsible in a lot of ways and there's a lot of collateral damage.
- [49:56]
A
Yes.
- [49:58]
B
And that's. It's. Yes. Hinge is so, so good. I love it so much. Okay, my wish at the fountain is this. If you have been feeling slumpy with your reading or maybe you've been feeling like I keep trying to get into a book and nothing's really sticking. Or just like I. I start reading and then my thoughts wander or I just can't seem to get stuck into a book like I normally do. This is weird advice, but I swear to God you guys get your eyes checked. Because I recently was feeling this way more and more, and I went. And I'm 52, so I'm at that age where I know my eyesight is like. Like every 12 hours. My eyesight is demonstrably worse than it was before. Oh, that's the. That's the age that I am right now. But I thought that I'd been, like, within the past year, but it had actually been two years since I'd gone, and my age optometrist was like, I'm surprised that you've actually been driving with your. Like, your prescription has changed so much. I just got all new glasses, and it has made my reading so much more enjoyable. But I bring this up because sometimes our eyes do such a good. Our eyes and our brain do such a good job of compensating that you might not even realize that that is why you just feel a little bit tired or it's. You feel a little bit distracted in a way that you don't normally. So I'm just gonna say, go, actually check to see the last time you went to the eye doctor. Don't just assume it. Go check it. And if you need to go, go get it checked, because it can really help.
- [51:37]
A
You're worth it.
- [51:37]
B
You're worth it. Exactly. That's my wish. Pings flash.
- [51:42]
A
It's like, it's right there. It's just begging.
- [51:45]
B
No, I can't not say it. I can't. I can't not save Pink Splash now that I know how many people just.
- [51:51]
A
I don't want to.
- [51:52]
B
I don't want people to hate it, but now I just can't. Now it's stuck like an earworm.
- [51:56]
A
And when you say that's my wish, like, it just. It demands. There's a blank right there. It's just begging. It is.
- [52:05]
B
But for all of you who let us know that maybe the fountain section. Well, you probably are not even listening to this because you've already skipped ahead.
- [52:12]
A
They're out of here. Scoot.
- [52:13]
B
Scooted on. So for the rest of you, I will tell you that we are going to be making some changes to the fountain section. We're going to be. We're going to be coughing.
- [52:22]
A
Watch this space.
- [52:23]
B
Yeah, exactly. So that's coming soon. All right, Katie, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me. I'm Meredith at meredithmonday Schwartz on Instagram.
- [52:36]
A
And you can find me, Katie, at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putabong Evans and you can find her on Instagram at Most of Megan's Reads Full show notes with.
- [52:48]
B
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 at currentlyreading Podcast, which is also where you can go take a quiz and find out your reader type.
- [53:05]
A
You can also follow the show where we share about cool stuff like that @currentlyreading podcast on Instagram or email us@currentlyreading podcast gmail.com if you want more of.
- [53:15]
B
This kind of content, join us. As a bookish friend, you get so much more content. You get a fantastic bookish community and you keep this show commercial free. It's only $5 a month and it's a great investment, especially at this beginning of the year because you can get our reading Tracker. You can also help us by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts and shouting us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [53:41]
A
Yes, Bookish friends are the best friends, all 3,000 of them. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [53:48]
B
All right, until next week, may your.
- [53:50]
A
Coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [53:53]
B
Happy reading, Katie.
- [53:54]
A
Happy reading, Meredith.