Season 8, Episode 27: We Control Our Reading + Boss My TBR

Summary

Currently Reading – S8 E27: "We Control Our Reading + Boss My TBR"
February 9, 2026
Hosts: Meredith Monday Schwartz & Kaytee Cobb

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee celebrate the freedom and joy of curating their own reading lives—a main theme that runs through both personal anecdotes and book recommendations. The episode features vibrant discussion of recent reads (from academic mysteries to old-school sci-fi and overlooked animal nonfiction), thoughts on rereading and changing as readers, and the return of their "Boss My TBR" segment, where they help listeners prioritize their to-read stacks. The co-hosts also debut a new closing format—"Before We Go"—to replace their long-running segment, The Fountain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Bookish Moments of the Week (02:37 – 07:42)

• Kaytee's Bookstore Visit:

  • Recaps her family’s trip to Monterey and San Francisco, including a cherished detour to City Lights Bookstore: “I loved wandering this old bookstore, wandering the stacks, partaking of the history there.” (04:00)
  • Describes City Lights’ focus: literary fiction/nonfiction on the main floor, genre fiction in the basement, and poetry on the top floor.

• Meredith’s Reading Realization:

  • Reflects on her ongoing slow read of Wolf Hall with a buddy group and the "Footnotes and Tangents" podcast.
  • Shares an epiphany about self-imposed reading rules: “I am the boss of my own reading. Did you know that?...You read whatever you want to read, and you read it as quickly or as slowly as you want.” (04:44, 07:42)

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Current Reads: Reviews & Commentary

1. History Lessons by Zoe B. Walbrook – Kaytee (07:59 – 11:12)

• Academic mystery starring Daphne, a history professor drawn into a murder case with sharp observations about academia, patriarchy, and the complexities of modern life.
• “It's a distinctive experience that leads to the reader feeling like this character has something special to offer...I loved Daphne.” (08:34)
• Four stars for immersive academia, compelling but slightly sluggish pacing, and hope for a sequel.

2. Sphere by Michael Crichton – Meredith (11:54 – 15:35)

• A claustrophobic, high-stakes underwater sci-fi thriller featuring a team of scientists who discover something terrifying on the ocean floor.
• “He takes smart people, isolates them with something terrifying…and then watches what happens when he turns the pressure up and up and up.” (11:55)
• Commends the propulsive action, intellectual intrigue, and a pitch-perfect ending, though she notes dated gender dynamics: “You have to contextualize [the depiction of women] as a product of its time.” (13:49)

3. Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb – Kaytee (16:23 – 20:23)

• Narrative nonfiction exploring beavers as a keystone species and environmental superheroes, with personal and historic context.
• “It turns out… beavers can basically save the landscape and the water table and maybe even the world.” (17:29)
• Five stars; Kaytee now identifies as a “beaver believer,” delighting in nonfiction that sparks newfound passions for overlooked animals.

4. The Sleeper Lies by Andrea Mara – Meredith (21:58 – 26:27)

• Irish domestic suspense about an isolated woman under threat, blending past and present mysteries.
• While the premise is strong, the pacing and dual timeline construction fail to fully engage: “This one was mid… not bad, not great. There was a great ending, but it just didn’t flow.” (25:12)

5. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (Reread) – Kaytee (26:35 – 31:20)

• Kaytee revisits a formerly disliked novel and finds her opinion changed with time.
• “I'm so glad I gave myself a chance to read it again as a different person, knowing how much I had changed…I loved this book the second time.” (28:46)
• Sparks a broader discussion on the value of rereading as readers grow and change.

6. Snap by Belinda Bauer – Meredith (33:14 – 37:26)

• Five-star thriller following a boy forced into caretaking (and burglary) after his mother disappears, interweaving multiple storylines and character arcs.
• “Your allegiances will shift… I found myself rooting for really unexpected people.” (35:34)
• Strongly recommends to fans of Lisa Jewell and Catherine Ryan Howard.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If you struggle with this in your reading because you’ve made up any sort of ‘should,’ I just wanted to let you know, once again: you are the boss of your own reading.” – Meredith (07:22)
• “When an author finds something they’re super into, and then they use their God-given gifts to convince me that I also am super into it… I did not give a rat’s tail about beavers prior to this book, but bring on the octopuses, the turtles, the birds, and the beavers.” – Kaytee (19:21)
• “Bringing a mid-book is the worst kind of book to bring to the show. Give me bad, give me great. Mid is hard to make interesting content about.” – Meredith (24:36)
• “I’m so glad I didn’t say, ‘Well, that’s my opinion; put it on my tombstone—Katie Cobb hated The Dutch House,’ because I love it now and I was allowed to hate it then.” – Kaytee (32:43)
• “The premise is strong but the pacing was off… it made me tired to read it rather than feel satisfied.” – Meredith on The Sleeper Lies (25:05)

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Boss My TBR Segment (37:27 – 47:15)

The hosts help two Bookish Friends prioritize their reading lists:

Gretchen's TBR (38:11 – 42:54)

• Choices: For Whom the Bell Tolls (J.C. Lynn), When the Stars Go Dark (Paula McLain), Bride (Ali Hazelwood), Monk and Robot (Becky Chambers), Gilded (Marissa Meyer)
• Meredith’s Order: For Whom the Bell Tolls → When the Stars Go Dark → Monk and Robot (41:08)
• Kaytee’s Order: Monk and Robot (for emotional balm) → For Whom the Bell Tolls → Bride (noting it’s a lighter intro to “omegaverse” romance) (41:56)

Lauren's TBR (43:46 – 47:04)

• Choices: I Medusa (Ayana Gray), Meet the Newmans (Jennifer Niven), Fear and Fury (Heather Ann Thompson), Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey), Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)
• Both opt for Meet the Newmans and Fear and Fury as top picks.
• Kaytee chooses I Medusa next; Meredith prioritizes Dungeon Crawler Carl, which she has recently enjoyed, and notes plans to bring it to a future episode.

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New Segment Debut: "Before We Go" (47:46 – 56:13)

To keep their closings fresh and flexible, Meredith and Kaytee introduce “Before We Go” with two parts:

1. Bookish Friends Highlights (49:41 – 52:06):
   Meredith shares two popular posts from their private Facebook group—one organizing a Democracy Awakening buddy read (37 participants!) and another seeking (and rapidly receiving) sleepy book recommendations for nighttime insomnia.
2. Tasting Menu of Mini-Topics (52:06 – 56:13):
   Kaytee explains themed closing options: curiosity, listener recs, sleeper hits, DNF confessions, and TBR triage.
   • This week: Kaytee does a "TBR triage," deciding to unhaul (and offer to Meredith) the Left-Handed & Sinister Booksellers duology by Garth Nix, which have languished on her shelf due to series-order confusion:
     “When I got home, I found out … this is the second in a series. … Now that I had both, I no longer wanted to read either. … I became so disenchanted with picking up the second one and being messed up in my head around them, so they got, like, sullied.” (55:46)

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Important Timestamps

• Bookish Moment of the Week: 02:37 – 07:42
• Current Reads: 07:59 – 37:26
• Boss My TBR: 37:27 – 47:15
• Before We Go Segment: 47:46 – 56:13

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Final Notes

• The co-hosts encourage listeners to shed reading “shoulds,” embrace personal reading rhythms, and even revisit books as new people.
• Meredith and Kaytee’s laughter and candor—plus warmth toward their community—shine throughout.
• Listener engagement is front-and-center, from Facebook group highlights to TBR triage.
• Stay tuned for Meredith’s thoughts on Dungeon Crawler Carl and for more inventive “Before We Go” moments in future episodes.

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To connect:

• Meredith: @meredithmondayschwartz
• Kaytee: @notesonbookmarks
• Podcast: currentlyreadingpodcast.com | @currentlyreadingpodcast (Instagram & YouTube)

May your coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable. Happy reading!

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 spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a readerly deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go.

[B]

I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I make the rules of my own reading.

[A]

And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona and a local bookstore is always part of my travel plans. This is episode number 27 of season eight and we are so glad you're here.

[B]

Oh, yeah, local bookstores are sometimes the. The absolute best finds.

[A]

Indeed they are, Meredith. And because we're on YouTube, I will point out that those travel plans. I am wearing my San Francisco shirt today that I just got on my recent trip. It's so sparkly, right?

[B]

So pretty. It's so sparkly. I love it. I love it. I am not dressed up today. I am like, you know what? We record too dang many of these for me to be dressed up every time. You're just gonna see me. So straight out the gym.

[A]

This is a real thing. I took off my hoodie that looks exactly like that maybe four minutes ago.

[B]

So if you are taking a look at our actual. Our YouTube video. Yeah. You will get to see the real us. All right, Katie, so a couple of things. First, I'm going to tell you that we are going to do our deep dive today on Boss my TBR fantastic regular segment. We actually hadn't done it since August. Is that right?

[A]

Yes. It's been so long.

[B]

Yes. So we are going to Boss two people's TBRS today and we also are going to debut a little something different at the end of the episode that will replace the fountain. Rip the fountain.

[A]

You know, I loved the fountain. It did have its detractors, but it was a faithful companion for a few years. So we are grateful to the fountain.

[B]

Well, I couldn't sleep last night, Katie, so I'm just going to tell you now that I am making sweatshirts for you and me that say pink Splash. So we're going to have. We are going to have commemorative sweatshirts.

[A]

Oh, I love it.

[B]

All right, so let's get started though before we do all of that with Our bookish moment of the week. Katie, what have you got?

[A]

Let's do. I'm so grateful that Roxanna was here last week to sub in for me while I was on vacation with my family in the Bay Area. This was a big deal. My parents, my best friend Shad, and all four of my kids and I went to Monterey for three days and San Francisco for three days. Thus the shirt. And we packed every moment as full as we possibly could. That means I only had one semi free afternoon to add a bookstore to our itinerary. So. So we went to City Lights, which is billed as the nation's first all paperback bookstore as their claim to fame. This store started in 1953 as a literary meeting place, especially for beatnik poets. And it still is a kind of cultural hub for the center of the city. The main floor has a pretty literary bent to it. It's like fiction and nonfiction stacks, but very heavy on both. Genre fiction is in small corners of the basement and poetry takes up nearly the entire top floor. Because of the long and storied history that City Lights Bookstore has with poetry, they also have their own publishing house. And I loved wandering this old bookstore, wandering the stacks, partaking of the history there. I only got two books for myself, and then I had a couple kids with me and they each got a couple. My parents couldn't find parking, so only half our party went to the bookstore. But it was a great capstone to our trip. Always love visiting bookstores in places that I haven't gotten to go to. I did also drive through Half Moon Bay, though, Meredith and I thought about you and the reading room that you love to talk about in Half Moon Bay. So that made me think of you.

[B]

Well, the Half Moon Bay also is where Johnny and I got married. And it's where, when I'm cremated, I.

[A]

Want to be sprinkled, scattered amongst the waves at Half Moon.

[B]

Scattered, sprinkled or scattered?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

I love Half Moon Bay. It is. It is one of my favorite places in the world. All right, Katie. Well, I am the boss of my own reading. Did you know that?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that. Sometimes I. I let other things begin to boss my reading. But so what made me think of that this week is that I am doing, and you are going to hear me talk about it all throughout the year. But I am doing the slow read of Wolf hall or the three Cromwell books, Hillary Mantel's three Cromwell books, starting with Wolf hall, doing this through footnotes and tangents. I've mentioned this before and I'm really, really enjoying it. So we are about 35% through Wolf Hall. I'm happy to report that it is much easier going this way than it was when I've in any of the three times before that I had tried it. There's been just a coup, like just a couple of things that really unlocked Wolf hall for me. But I just am am so enjoying reading it with Simon Hazel, who heads up Footnotes and Tangents, his weekly podcast episodes that he releases that kind of go over that week's reading are incredibly helpful and really, really well done. So they come out every Monday and so we have a reading schedule. So over the course of a week, you know that you're supposed to read the X part of the book. It ends up being about 35 to 40 pages. It's not a lot. It's really a very, very doable amount of reading. It's just a few minutes of reading each day. But Katie, life happens. This last week I was really, really sick and I had to work and all the things like I could. Life wasn't going to slow down for me to be, to be sick last week. But something had to give. I got a little bit behind my Wolf hall reading and I got up in my feelings about that because I'm a very strict like, if, if I'm going to do something, it needs to be done exactly this way all the time. Then all of a sudden I was like, you know what? There is no like reading principle that's going to send me to the, to the office if I get behind by a couple of weeks. A couple, couple of days, couple weeks, couple months. I'm still getting like, I can move through this as slowly as works for me. This seems like a very obvious thing unless you're in enneagram one where it is like a bunch of light bulbs going off over your head. I'm doing, yeah, I'm doing a read within the read within the read with Liz Hein and Holly Farrell. So the three of us are doing this little nested buddy read of it and we all agreed like, oh right. I guess it's totally fine if we don't actually keep like, you know what I mean? It's going to be there for his emails are going to be there for us no matter what. There's no stopwatch on it. There'. No, you know, no one's going to publicly shame anybody if you get behind anyway. Seems obvious, but if you struggle with this in your reading because you've made up any sort of should. I just wanted to let you know, once again, you are the boss of your own reading. You read whatever you want to read, and you read it as quickly or as slowly as you want to read it.

[A]

But it's such a good reminder. We all need that sometimes, right?

[B]

I. You wouldn't think that I would, but I do and I did. And I'm better for it. All right, Katie, let's talk about our current reads. Let's talk about what we've actually been reading. What are you going to lead us off with?

[A]

All right. My first book this week is called History Lessons by Zoe B. Walbrook. Our bookish friend, Jessica Howard, put this on my tbr. It's bookish, it's history, and it's murder. What's not to love?

[B]

Love it.

[A]

Our main character is named Daphne Overture, which is a French last name because she's a college history professor who specializes in French colonialism. She's managing a full schedule. She's like a junior professor. So she's really like, she's trying to work toward tenure. She's busy, busy, busy. She's writing a book and she's oftentimes plagued with awful dates, which is important in the story. Her love life is a mess. But then her colleague Sam Taylor dies suspiciously and he and Daphne didn't see eye to eye. They didn't get along great. Some of the evidence points a little bit Daphne's way. So there's an attractive but dogged detective turned bookseller sniffing around her home and her bookshelves because booksellers want to know about our bookshelves. Of course, there's a killer on the loose who's maybe the same person who thinks Daphne has something that belonged to Sam and is looking for it. And there's a deadly cover up that she's got to solve before she's the one in the crosshairs or potentially the morgue. This book was sometimes it's billed as cozy mystery stories. It's not that cozy. It's a bit more suspenseful than your typical cozy, but it is really voicey with a capital V. We do have a lot of newer listeners over the past few weeks, so I'll remind people or introduce the term again here. When a book is voicey, it doesn't mean the narrator of the audiobook has a notable voice. It means that the character and the way they're written have very distinctive personality, perspective and voice. It's a different experience. It's a distinctive experience that leads to the reader Feeling like this character has something special to offer. I loved Daphne and the way that she has to navigate academia, a murder mystery, systemic racism and patriarchy, and her dating life. We are complex creatures, all of us, and she reflects that really well. She's not one dimensional, and I appreciated that. There is a bit of coziness to this mystery because despite the fact that murder does happen on the page, because we do have a love interest, remember the disastrous dates, but this remains closed door rather. And it's rather closed door and mystery focused. I'd love to see Daphne stay safe, but still get to solve additional murder mysteries in future novels. Although the online listings don't indicate that that's going to happen, they don't list this as the first one in a series or say this is Daphne number one or anything like that. The author, Zoe Walbrook, is also a professor. So the academia portions of this mystery, this academic mystery, are particularly on point. You feel like you're on the college campus, you feel like you're in the office meetings. All of the minutiae around academia and writing really sinks off the page. I ended up giving this one four stars for a little bit of slogginess and the way that it wrapped up at the end. But I will absolutely pick up more from this author in the future whenever she releases it. This is History Lessons by Zoe B. Walbrook.

[B]

You know, I love a voicey book, and that term is so perfect, of course, from Sarah Dickinson, from Sarah's Bookshelves. Life coined that term voicey. And it's one of those things that I learned about myself as a reader that I'll read almost anything if. I really, really love the voice of the narrator of the book. Again, not the audiobook narrator, but the actual. The actual person who's voicing the book. And I love to know that about a novel before I jump into it. It makes me more interested. Okay, my first read is something that if you're claustrophobic, you might not want to. You might not want to listen to this. All right, this. This is Sphere by Michael Crichton.

[A]

Old school.

[B]

Kicking it backlist here. Here's the setup when psychologist Norman Johnson gets an urgent call from the US Navy. He figures he's in for a consultation because maybe there's been a plane crash, because he's done those before. What he doesn't expect is to find himself a thousand feet below the Pacific Ocean, trapped in an underwater habitat with a team of scientists investigating a massive something that has been sitting on the ocean floor for a long Time. I will say the blurbs on this anywhere you find the marketing material. They're terrible. They give away way too much. This is all you need to know. The crew includes a brilliant mathematician, a marine biologist, and an astrophysicist. And they all are really excited to be a part of whatever this thing is that they're supposed to be figuring out. But when they discover something, which I can't tell you what it is, everyone goes from being super excited to being crap your pants scared. That's all you need to know. You don't need to know anything else. This is Michael Crichton, who I love Rip. I love him so much. I love his books. I just all of a sudden got in this mood. I just really wanted an old school, really good Michael Crichton. And I realized that I hadn't. I'd read many of his, but I hadn't read Sphere. Just like over Christmas, I was. I was taking my. I was taking Christmas down, and I listened to so much of this book in one day. But this is what he does really well. He takes smart people, isolates them with something terrifying and. Or inexplicable, and then watches what happens when he turns the pressure up and up and up. So when I'm in this mood for science fiction, Michael Crichton is a place I know I can go and I'm going to have some good results. And this one did not disappoint. It's got all the things that you've learned to love from him. Tons of action, plenty of gore. You should know that about this book. Lots of gore and enough intellectual meat to really chew on. Then he does ethical questions really, really well. And that alone makes this book really memorable. The scientific concepts are the kind that make you feel like your brain is getting a proper workout. And I love being in that place where you've got a ton of action, but you also feel like you're learning something you didn't know. You didn't. You didn't know before. Now. This book is not perfect. It's not Jurassic Park. There are definitely some moments especially. Especially with how Michael Crichton writes women in this story that made me cringe. Not just a little bit, nothing horrible, but enough that really made me remember over and over again. This book came out in 1987. It was a whole other world back then as far as women and science or women in the military. But if it's okay with you to contextualize that as a product of its time and not let it completely derail your Reading experience, then you'll be fine. But it is worth being in that posture when you go in. As I said, I listened to this one on audio and I really think that was a great way to go if audio is something that you like to do. There's something about being in the underwater habitat, trapped with these characters and this mysterious whatever it is. Sphere. That worked really beautifully in the audio format. There's claustrophobia and tension that worked really well all the way through. And the ending is perfect. No notes. Crichton sticks the landing in a way that is very satisfying. And that's not always a given with sci fi thrillers. This is Sphere by Michael Crichton. I really, really like the way he ended this one.

[A]

I love it. We reread Pop or for Popcorn on the Pages. We reread Jurassic park just a couple years ago and they just. Yes to the way women were written in the 80s and 90s especially. But such good books. Yeah.

[B]

Jurassic park is one of my all time favorites.

[A]

Yeah, it's just excellent.

[B]

And the Andromeda Strain is really, really good.

[A]

Timeline time.

[B]

That's the nights one, right? The one like the night, the time travel and nights timeline is really good. That's one that I should reread. I should re listen to Time Man. If you like Outlander, but also science fiction in Jurassic Park. Timeline is so good. Love that book.

[A]

I love it. Okay. My second one this week is nonfiction. I mentioned it briefly in our top Top books of the Year episode, but I had not yet brought it as a current read. So today I'm going to talk about Eager by Ben Goldfarb. Do you remember when I talked about this? Meredith, this is going to need.

[B]

I'm just gonna need to leave the room.

[A]

I'm just gonna like take out your headphones. Okay. I. I read this one with Katie and it was part of our read about an overlooked animal series that turns us into rabid fans of weird creatures. Especially when you get to then gush about beavers. There's no way to have this conversation, y'. All. I'm sorry. As I said, it showed up briefly in my top 10 roundup in that it's a book that's hard to talk about because Eager is about beavers. The subtitle of this book is the Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and why they Matter. It was published in 2018 and Ben Goldfarb falls deep into the world of beavers and the people who love them and advocate for them. I know. I'm so sorry. I see you I'm all right.

[B]

I'm all right.

[A]

It turns out, and he shows us through a compelling narrative nonfiction style, that beavers can basically save the landscape and the water table and maybe even the world. In this book, we travel back through history and especially to the era of colonization and settlement that we see throughout the Americas and Europe in the 1800s and 1900s. During this time in the United States and Canada especially, beaver pelts were so highly prized in Europe that they were being trapped and killed and sent back at a bounty. So people were getting $5 per pelt, right? This had really far reaching environmental consequences because beavers are a keystone species in many parts of the continent. As settlement continued and farming and agriculture took over much of the economy, they were, they simply became considered like destructive rodents. Kind of like how we think of mice and rats today. Like they're going to eat your stuff, they're going to ruin your landscape. You got to get rid of them because they're a nuisance, right? So while they were no longer hunted for their fur, they were removed, usually still at a bounty, reducing populations from millions to thousands. Just in the continental United States, there used to be millions and now there are thousands. Now, luckily we have what are known as beaver believers who are intent on restoring beavers to their natural habitats and finding ways to cohabitate peacefully with beavers and humans sharing space. It turns out, and many studies have been done to this effect, that the ways that these animals shape the landscape actually leads to more diverse species thriving, higher water tables across a regional streams, wetlands and lakes either returning or thriving to landscapes that have dried up. It's really amazing. The human impact on the beaver population and the ways that that population impacts us right back was 100% not on my radar until I read this book. I love it when that happens. When an author finds something they're super into and then they use their God given gifts to convince me that I also am super into it. Like, I did not give a rat's tale about beavers prior to this book, but bring on the octopuses, the turtles, the birds, the beavers, and the baby wooly mammoths, which I talked about a couple weeks ago. I want to care deeply for the weird and overlooked animals of this planet and Ben Goldfarb convinced me to do exactly that with his excellent book. I gave it five stars. I do now count myself among the beaver believers, but I won't tell anybody else that this is eager by Ben Goldfarb.

[B]

I mean, I'll say it before I've said it. Again, it's the best title ever.

[A]

It is.

[B]

Beavers are awesome.

[A]

Truly.

[B]

I wish that we could have a conversation about them without having to use every bit of discipline that we have. Not to be laughing because it's inappropriate, because beavers are great and we should gush about them.

[A]

And they're like, hey, also, they're so cute.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Once you read about beavers, the Internets know that that's what you're doing. So now Katie and I both find, like, reels about baby beavers. They're the cutest things that ever existed on the Internet. I wouldn't be able to talk about that without it being weird.

[B]

Right? Exactly. I feel like we need to call. We need to call it something different. And, you know, again, I think what I said before is big beaver needs to do. Needs to take their name back.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I saw a video about a woman who had taken in a beaver as a pet and what this beaver would do, like, within the bounds of her home, just as a part of his normal way of, like, building. Like, you can't stop the beaver.

[A]

Yeah. From.

[B]

You can't. You can't stop it from doing what it's going to do. And it's. And they're smart and can use, like, this beaver was. Was like taking chair. I mean, not that I would ever want this in my house because I'd be super pissed if I came home. My dining chairs were. It was like dismantling your chairs and them down into usable pieces. And it's amazing. Yeah. I mean, it. I. I just. I. It's. It's so. It's totally amazing. I actually really would love to read that book, but I can't. I can't stomach us having to talk about it again on this show. I don't think I can get through it.

[A]

Maybe next year.

[B]

It's too much slower content.

[A]

It's so good, though.

[B]

My second book is a book by an author that I really, really, really love. But maybe this one wasn't my favorite. This is a book called and again. God, I should have known from the title. This is a book called the Sleeper Lies. What does that even mean? The Sleeper Lies, by Andrea Mara, who I love. Okay, here's the setup. Lead character's Marianne. She lives in a v. Isolated cottage in Ireland, and they're in the middle of a big freeze, which we certainly understand here in Texas. When you. All of a sudden, you don't normally get weather like this, but all of a sudden you get the kind of weather that just locks you in. You're completely locked in. So she's by herself in this cottage out in the middle of nowhere and there's this freeze and there's snow on the ground and she discovers footprints trailing from her garden. Footprints that stop right at her bedroom window. She lives alone, she works from home. And until this point, she's been pretty unbothered by the weather warnings and all the roads being impassable and everything else. But now she is genuinely freaked out. As the stalker begins leaving increasingly disturbing mementos and the snowstorm intensifies, Marianne's mind drifts back two decades to a devastating schoolyard incident and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother's death in Denmark. She becomes obsessed with finding patterns between this present day stalker and an old family tragedy and a true crime story that she's been researching. So there's all of these things happening. It's set over just 24 days and we see how everything comes crashing down around this poor Irish woman in her cozy cabin in the snow. I love that premise for a lot. I love that very first part of the premise. Like the garden and the steps and they stop at the window and oh my God, no. And I wanted to love this book. Andrea Mara was especially front of mind for me when I started reading this book because I had just finished All Her Fault, which of course I love that book. And I really like the peacock adaptation that was just on. So I jumped into the sleep Leaper lies in my quest to become an Andrea Mara completist. This one was mid. Wasn't bad. It wasn't bad, it was just mid. And I still want to be an Andre Amara completist. I've spent real time trying to figure out why because, you know, bringing a mid book is the worst kind of book to bring to the show. Give me bad. Give me great Mid is hard to make interesting content about. So I really, really took it apart because all the puzzle pieces were there. It should, should have worked. There was the interesting dual timeline construction, puzzle pieces that click together at the end. There's a great setting. That Irish cottage with the stalker and the crazy mementos and the storm, all of it is there, but the pacing was off. I loved the present day POV with Marianne trapped in her cottage. And there were in fact a few moments that were like downright chilling. Right. But when she switched to these like the past timeline stuff, it was exploring like what happened in Denmark and the mystery of her mother. I really felt myself trying to maintain my attention. Like when you're trying to meditate and you're like, focus, just focus. And I just couldn't keep my. I couldn't keep my focus there. I could see the scenes in the storytelling in this one, which is not usually what you get with Andrea Mara. It felt like everything she was doing, she was having to work really hard for like it was. It made me tired to read it rather than to make me feel satisfied it wasn't just flowing. That said, the ending on this was much better than the rest of the book was. It made up for at least a half star in tidy execution. Bringing things together in a way that I felt made me say it was mid instead of bad. Like the ending really, really brought everything together again. I'm going to continue reading Andrea Mara because I genuinely love the way that she writes, but her other books, all Her Fault, Someone in the Attic, the Other side of the Wall, are all ones that I would say are really worth your time if you love really smart Irish domestic suspense. This one was just an Irish meh for me. This is the Sleeper Lies by Andrea Mara.

[A]

Maybe it needed an Irish goodbye instead.

[B]

Except then I wouldn't have got the great ending right.

[A]

True.

[B]

You know, it happens. That's what Jeff, my grandson, my four year old, says it happens. Mimi.

[A]

Well, I feel like that happens sometimes with some of our favorite authors, which actually does bring me to my third book, which is a journey that we're going to go on because I am ready to retalk about the Dutch House by Ann Patchett.

[B]

So is that the book you're bringing right now?

[A]

Yes, it is. Okay, so this is another read with Katie and it is a reread. Again, I mentioned it briefly on our top books of the year. It didn't crack my top 10, but I did give it five stars this time when I read it. I know Meredith and Roxanna just talked last week about rereads and I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the discussion because this one's a bit of an outlier even for rereads. Right. I'm going to set this book up briefly and then talk about the experience of reading it, because that's the interesting part of this one. Danny Conroy is our main character. He's a young boy at the start of this novel. He's the son of Cyril and a brother to Maeve, his beloved sister. They live in the Dutch House, a gorgeous mansion that their father bought with his first real money as he made the leap from impoverished young adulthood to substantial means and fatherhood. Kind of a real estate empire. When their mother leaves and Cyril remarries a woman named Andrea. Danny and Maeve are exiled from the home. Upon his death, they no longer get to live in the Dutch house. This book covers many years, decades, from their childhoods, young childhoods, all the way to Dani's own parenthood to a young adult. So probably 40 or 50 years altogether. It's character driven in that the characters are what pulls us back to the story over and over again. What happens to them matters, of course, but it's not the point of the book and that matters here because of my first experience reading it. I first read and reviewed this book in November of 2019 when it was pretty new and I brought it to the show. At that time as an outlier, I didn't have the same experience other people did. I gave it three stars because I only had whole stars on Goodreads, but my review said this does not get the praise I've been seeing from me. I didn't like the characters, especially the women. Maybe Maeve, but everyone else. Ugh. I would have given it two stars except the Tom Hanks narration on audiobook is pretty awesome. His chapter headings though. Eye roll. That's my whole review essentially. I thought I liked the narration, but I hated everything else about it. I didn't get it right. I wasn't a reader who likes character driven stories and that was sad because I had already read and loved multiple books by Ann Patchett at the time. In 2019, however, I was pretty sure that this one, this 2019 release, was part of her newer style of writing that wasn't for me. In 2016 I gave Commonwealth three stars. So this continued that trend. I was like, oh, she's changed as a writer. She's no longer for me, right? I had this narrative in my head that Ann Patchett was becoming someone not for me. But then I continued reading and loving Ann Patchett after that back list and front list and I started looking at this one with different eyes. Maybe it wasn't for 2019 Katie, but 2025. Katie is a different person, right? She would find something different to love. When my reading partner, Katie Proctor wanted to pick it up also, we decided to read it together on paper this time. No Tom Hanks nonsense for me. Lord love him, he's a national treasure. But I do not need his voice narrating my audiobooks. It actually was a detraction from my experience. It turns out it was a me problem though. Or not a problem. It's okay that past Katie didn't like this book and it's okay, that present. Katie is a different reader than I was before. I'm so glad that I gave myself a chance to read it again as a different person, knowing how much I had changed. I was 35 at the time. I had a young baby. Analy, who you all remember from those early episodes. There are so many things I could say about that time in my life that made me a different person than I am now. About where I was living, about who I was with, about what my family looked like. But it was worth it to me to read it again, and it paid off in dividends, in droves. I loved this book the second time. I loved the characters. Dani and Maeve are phenomenal, unforgettable. The house, as a character captured me. Andrea, the stepmom, is a character we love to hate. She is horrendous, and I adored her for that. Like, I didn't need to just hate her. I could be like, God, Ann Patchett did an amazing job creating Andrea and the dynamic between her and these stepchildren. Now, do I reread Commonwealth as well? Maybe that was also an outlier. We'll see. Time will tell. But for this reader, rereading something that I did not like the first time really paid off, and I gave five stars. This was the Dutch House by Ann Patchett.

[B]

I think that's a very, very interesting lens to look at this in. And I think that that is a place where rereading is very, very interesting. Is not going back to the thing. I mean, there. It's also fantastic when you want to go back and revisit something that you loved because you want that comfort. You want to, you know, all of. For all of those reasons, but rereading stuff that we hate. Because I was thinking, like, how much would someone have to pay me to reread Tom Lake?

[A]

Mm.

[B]

And that would be a high six figures, right? I do not.

[A]

And when I finished the Dutch House, I would be like, absolutely not. Never reading that again. I was bored. I hated it. Those characters. Awful. Nothing.

[B]

But if I did it again, like you, I wouldn't do it on audio because that was Meryl Streep.

[A]

Shenanigans, National Treasure.

[B]

We Love her exactly 100% love Meryl Streep. And, yeah, I would do it in print and just. But it is interesting if you revisit books that you really hated several years later. That's a very interesting way to reread.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, because we know. We know that we're all changing constantly as readers. Right. We're Always bringing new life experiences. Or a wider lens. Or a narrower lens because we've got that new thing that we've been thinking about or we're going through a thing that narrows our lens for whatever reason. It's okay to change and to change your opinion about it. Right. I'm so glad I didn't say like, well, that's my opinion. Like, put it on my tombstone. Katie Cobb hated the Dutch house. Like, because I love it now and I was allowed to hate it then. And that's okay.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. We just have to hold all of it really loosely. We need to be open for reconsideration. And if we had been in book club together, I would have taken a real run at trying to convince you that Andrea is not as bad as you think she is.

[A]

Right. Yes. Because even at the time we had very different opinions about this book. So.

[B]

Yeah, very interesting. Okay. My third book I had to bring a five star mystery or thriller because I brought a mid one. And anytime we bring a mid one in that genre, I just feel it incumbent upon me to being to bring a really, really good one. So this one is a book called Snap by Belinda Bauer. Here's the setup. On a really hot, sweaty summer day, 11 year old Jack Bright and his two little sisters are waiting in their broken down car on the side of a motorway while their pregnant mother goes to get help. Because their car, their car's broken down. She says, Jack's in charge, I won't be long. And she walks off. She never comes back. Three years later, Jack, now he's 14, is still in charge. With their father gone, consumed by grief from not knowing what happened to the mom, Jack has become the sole provider for his sister's joy and Mary desperately kind of trying to keep their household running and trying to hide the truth about this scenario that he is the one in charge from social services because obviously 14 year olds cannot be the head of the family. So he's doing whatever it takes to keep the family together. Even if that means becoming the burglar that police have dubbed Goldilocks. Because he goes in to the houses in the middle of the night and he eats her food because he's hungry. Across town, meanwhile, a pregnant woman wakes to find a knife beside her bed and a note that reads, I could have killed you. As these seemingly separate threads begin to weave together, Jack finds himself pulled deeper into the mystery of what really happened to his mother on that afternoon. This book is very, very good. So it seems like from the premise it's going to be a really straightforward thriller about finding a killer. But this book is actually that, but so much more. Belinda Bauer. This is my first one by her. Elizabeth Barnhill had recommended her books a few times, but for some reason, when I was at the library just a little bit ago, this one really stood out to me. So I grabbed it and started it. And it was one of those within the first two paragraphs you're pulled in. The misconception that I had was that I was going into a fairly standard whodunit. But this is a story that is doing a lot of high level work because you are working on three separate narrative threads. You've got Jack's story, you've got what happened to his mom. You've got this pregnant woman who's got this, this threatening note that's been left by her bed. Right. So Belinda Bauer though is doling out information on each of those in a way that keeps you interested and keeps the connections coming together the whole way through. Where the Andrea Mara book. The problem with the pacing here, the pacing is top notch. I was turning pages. Even though this isn't written in a thriller like a shocking twist kind of way, it's just really, really smart. And the other thing that you might not expect is how much from the start of the book to the end of the book, your allegiances will shift. Bauer is flipping the script on who you think you'll sympathize with. I found myself rooting for really unexpected people. In fact, there's this one side character, he's a 19 year old bad guy, but he also is a 19 year old dad. I can't even tell you how much I, I want that character to have like a book of his own. But so he's a side character and I was very invested. Which just gives you a sense of the writing that she's doing here because Jack, of course, our lead character, this kid broke my heart. 14 years old, obviously. I have a 14 year old son. He's the sole provider for these two kids. His father abandoned him, abandoned them after they. I mean there's just a lot going on here. My heart was with him through every single page. So if you like Lisa Jewell or Katherine Ryan Howard, the best of the best by those two writers. This is one that you are going to want to pick up really soon because it is fantastic. This is Snap by Belinda Bauer.

[A]

It sounds excellent.

[B]

It's really good. Really, really good. All right, Katie, let's boss a couple of TBRs. All right, so for those of you who've just joined us. This is our recurring segment we do every few months where we pick a couple of victims from our Bookish Friends Facebook group, people who've joined us on Patreon, and they've joined us in the Bookish Friends group. And we say, like, hey, give us us five books that are currently high up on your TBR list and also tell us a little bit about what's been working for you lately. Give us a little bit of info, and we will then choose three of those five we think you should prioritize, and we'll give you the order that we think you should read them in.

[A]

All right.

[B]

So, Katie, do you want to give us our first. Our first victim?

[A]

Yes. Our first victim this week is Gretchen. A lot of times they ask for a little bonus something within their stack of five. So this time I asked about traveling with books, and that's because it was top of mind for me, having just gotten back from San Francisco. But I said it could be an actual place you traveled to or it could be where you've been traveling to mentally. Right. And we have one of each of those in this stack of two victims. So Gretchen says, I love these. I love getting a peek at others. TBRs. Here's her list of five. First is For Whom the Bell Tolls by J.C. lynn. Meredith made me do it. She did just talk about this a couple episodes ago. If it's ringing a bell for you, you can go listen to that episode. Next is when the Stars Go Dark by Paula MacLean. Third is Bride by Ali Hazelwood. This is Paranormal Romance. Fourth we have Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers. And she specifies as the two books in one because that is two. Two books. It's a Psalm for the Wild Bill and A Prayer for the Crown Shy. But she's talking about reading them as a series because they're two novellas. Fifth is Gilded by Marissa Meyer. And she finishes up by saying and traveling. Oh, traveling. My goal this year is to hit more independent bookstores in the Portland area, and there are so many. I bought Monk and Robot at Field Day Books and Bottles in Portland, Oregon. It's Portland's only book and bottle shop. I bought Bride at Cannon Beach Book Company in Cannon Beach, Oregon. I love the Oregon coast. It's so dramatic and has haystack rocks and other rock formations in the ocean. And she did attach a picture. It says, haystack is in the background hiding behind this sparrow. I've been to all those places, so this was especially personal for me. So with this stack of Five. Meredith, which one or how do you want to prioritize? Gretchen's tbr.

[B]

Okay. So I wanted to go. I mean, she's got some great books on this stack. I really, really like it. And I just felt like there were three that just are the. They're so different one from the other that I just felt like they'd make a perfect 1, 2, 3. And that is starting with For Whom the bell tolls by J.C. lynn, which I did just talk about. That book is really fast. It goes so fast. It's so light and frothy. And then. And I think you could get like, do a 1, 2. You could flip the order of these, of these two. Then I think when the Stars Go Dark by Paula MacLean. This one is a novel. It weaves in a lot of elements of the. In real life, crime of polyclass. It's on the Mendocino coast, kind of brings in all of those pieces of things, but it's dark and it's harder, but also very propulsive. And then, of course, I think you have to go into Monk and Robot after that to soothe your soul. So that threesome, I think is just really calls to me because each book is so different from the last one and. And you're never in one place for too long.

[A]

Yeah, I like it. I was planning my books for these today, and I was. I had a hard time getting out of my own head. So I said a lot of us are in the in case of emergency, break glass section of our TBR right now. So I put Monk and Robot first because that belongs in that section of your tbr. If you've got it on your tbr, it's perfect for that moment. So I prioritize that one mostly as almost like a palette cleanser from life. Right. And then I went with For Whom the Bell Tolls Again. I can't get out of my own head. This is top of my TBR because Meredith made me do it. So I'm putting it second because it's going to get her reading life going again after that break glass moment. It's like quick and fun and it'll give you some momentum, some buzziness. A lot of people are talking about it right now, so you're going to feel like in the zeitgeist, it's a great way to like keep your reading life momentum going right now. And then I put Bride by Ali Hazelwood third. This was one of my top romances of 2024, and I love the idea of getting Gretchen to pick it up. It's werewolf a megaverse fiction with a vampire bride to a werewolf alpha, which is a lot of words. Right. She should know, and probably does, that it's pretty spicy, but for a werewolf book, it's pretty tame. So there are different chili pepper levels and they change quite a bit depending on which side sub genre of romance you're in. And Bride is a good kind of starter course for somebody that's interested in the Omega verse and werewolf fan fiction or werewolf fiction, werewolf romance. So I felt like it was a fun way to press it into somebody's hands by using the Boss my TBR segment to tell her that I wanted to read it.

[B]

I love it. I think that, I mean, she. She gave us a lot to work with in this group of five. Right. There's a lot of different ways that it could work together because Gilded by Marissa Meyer has been on my list for a long time because it's fairytale retelling, which of course I really, really love. So I'm eyeing that one. All right, our next victim is bookish friend Lauren, who gave us this list of five I Medusa by Ayanna Gray, Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven, Fear and Fury, the Reagan 80s, the Bernie Getz shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thom, Leviathan wakes by James S.A. corey, and Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Deniman. She says lately I've been hanging out in Middle Earth because I want to hang on to the notion that determined people can band together to defeat evil.

[A]

Right. So she chose fictional traveling. I love.

[B]

So smart. All right, so Katie, what three are you choosing for Lauren?

[A]

Okay. I'm obsessed with the variety that she put on this list. Right. We've got sci fi, we've got an RPG book, we've got nonfiction. This like historical fun, and then a fantasy Greek mythology retelling. Lauren has already been doing some fantasy with her hangout time in Middle Earth, so I'm going to let her hang out in history, but bring her back to the planet with Meet the Newmans. I'm excited to read this one as well. It's high on my tbr. It's buzzy and definitely has some top book of the year potential for a lot of readers, which is what we said on the indie press list episode when Fabled brought it to us in January. So Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven first. Next, I decided to go with nonfiction because we can escape again right afterwards. So this is one of those wild swings that I like from my own reading life. This is a new release from Heather Ann Thompson, selfishly going on my TBR as well. So thank you, Lauren, for making sure I knew about it. I've had this author on my radar already because of Blood in the Water, which is about the Attica prison uprising. But I love something that totally peels back the layers on an event that I was otherwise unaware of. Right. I wasn't alive in the 80s. Well, we're not, like, aware of it. As I already discussed with Eager in this episode, I like to know about things I don't know about. So, Lauren, let's both read that one. And then I'm really torn for my third one, but I decided to go with I Medusa, because I think the other one I wanted to put here is one that Meredith will have on her list, and I think that'll be plenty of peer pressure. So I'm putting AI Medusa third in order to make sure that there's sufficient pressure to read that one. I loved this retelling of the Medusa story, the story by Ayanna Gray. Of the books I've read by her, this is my favorite. So I think that's a great third option. What did you choose?

[B]

Yeah, my first two were exactly the same. Meet the Newman's, you know, is historical, but really, really fresh and a modern take on historical fiction. It's very voicey.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

And then, yes. Fear and Fury, the Reagan 80s, and the Bernard Getz shootings. I did live through this. Those subway shootings were one of the first conversations I can remember having with my parents where I was old enough. I don't even remember. I don't remember exactly what year it happened, but in my mind, I was, like, 8 or 9. I was, like, young. And my parents saying, like, hey, this thing happened. And, like, it's very messy and not. There's not, like, a clear, right, wrong, you know, kind of thing. And, like, right. Asking my opinion about things and asking me to kind of think about some of these harder, you know, issues, current events that were going on. But I was a kid, so I'm. I know that there was a lot that I missed. So I, too, am putting this on my tbr. It's got great reviews as of now. It's got great ratings as of now. And then you were right, Katie. I'm putting Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Deniman as third. I just finished this yesterday. It was an absolute delight. It was an absolute surprise. I had no idea what to expect. But if you are in the mood for determined people, banding together. This is going to get you where you want to go. So I think that's a great threesome.

[A]

Excellent. I love it. And that's. That is what I was thinking, of course, that you would put dungeon crawler Carl as your third spot or somewhere on yours so that we would get that double press between the two of them.

[B]

Yeah. And I'll be bringing that to the show in. In a little bit, too. So that's how we have bossed your TBRs, as usual. We want to know from you, Gretchen and Lauren, let us know. What did you think about what we said? Did you read any of those books? Did you read some of the other ones? We definitely want to know what you thought about it for sure. All right, now, rip the fountain. Everyone hates the fountain. I don't care how there's like a tiny handful of people are like, but I like the fountain. Buy our pink splash sweatshirts, which we're gonna have available.

[A]

They're like whispering into an echoey cave. That's what they're talking about.

[B]

Everybody hates the fountain. Everyone hates pink splash. I. I said it before. I'll say it again. There was a woman on the survey who put in every single field that she could on the survey, even if it wasn't asking anything about it. She put, please never say ping splash again.

[A]

So she loves this episode.

[B]

She loves it. She's gonna buy our sweatshirt, too.

[A]

Yeah, I believe it.

[B]

So we, however, all jokes aside, we do want you guys to like the segments of the show, and we don't want to say things over and over again that give you cringe. So we are retiring the fountain, may she rest in peace. And we are going to go with a new section which we are calling a Before we go. All right? And this is going to involve two things. Now, remember, with this ending section, Katie and I, we couldn't just revert back to pressing books because we would just be. We'd have the exact same problem that we had before, which is that we'll. It's really hard for us to press books in that exact way every single week for years at a time.

[A]

So.

[B]

So we still need to have that freedom and flexibility to bring lots of different kinds of things, but we want to kind of frame it differently. So whoever's driving the show in odd number episodes, I don't know if you've ever noticed this listener, but I drive odd number episodes. Katie drives even number episodes when we're on the show together. And whoever's driving is going to highlight some post or interesting thing that came up in the bookish friends group in the previous week. That group is so active that we have a lot to choose from there. There's a million different kinds of things that could come up and the person could choose to talk about. So I'm going to take care of that for this. And then when Katie has her turn, she's going to tell you what she had to choose from for her before we go.

[A]

Yeah. So I am, I'm excited.

[B]

All right. So I wanted to talk about. I wanted to highlight two different posts that happened in the group this week for different reasons, but both of them made me smile at the time and both of them made me just go. I just absolutely love being in community with a lot of other readers so you can reach out and say things like this. So in one case we have bookish friend Denae who said, does anyone want to do a buddy read of Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson? She says, I just finished on Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, which was also very, very hard to read while also being necessary. I think this would be a good in quotes follow up and I'd love to have someone to discuss it with. And do you know Katie, that she had 37 people raise their hand and say, yes, could we buddy read this book together? So that was a book that you brought to the show a couple of weeks ago. We both talked about our abiding love for the incredibly smart Heather Cox Richardson. And I love that. Danae was like, I want to read this. And she just threw it out there in the group. And now they then arranged within the comments on that thread to move that into its own thread all by itself. And so then those people are going to go off and running to buddy read. I just like the way that that works. There's no pressure. There's no I have to know somebody. It's just like, hey, I want to read this. Does anyone want to read it with me? So I love it. And then we had an a bookish friend Susan, who said, I'm really hoping that this group can help me. I have terrible insomnia. I often wake up around 3am and I can't get back to sleep. I get out of bed and read and I'm looking for some gentle and somewhat dull books that make me sleepy. And she had 27 different people within just a couple of hours give her multiple recommendations for gentle and somewhat dull books. And even then bookish friend Margo said, there's a podcast called Nothing Much Happens. It's designed to put you to sleep. And there were lots of books that were recommended. And so I just really love again, bookish community. You can reach out whether you want to buddy read or you want to gather recommendations. A recommendation for whatever. So those are my two bookish friends posts in the bookish friends group that I wanted to highlight. Katie, let's talk about the other part of this before we go segment.

[A]

I like the before we go. Okay, so this second part has a tasting menu of sorts that we get to choose from each week. And it's just five little options that the non driver gets to pick from in order to cap off the episode. So I'm going to run through them really quick and then I'll tell you which one I chose for this week. We're not going to run through them every week, y'.

[B]

All.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yes. This is your one chance to find it.

[A]

Right. So the first one is called Currently curious about. And this can just be something that has piqued your interest in your reading life. A genre, an author. And it just gives us an option to talk about something that maybe we're going to read about, maybe we're not. It's just on our radar. Second is listener rec of the week. This is more like what Meredith just did, but it's a shout out to either the Facebook group or somewhere on Patreon or Instagram from a bookish friend or a listener where they have recommended something to us or to all of us, which is great. Third is a sleeper hit. This will be reminiscent of our books we used to press into your hands. So a couple weeks ago I pressed Hench into your hands. So it can be something that you liked in the past that you just want to make sure people know about still.

[B]

But the difference there, the important difference there, what makes a sleeper hit different than a book that we want to press? Books that we wanted to press. The bar was too was so high.

[A]

They were like forever favorites. Yes.

[B]

Or like it's a book we want to press into almost everyone's hands with a sleeper hit. You could be like Timeline from Michael Crichton. Like I could bring that up and know that not everybody's going to be interested in it. But it is an under the radar, like, not like we might have totally forgotten about it, but it's really, really good. So like the pressure is amped down on that.

[A]

Yes, yes. And we love those recommendations. Of course. Fourth is a book I DNF'd this week and why, which is exactly what it sounds like. And fifth is TBR Triage this one's fun. And this is actually what I'm going to do this week. So you pull a book from your TBR and make a quick call. Are we still reading this? Are we unhauling it? What are we doing with this book?

[B]

I'm glad you're doing this one. Okay, good.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I'm. I'm. This is brand new. I'm already cheating. I have a twofer. So my family and I went to London in October of 2023. I purchased the Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix at Foyles, which, as you'll remember, Meredith, is a gorgeous bookstore. I was like Gus, Gus from Cinderella. I had so many books stacked between my chin and my hands. Yep. We had gone to Bath the day before. So title cover, I thought it would be a hit. When I got home, I found out at a bookish friend swap that this is the second in a series. Didn't matter to me. I didn't look into it. Just liked the title and the COVID So my local bookish friend Jackie brought a copy of the Left Handed Booksellers of London to swap. Hold up. I said, what's happening? Well, now I had both books on my shelves. A they don't match because one's a UK copy and one's a US copy. And now that I had both, I no longer wanted to read either. So they've both sat there for nearly two full years. However, this is now a triple TBR triage moment because I'm removing them from my own tbr. I've decided they're not for me. But, Meredith, I'm gonna offer to send them to you if you're interested. It is a slightly alternate London in 1883 Fantasy mystery series that's billed as Immersive by Publishers Weekly, Whimsical by Veronica Roth. And V. E. Schwab says, it's a world where the magic and the real nest together like the pages of a book. And if that doesn't sound like Meredith, I don't know what does.

[B]

It absolutely does. And I 100% would take those off your hands. But why don't you want to read them?

[A]

I think a lot of it has to do with that. I became so disenchanted with picking up the second one and, like, being messed up in my head around them. So they got, like, sullied.

[B]

They're tainted.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, got it. And so really what I would, in my ideal world, I would send them to you and someday you'll read them and you'll be like, katie, you would love these books. And I could put them back on my tbr.

[B]

You could send them back, but in.

[A]

The middle meantime, they can live somewhere else. And then they get a refreshed look later when they come back on my radar instead of sitting there and like, kind of gathering dust mentally for two full years.

[B]

Okay, well, maybe I could do like an annotated version of it and then if it ends up that we like it, then we could do that shared and it. Then it, like, really could become something new.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, that would be fun. Okay.

[B]

All right, well, good. I did not think that our first TBR triage was going to mean I added two books to my tree, my tbr.

[A]

Well, there is TBR triage can be. Well, now I'm glad I looked at this because I'm pushing it up my tbr. It's just this one was a little bit roundabout, but I was excited to talk about them.

[B]

Got it. Okay, good, good. Well, hopefully you guys will find something to like in our segment. I'm already deciding that I don't want the driver. Like I. I am already, like, live realizing that I should have only brought one person to focus on, not two, because that part of the segment took too long. So. But you know what? We're learning in real time. We're trying new things. We're experiment, iterate, tweak, iterate, tweak. This is what we do. So you guys just get to enjoy this in real time.

[A]

It's true. And we're always inventing. We're always doing something new with the show. It keeps it fresh for us, fresh for you, and hopefully means it'll keep going for a very long time.

[B]

Exactly. Keeping it fresh. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me, I'm Meredith at meredithmonday Schwartz on Instagram and you can.

[A]

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 Megans reads 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 can be found in our show notes. You gotta take a look at those. Or you can go to our website@currentlyreading.

[A]

Podcast.Com you can also follow the show at Currently reading Podcast on instagram or on YouTube or email us@currentlyreading podcastmail.com yeah.

[B]

If you want to actually see us do the show, Watch us on YouTube. If you want more of this kind of content. We have so much more available to you. You can join us as a bookish friend on Patreon for $5 a month. You get get hours and hours and hundreds of hours of extra content. You get bookish community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also rate and review us on Apple podcasts and shout us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience. Someone asked us, Katie. Someone asked us, what is our perfect audience in the survey? Our perfect. Our perfect audience are people who just love to read and love to get great book recommendations and. And love to talk about the reading life. That's our perfect audience.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's all of you. You're our perfect audience. We want more of you. That's what we want to find. Bookish friends are the best friends, and we want more of you. 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 unputownable.

[B]

Happy reading, Katie.

[A]

Happy reading, Meredith.