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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 8, Episode 31: Book Festivals + Revisiting The Currently Reading Press List
00:57:26
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- [00:00]
A
Foreigners. 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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B
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a readerly deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go.
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A
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas, and I love catching up with bookish friends.
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B
And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona, and I'm looking forward to some serious fangirling. This is episode number 31 of season eight, and we are so glad you're here.
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A
All right, Katie, are you feeling spring? I'm feeling spring here in Texas.
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B
No, it's almost summer here.
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A
You went right from winter.
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B
We skipped it. That's what happens in Arizona.
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A
Yep, absolutely.
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B
Our spring is like the week between Christmas and New Year's.
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A
Well, I've said before and I'll say it every single year, spring is my favorite season in Texas. Just starting to see the cherry blossoms. I haven't yet seen my first bluebonnet, but I will look forward to it. It's a beautiful part of the year, if not a very, very short one.
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B
We have trees leafing out here because we do have some that lose their leaves, but yeah, it's 90 degrees. I mean, everybody else would consider this summer. It's spring for me.
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A
All right, Katie, I gotta get back into my groove. I so appreciate everybody's support. I was off last week. I haven't been behind the mic for, gosh, almost two weeks now, which is a really long period of time for me. When we're not on a break. I'm a little discombobulated, but I have faith that I'm gonna pull it together.
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B
Right?
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A
We're going to get this going and we are going to talk today about one of my favorite things that we have done at Currently Reading, which is what we call our Currently Reading press list. Katie, this is the collection of books that you and I, over the course of the first four and a half seasons of the show. Right at the end of every episode, we would each one of us say, this is a book that I like so much that I'm going to press it in your hands. Well, it's been several years since we've really looked at that list. And we had a listener send us an email saying, I wonder what you guys would think about that press list now. So in our deep dive today, we're gonna take a live on air fresh look at it and we're gonna see if we still stand by our choices.
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B
It's like opening a time capsule, Meredith, like they do in third grade or whatever, where they're like let's put a photo and like the thing that's popular right now and then in 20 years it feels a little like that.
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A
Yeah, it does. I haven't looked at it all on purpose because I really want it to be fresh when we talk about it. All right, but first we are going to talk about our bookish moments of the week. What have you got, Katie?
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B
All right, Meredith, much like the rest of the world, I've been running a little ragged in my day to day life lately. I've got a lot of balls in the air. There's like travel plans coming up. It doesn't look like the bonkers, right? It's the bonkers. But I am looking forward with bookish joy and elation to two weeks from today in real time when I will be at the Tucson Festival of Books for my third year in a row. That means today in not real time in podcast time when this episode is dropping on March 9th. We are only a few days away from meeting up for dinner on March 14th in Tucson in between the two days of the festival and in the past I've had usually between 15 and 20 listeners and bookish friends join us for dinner in Tucson on that Saturday, March 14th. So friends and listeners, if you're gonna be there send me an email@katierrentlyreading podcast.com new phone. Who dis so excited about our brand new spanking new emails. But if you'll be there in Tucson and you want to attend the dinner, you need to let me know ahead of time so I can put the right number of RSVPs in and then I will reply with the details. In the meantime, I will be scouring the schedule online starring the author, events that I want to go to, trying to get fast passes to the ones that are ticketed event and trying to decide which books I should pack to bring along to get signed by some of my favorite people.
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A
I know that that is going to be such a fun time and we of course will put in the show notes the exact email address in case anyone didn't get that that will be there for you with instructions about how to make sure that you are on that list because that's going to be a really good time.
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B
Oh, it's always so fun. And people end up making, like, forever friendships at these dinners because they meet somebody from, you know, Minnesota that they had never met before. Yeah.
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A
Or they make forever friends with you. How fun is that?
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B
Forever friends with me and Katie and Shad will be there. It's just really fun. It's really fun.
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A
All right, Well, I said in my, in my bite size intro that I love catching up with bookish friends. And I'll bet you thought that meant something different than what it actually means because this is actually my favorite way to catch up. We have bookish friends in the form of bookish podcasters who are back. I am so happy to report. Thank you to those of you who let me know that the Diving in podcast, which has been on hiatus for, I think, about a year and a half. Yeah, they're from Australia. It's a book podcast with two of the most amazing women you've ever heard talk about books in your life. They are back with a fantastic episode. So this is one of my favorite shows. I listen to a lot of book podcasts. I am unashamed, unashamedly a fan girl of so many different book podcasts. Diving in is one of my favorites. They, of course, feature Australian authors. The way that they talk about books is so excellent. They always make me interested in a book that maybe before I wasn't. And they're just a really, really good time. And so I love it. And their theme song is my favorite book podcast theme song. So check out Diving In. They're back. If you haven't listened to their back at their back catalog, start like as far back as you can and then you'll have this and hopefully some more new ones waiting for us. So, so, so glad to have them back in our ear. Our AirPods. EarPods. AirPods.
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B
Earbuds. Earbuds in our ears. Just in our ears.
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A
Just in our ears. All right, Katie, let's talk about our current reads. What's your first one?
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B
All right, Meredith. Especially at the end of the year, this book was a little buzzy, but I'm going to talk about Rec by Kathryn Newman. This one made Mary's top books of the year list for 2025. And I was happy to hear that on that list because at the time she recorded, I was just finishing this one. For anyone who read Sandwich, which was Newman, Newman's breakout hit in 2024, this one is a follow up to that story of middle age and parenting and caring for aging parents. This is a late 2025 release and the main character from Sandwich, whose name is Rocky, which I think is a little unfortunate, but people's names are what they are, even when authors choose them, is again at the center of our story. She is navigating menopause. She's adding new members to her family while saying goodbye to others. And she has this kind of niggling health issue going on. While Sandwich took place in a vacation home in Cape Cod, in Wreck, the family is back at their regular day to day home and Rocky and her daughter Willa are kind of anxiously obsessing over a local accident, a train accident that has strange ties to their community and to their more nuclear family. That's pretty much it. That's kind of what this book is about. There's not a lot that happens in these books, partially because they're small, like 250 pages or less, and partially because they're a little more literary and character driven. But mostly it's because both Sandwich and Wreck are about being with a family, being part of a family. They're about womanhood and motherhood and daughterhood. They're about health issues and anxiety and the turmoil and comfort of being in relationship with other humans, right? The turmoil of like, oh, I got to put up with these people because they're family. And then the comfort of like, thank God I get to come home to this husband and this daughter and this son of mine. It's a life on the page, a little slice of life. This family already felt like members of my own little group of beloveds when I finished Sandwich. And with Rec, they just further cemented themselves into my heart. The ways they love each other through hilarity and hard is what makes them real and delightful. I highly recommend the audio on these books. The narration is totally spot on and it's an easy listen in an afternoon because it's day to day life. It's a really easy listen for puttering, doing your own crap around the house, right? However, I have purchased both books for my shelves at home after the fact because they're the kinds of books that you revisit when you touch them on the spine or see them in the bookstore after you've finished them. So I was glad to hear Mary love this one. I also loved it. It's Rec by Kathryn Newman.
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A
Katie, if you haven't read Sandwich, do you need to start there?
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B
I would recommend starting with Sandwich. There's a few plot points that do carry through from the one to the other. Including one of the parents having a health issue in one and then no longer being around in the other. So, Meredith, I would also tell you that right now is not the time to pick up this book. Okay?
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A
All right, good to know. All right, Katie, this week I am bringing not one but two five star books.
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B
Excellent.
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A
And in the middle I'm going to bring a creamy little center. And that is probably a great way to describe the book that's in the center. But right now let's talk about my first one. And that is a book called Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. So here's the setup. We're in the middle of every parent's worst nightmare, right? So we've got a kid's school going into lockdown, a blizzard is going on and no information is coming out at all, except, you know, that there is a masked gunman that is at large, has not been taken down. That is the gut wrenching premise of 3 hours, which is a real time thriller set in a rural English school in Somerset. Interesting that it's set in England, right?
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B
Yes, agree.
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A
So over exactly 180 minutes, the author weaves together multiple perspectives. We've got the headmaster who was wounded and is now trapped in the library. We've got a teenage girl who's in the midst of experiencing her first love, but is also in the midst of everything that's happening right now in real time. We've got a 16 year old Syrian refugee who's trying to get to his little brother who is also on campus but in a different part of the school. And we've got a police psychologist who is racing to identify the shooters. And parents of course are gathered around. So it's structured like a countdown clock. And you will feel every single second of this book. This is genuinely exceptional book. And I don't know how it flew so completely under my radar for so many years. I picked it up on my latest trip to London. I had seen that it was a London Times thriller of the year. That always catches my eye and they do a really good job there of pointing that out. It actually came out in 2020, which probably explains why it fell under the radar. We had other things that we were thinking about. So this is a school shooting thriller, obviously set in England. And your first thought like mine is wait, don't they really not have school shootings in England? And you're right, but what I found most fascinating about this book is that even in a country where this kind of violence is extraordinarily rare, the schools are still prepared for it. The lockdown protocols are in place. The teachers know what to do. And I can't help but think about the fact that that is both deeply sad and strangely heartening. But Rosamund Lupton, the author here, doesn't shy away from a lot of things that are both. And she doesn't shy away from the complicated feelings here. What I thought made this book go from just like a good thriller to a literary thriller that I would put into a lot of people's hands is that sentence level writing. Rosamund Lupton is really, really good. The sentences are beautifully crafted. There's nothing overwrought here. Plotting is complicated. We are following those multiple perspectives across different locations in the school, across three hours. But somehow it's never confusing. It's never too complex to track. And that, of course, is not easy to pull off. But here it feels effortless, even though not a lot else about the book feels effortless. Like I said, that pacing is spot on. I love a real time thriller when it's done really, really well. And I, as with most of those thinking of, like Fierce Kingdom by Jen Phillips, it doesn't give you a lot of time to set it down and come back to it later. This is the kind of book that you're probably, if you're like me, going to read in just a couple of settings. This is a hard book, absolutely. But moms, I want you to know that you can read this one. This book does not wallow in graphic violence. This is not trauma porn. This is one that you will be okay with. But what it does is, I think, actually in a lot of ways more powerful. It is exploring who people are in this situation. It is exploring courage, sacrifice, the small things and large expressions of love that come out in moments like this. At its heart, this is about humanness in the worst possible setting. Lupton uses this pressure cooker scenario to really make us think, what would we do in this situation? The characters here are all really fully realized, which I liked. I loved. And also made the book that much more impactful because these are not cardboard cutouts. These are people you desperately care what's going to happen. This is absolutely. If you love a real time thriller and you can kind of deal with this, then this should be on your radar. But clear your schedule because once you start, you probably are not going to want to put it down until you reach the ending. This is three hours by Rosamund Lupton.
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B
It sounds excellent. I was definitely getting Fierce Kingdom vibes. Maybe a little T.J. newman. Except take away all the planes. Like that kind of everything is happening right as you're reading it.
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A
Yep.
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B
Feeling fierce.
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A
Kingdom, I will say, is a lot more violent than this book. Is that like this is much more a character study of a school shooting than a let's kind of be a fly on the wall in a school shooting, especially the way that Americans consider that. Does that make sense? Right?
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B
Right? Yeah, definitely. Okay. My second book this week is My nonfiction Sandwich, which is what I tend to do at this point in time. I'm going to talk about the Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande. This is a backlist gem comes to us from 2012 and when I briefly posted about it on Instagram after I finished it, I got so many comments and DMs about this being a book that had opened people's eyes and changed their lives over the past decade and a half. So I can't wait to tell everybody else about it that hadn't read it yet. Reyna Grande in Here is writing a memoir. She does have another novel as well, and so she's allowing us to travel with her through her childhood and young adulthood. And I mean travel pretty literally. She grew up in a very small town in Mexico and when she was young, four to five years old, her father left for El Otro Lado, which means the other side in Spanish. His goal was to earn enough money to send home so that they could build their dream home in their tiny town where they could all live together. Reyna, her mom, her two siblings and her father. There are quite a few kids in the community that have parents in El Otolado, but Reyna feels her father's absence really deeply. Years passes, years pass and he sends for his wife to join him, leaving all three kids with their grandmother, who is not a Mimi like Meredith. She is a strict disciplinarian. She's already caring for an older cousin whose parents are also on the other side. That cousin is lavished with love and attention, but that's kind of all she has to give. So Reina and her siblings suffer from lack of attention and lack of affection. Instead, they care for each other. Like co parents, Reina and her siblings find ways to become self sufficient, making time for play and tiny luxuries like penny candy from the grocery store. Whenever they can, they'll sell cans in order to get a piece of bubblegum type thing. When their mother returns home, Reina gets the chance to try her own dangerous journey to the other side to live with the father who's been absent for longer than he was around this man is. Is not the one. She remembers this. She has had this framed photograph of him sitting on her dresser for the entire time he's been gone. So she's built up this person in her mind instead. She finds someone who is abusive, by turns, sometimes loving, depending on how much he has to drink. And Reina finds herself turning to books and music in her new language, English, as she attempts to navigate the tumult of immigration, education, growing up, getting her first period, that type of thing, and waiting on her green card. Waiting on her father's green card. The writing here in the Distance Between Us is brilliant and lyrical. Reina is a second language learner of English, right? But she's writing this book in English. This is a story of immigration and crossing without papers from Mexico into the United States. It's more than a decade old, and the journey itself is much older than that because Reyna was making that journey when she was 8 years old. And now she's a successful adult. But it's also really applicable today as well. Reina's story is her own, of course, it's not. No Group of People is a monolith. But it gives us a glimpse into her travels, her trauma, and all the triumphs that she has through a longer arc from young childhood all the way into her adult successes. I'm really grateful always for memoir, but this one, especially in the way she invites us into her story and the way that it brings further humanity to the stories that are also showing up in my newsfeed every day. I loved this book, just like all the other books I'm bringing this month. This is the Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande.
- [18:34]
A
Are you bringing only books that you love in March?
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B
No, I didn't mean to say this month. I meant, okay, this week. But this week I have a lot of really good books to talk about.
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A
I was like, wow, that's a. That's a big commit.
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B
Yeah, I don't think I could do that.
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A
Yeah, that's hard. That's.
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B
That's.
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A
That's hard to do. All right. My second book is Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic by C M Nos Costa.
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B
Oh, my goodness, I'm so excited.
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A
We've both read another one, Morning Glory Milking Farm, by the same author. And I. I liked this one, too. Here's the setup.
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B
Okay.
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A
And so little ears might not want to listen to this next bit, although I have tried to keep it as family friendly as possible. But just so you know, this is not a family friendly book, so go ahead and Turn us down for the next little bit if you need to. Okay, here's the setup. So. And the title does tell you exactly what you're getting. I love the audacity. So our book is set in Cambric Creek, a small town where monsters and humans coexist. We meet our one of our lead characters, Lowell Heming, who's a globe trotting werewolf photographer. He's stuck back in his hometown. He's looking for a distraction. And then we also meet our other lead character, our female lead character, Mariah, who is a recently divorced interior designer who's finally family free to live her life on her own terms. She's got a thriving business, her own home, and dreams of traveling. But the one thing she really wants that she hasn't been able to get is a baby. Also, trigger warning for fertility things because this is a light fluffy. So go ahead and turn me down because infertility is not light fluffy. So let's take care of ourselves there. So Mariah wants a baby. She's had years of failed fertility treatments that ended up ending her marriage. And she's ready to try something very unconventional. The clinic, the Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic offers a unique service, a higher success rate than multi species ivf. It's cheaper than adoption and definitely more enjoyable than your average doctor's visit. When Mariah flips through a catalog and selects a handsome dark haired werewolf, she expects a pretty straightforward training transaction. She doesn't expect to actually like him. All right, so you guys know there is a mood that I get in in my reading life where only a monster romance will do. And it usually hits between a couple of really good books, maybe really important books, emotionally demanding books, when I need a palette cleanser. But it's not just about resetting my brain. It's also a mood where I want something that I can dip into and feel totally okay if I decide to leave it and move on to something else. It's not a commitment in any way, shape or form. It's a placeholder book, if you will. I dipped into this one thinking I would just read maybe a couple of pages. It was at nighttime. I didn't want to commit to anything. These books do serve a real invaluable purpose in my reading life. I think we need to know kind of what, what those are for us. But this one was perfect. This is, as we said, Siem Nescosta is from the author from Morning Glory Milking Farm. If you've read that one, you know what you're getting with this Cambric Creek world. Right. This particular book about werewolves and a fertility clinic deals with lots of issues, but in this business arrangement, romance kind of way. I like this trope where a situation puts two people together in a transaction, but then they catch feelings despite everyone's best intentions. And I think that's what I like about it. Everyone is going into this being like the last thing that I'm going to do is to develop feelings for this person. And then of course they do. I really liked both the lead characters and their backstories. Lowell is a part of the Hemming family. He's got six brothers. Of course, all of them are werewolves. They've got complicated family dynamics. And the way that. That the author gets into this family stuff was actually one of my favorite parts of the book. There's weight to the story of him being one of six really successful brothers. Lowell is like trying to figure out himself and where he fits and. And loyalties amongst the brothers are always switching and shifting and someone's on the out and some. It had more texture than I was expecting. What I was expecting, I got. This book is very spicy. Lots and lots and lots of spicy content. This was also my first foray into anything involving knotting. K N O T T I N G if you know, you know. If you don't know, you can probably figure it out from the context or
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B
you can go incognito mode on Google.
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A
Yep. Now, this is not a book that anyone is going to copy. It doesn't need to be rated on some big serious scale, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a place it in. I mean, in my reading, it definitely does it. I enjoy monster romance, particularly the kind of cozy, spicy variety, especially where you know you're going to get happily ever after. And this one delivers exactly that. It's light, meaningless, and demanded nothing from me. So whether this particular subgenre is for you or not, there's real value to having books like this in your reading. This is Moon Blooded breeding clinic by CM Nescosta.
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B
Okay, I loved 100% of that, but I also really loved just thinking back about 15 minutes when Meredith said that she had two five star books and then a creamy little center for Christmas. Okay.
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A
You had to remind them of.
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B
Yes, if I get to remember it, everybody else gets to remember it too. Oh, that made. That made me very happy. I haven't read this one yet. I did love Morning Glory Milking Farm for the same reason. Not all books we love have to be books that are wonderful. And that you can talk about with your pastor at church. Right. Like there. There's a space for loving books that don't go on your forever favorites list as well, or your. Or the books you want to press into people's hands.
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A
Yep.
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B
So this sounds delightful.
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A
Pure popcorn. I love it.
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B
All right. My next one sounds like a romance, but it is not. It is Love and Fury by Samantha Sara Silva. This was an Indie Press List pick from Novel Neighbor in October of 2025. It is also a shorter novel, just under 300 pages. But this is historical fiction focused on the life and especially the end of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Now, not everybody knows Mary Wollstonecraft, but everyone recognizes the name of her daughter, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein as a young adult. The Mary of this novel, though, was an icon in her own right. She is largely recognized as the founder of modern feminism. She was a prolific writer as well. This book is told in alternating timelines. Samantha Silva focuses on Mary's life in alternating chapters with the days leading up to and following the birth of her daughter, Mary Shelley. It is part of the historical record that Mary Wollstonecraft died only 11 days after Mary Shelley was born. So this book is essentially narrated by the midwife who delivered baby Mary in the tone of telling the daughter about her mother's life. Samantha Silva, the author, was already a known entity to me, and for a very similar reason to this novel. She wrote Mr. Dickens and his Carol, which I brought to the show back in season one, episode 18, so long ago. Although the core stories are very different here, Mr. Dickens and his Carol is the holiday season Charles Dickens. There is some darkness in that history as well, but mostly it's a much lighter tone than this one. What matters here is that her writing of historical fiction is really vibrant. She brings her characters to life on the stage, on the page, or the stage in a way that feels fresh and contemporary while still giving us this historical illumination of a figure that existed in our world and shaped their life and their times and and our life and times. This book is sad, right? With a capital S. It's about the death of a woman during the late 18th century, but it's also got these threads that are hopeful and feminist and forward thinking. I have a lot of context to offer with regard to this book in particular and Wollstonecraft's life in specific. From the youe're Dead to Me podcast, which is put out by the BBC, so it's delightful in its own way. They did an episode in April of 2023 focused on her life and my friend Candice made sure to bring it to my attention to add a broader perspective to Mary Wollstonecraft as a whole. It was well worth my time to spend an hour getting a bird's eye view before diving into this book and I heartily recommend that other readers do the same. It gives a great context to the story as a whole, as well as some of the other historical figures that drop in and out of this novel. Either way though, here you're going to find a shorter novel, 288 pages, that's well written, propulsive, immersive, and I loved it and I gave it five stars. Well done novel, neighbor and Stephanie Skees in particular. This was Love and Fury by Samantha Silva.
- [28:05]
A
Yeah, that's one that really, really caught my eye. That's on my shelf to return back to at some point.
- [28:10]
B
It's really good. It's really good historical fiction.
- [28:14]
A
All right, well I have one that actually goes kind of well with that. This is my second five star book of the episode and I'm fairly sure this is going to be on my top 10 of the entire year. Absolute standout. This is a book called the Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty. Have you seen this one, Katie?
- [28:34]
B
No, but of course it has ties to other titles, so I'm curious.
- [28:39]
A
Yes. So here's the setup. The one shouldn't feature Queen introduces us to 22 year old Vera, a young woman who's stuck in a holding pattern in the home, the town where she grew up, Glastonbury in England. She's just waiting tables. She's just had a really devastating loss in her life. So she's done one of those like go back home and kind of recuperate, heal. And then a strange man walks into her or the inn where she's working, claims that he's Merlin, that Merlin and insists Severa is actually the legendary Queen Guinevere, transported forward in time as an infant and now desperately needed back in Camelot. What makes this work as more than a gimmick is the central tension that is there Once Vera goes back to Camelot. She's supposed to be a queen of this kingdom, but she can't remember anything about it. She's supposed to be married to a man, Arthur, who she has no idea why he won't look her in the eye. And she has this job to save this kingdom where magic is dying and she has no idea about any of it. She's a 22 year old from like 2024.
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B
Right.
- [29:53]
A
This is absolutely fascinating. Like I said, five stars. So if you are someone who loved A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Bridget Kimmerer, that feeling of a modern woman dropped into a legendary world just to figure everything out really fast and save the kingdom, then this is going to need to be your next read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you love feminist retellings that give the women some agency and you're getting the interior of their story, then you are absolutely going to love this book. And if you have ever wished that someone would just kind of let Guinevere tell the story of Camelot again, Paula Lafferty has done exactly that. I cannot even describe to you how much I love this book. It popped up in my library's weekly feed, which. Can I just say, the Lake Travis Library does such a good job of putting out the new releases that have come out that week, but it's not the new releases that you see everywhere else. I cannot tell you how many times I am finding books that I'm like, I didn't even know this book was coming out. And they're highlighting it and I'm like, I want this one. And they're like, we'll save it for you. And they do that for all of their patrons. It's really wonderful. What makes this, I think, so interesting is that there's this tension that Lafferty builds when she arrives in Camelot. This is my favorite part of the book. Like I said, Arthur is presented as this puzzle. He's like, cold and forbidding when we're there together in public. But then he's leaving, like quiet tokens and flowers and doing these small kind of caring things when Vera wakes up in the morning. But, like, he's very cold to her when they're face to face. She has a fast friendship with Lancelot, but she doesn't really understand why that is. And she knows that people are gossiping about the two of them, but she has no idea why. And then we have this concept of magic literally dying around them. There's so much at stake here and the fact that our lead character has no roadmap. We don't know, like, she doesn't have any of the queenly skills that she would have had. Now it just makes for these amazing character dynamics in scenes that really had me turning the pages. So obviously it's being pitched as Outlander meets the Princess Bride meets Camelot. And that comp is not wrong. This is big hearted feminist time slip storytelling. It's really, really well Done. It's the first in a trilogy, which I love, but this one does stand alone enough to feel very complete. It was originally a Kickstarter, which I think is really interesting. Yeah, it was. It was originally called La Vie des Guinevere before Kensington Publishers picked it up. So it's already been published in 10 countries. It's already been translated into eight languages. And the audiobook is narrated by Julia Whelan, and which will be a big win for most of you. For some people, I did it in print. It has. It's an absolutely gorgeous book. I got it from my library and then promptly bought it because it's got beautiful sprayed edges. It's absolutely gorgeous. A couple of things to know before you go in. There is a trigger warning for one scene, a physical assault that is really quite graphic. It fits the story. It's not gratuitous in any way, but it took me by surprise in its very visceral nature. So I wanted to flag that just in case anybody has. I don't want it to be lurking, and I want to jump out at somebody who has a lot of, you know, triggers around this. On the spice front, I would say maybe two Chili Peppers. There's really only one scene, and it's really not that spicy, and it could be easily skipped if it's not your thing. But everything about this book was my thing, and I enjoyed every last delicious page of it. This is the Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty. Oh, five stars. This is a book that I wish I could read again for the first time.
- [33:49]
B
It sounds so good. And a comp to Curse so Dark and Lonely.
- [33:52]
A
Yeah.
- [33:53]
B
That's the best for those of us from season one. That's what we've been chasing ever since, right?
- [33:57]
A
That to me, yes. Outlander. Yes. Princess Bride, Yes. Camelot. But to me, it's the curse of Dark and Lonely comp that gets closest to the mood, the vibe that we're experiencing.
- [34:08]
B
Oh, fun. Is this. Is this new? It's a new release.
- [34:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, it just came in. Yeah, that came up. Yeah. Because my library was. I was like, what is this? I've never even heard of this before.
- [34:19]
B
Crazy.
- [34:20]
A
Gotta love it.
- [34:20]
B
Love it.
- [34:21]
A
Love my library. All right, Katie, let's get into our deep dive, which is, as I said, at the top, the Currently Reading press list. We're kind of taking a fresh.
- [34:32]
B
A retrospective.
- [34:33]
A
Right. Taking a fresh look at it. And so, again, if anyone just skipped right to our current reads, let me tell you, the currently Reading press list is available on Our website. It is a list of all the books that for the first four and a half years of the show, every week Katie and I would each bring a book we wanted to press into almost everyone's hands. And that's important because that is partly why we stopped doing the segment. Because it's hard to come up with a book a week that is that you feel is so good that you want to press into all almost everyone's hands.
- [35:05]
B
Right. Because four years times 50 episodes. Ish per year. That's 200 books each that we put on that list. That's a lot of books.
- [35:18]
A
Exactly. Now we are going to link to this page in our show notes so you'll be able to go right to this page and see it. It's called Books we want to press into your hands. And we have all of them there. They are organized by season. You can click right through to bookshop.org and get more information about each one of them. But Katie, do you have the page open right now on your computer?
- [35:43]
B
I do.
- [35:43]
A
Okay, so the question that we got is this. This is from a woman whose name is Critterina on Discord, but also Laura from the Bookish Friends. Laura says this. I just wanted to throw this out there as a deep dive idea. I spent six the last few years reading through your original press list. It's been a fun adventure that has broadened my reading life and I've enjoyed books that I never would have picked up otherwise. I would be very interested to hear a reflection on the press list. You've spoken on the podcast on how readers change. It'd be interesting to look at the press list and reflect. Are there any books that you wouldn't press now as a reader? Or if you have a book that you've read that is the same type, but even better since you made that press, like what the presses tell you about your reading life at that time. Are there any that stand out to you as amazing things like that? I think this is a really good question, Katie. I think this is really, really fun because we do change. But what I think is the most fun is how many people have undertaken this project to go through and read through this list of books. Yeah, I mean, it's. A lot of people have had a good time doing it.
- [36:54]
B
Yes, indeed. And I mentioned this a little bit a couple weeks ago when I talked about updating all the links to make sure that we knew everything was still current and going where it was supposed to. But I was almost struck by this, like, little itchiness in the back of my neck that, like, Katie, maybe you should make, I don't know, a page in the spreadsheet that has every single one of these books. And people can check off which ones they've read. And it would say who pressed it and then get a feel for, okay, well, these are the types of books I tend to read. Maybe I am more of a Meredith reader, and I didn't even realize it, but she pressed books that I love. Or since I know that now, I want to read all of Meredith presses. And you can use a filter, and you can get all of those together in one space. I just. And then, like, do I want to make that a project? I've read all of my presses. Do I want to read everybody's presses? Maybe. Yeah.
- [37:45]
A
I love the idea of putting it somewhere where it can be filtered down. It could be the checkbox. Like, people can check their way through it. I think that's really fun. We should definitely do that. So when you look at this list, Katie, is there, like, what were. What was. What's your first overall feeling when you look at this list?
- [38:02]
B
Well, actually, the first thing that struck me about this list is that it feels like two people who have kind of a Venn diagram of circles talking about books they really love. Right. And then every once in a while, there's something that's like, ding, look at me. One of these things is not like the other. Right. And that's because we used to have guests on a lot more often, and we would allow them to press books, too. So it would be like, okay, well, I've read a lot of these, even if they were your presses, and I know you've read a lot of them that were technically pressed by me. But then I'll be like, oh, interesting. We had the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, which was pressed by Beth Silvers in. In season one. She is on Pantsuit Politics. And. And I love that that press exists there. But when you look at season one as a whole, it's like, wow, where did that come from? Right. Like. Like a visitor popping into your conversation. That's otherwise between these two friends saying, oh, but have you read. And you're like, well, no, I haven't. And the entire press list as a whole feels like a conversation to me, which I love that as, like, a broader view of it. I also can tell that it was easier for us to press books at the beginning. Right. Yep. When I think about the ones that are really timeless, they're in seasons one and two getting into season three and then season four, you can tell that we're starting to be like, okay, well, I guess I could go back to the things I was reading in season two. I read them two years ago now, but we qualified them a little more. Right. If you're this type of reader, you might really love this book, but not necessarily everyone. So what do you see when you look at this?
- [39:42]
A
I mean, the funniest part to me is how you get to season five, and it's like, bubble. We only did.
- [39:48]
B
We started season five, and we were like, so we have a new plan. So these are now our last presses.
- [39:53]
A
Yeah, we had to announce it. That's why. That's why. But it always just kind of bugs me that those two are there. But yes. I mean, overall, when I look at this list, I think, man, that's a lot of really, really good books. I also think, Katie, that you and I had a lot more overlap when we started the show than we do now.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah, I think so, too.
- [40:16]
A
Right. Like, I think I feel like we've diverged a little bit in our. It's easier over time to tell whose press is whose.
- [40:23]
B
Yes. When you. Especially when you get to, like, the end of season four, it's like, well, and normally the pattern is two Meredith books together, two Katie books together, because of the way we would alternate who was driving the episode. Right. So it's like, once you know this is a Katie book, of course there are guests in there because we had Mindy, we had Mary in there as well. But mostly it's two Meredith books, two Katie books. So once you know the pattern, you're like, oh, yep, I know exactly who did which of these. And it's easier to tell toward the end which ones are which, for sure.
- [40:58]
A
Are there any that you look at this list and you're like, I just would not put that on the list now. Like, I wish I could take it off the list.
- [41:07]
B
There are books on this list that seven and a half years later, seven years after the fact, I have different feelings about them than I did at the time. And that's because we. We grow and change, and we're not always the same person, that is a reader, as we were at the beginning. Sometimes it's because the book itself lands differently or the author has changed in my viewpoint, a little bit. Mostly, I try not to look into authors too hard because I want their books to just live by themselves, like, in my head, the way that they were when I read them.
- [41:44]
A
But.
- [41:44]
B
But there are certainly books on here That. I mean, going back to episode three, Roald Dahlia wrote Matilda. I love Matilda. I loved the movie growing up. I love that book. Walt Dahl is not a great person. Yeah, right.
- [41:57]
A
Yeah.
- [41:57]
B
And sometimes we have to divorce those two things from each other. He was already not a great person when he wrote that book, when he published that book, when I read that book. But I didn't know that at the time. I just loved that book, and I still love that book. I love Matilda. I love everything about her as a reader, as a character. I don't think I would change it, though. I think that it's okay to. To give grace to past Katie, who didn't know those things, who wouldn't necessarily put that on the press list now, but it should exist because that's who I was at the time. Are you having any feels about any of these?
- [42:31]
A
Well, like, I mean, the very last one that I pressed, Death at Bishop's Keep. I don't. Why did I press that? Like, it's not a bad book, but I just don't.
- [42:42]
B
Like.
- [42:42]
A
I don't know what I was thinking.
- [42:44]
B
You know what's funny is I remember that episode when we got to the end of that episode, and you were driving, which is why yours is the last one on the list. Right. And when we said, okay, now it's time to press books into each other's hands for the last time, it felt like there was so much weight on that episode. And I'm like, well, I brought the gunkle. Yay.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah.
- [43:07]
B
Yeah.
- [43:07]
A
So we definitely were running out of steam. But when I look at this, I'm like, there's a lot of really, really, really. For the most part, it is really true. Like the yoga store murder. The best true crime book anyone has ever read, ever, Period.
- [43:22]
B
End of story. And I read it because you pressed it. Yeah.
- [43:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, nobody read that book and then come to me and tell me it's not the best true crime ever that nobody ever talks about. Disney War. That's a great business biography. The Course of Love by Elaine Debut, Elaine DeBotton. Nobody ever talks about that book. But if you want to read a book about middle marriage, that's a great book about middle marriage. In fact, I should probably go back and reread that book now. I'm a very different reader now than I was when I read that the first time.
- [43:52]
B
Shogun by James Clavell. Giant book, now super popular because it's been made into a miniseries. But guess what, y'?
- [43:59]
A
All?
- [43:59]
B
It's on the press List from like, episode 12 or something of the show. Episode 14 of the show in its entirety. Oh, so good. I still think about this one. Was one from your brother, Scott. Dataclysm by Christian Rutter. I brought that book up last week in conversation with somebody. Such a great book. And I read it because of Scott pressing it on the show. Yeah.
- [44:22]
A
We've got the Book of M, which is Ping shepherd, back when Ping shepherd wrote good books. And, you know, it's, you know, Apocalypse done really, really well. I absolutely love it. The Age of Miracles is fantastic.
- [44:35]
B
Life After Life by Kate Hackinson. Yeah, somebody. Just the other day we re released episode one of All Things Murderful, and she said, why wasn't Kate Morton on my tbr? Y' all do not sleep on Kate Morton.
- [44:47]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [44:49]
B
Goodness.
- [44:51]
A
Yeah, exactly. Yes. I got several DMs yesterday about the Forgotten Garden being on All Things Murderful. Yeah, exactly. Because, yeah, Kate Morton is really, really, really good. But like the vintage Teacup club. I know that I was the one who pressed that.
- [45:07]
B
Yeah.
- [45:07]
A
I haven't read that for the life of me. I have no idea why. It was not very far away from when I pressed a curse so dark and lonely in Scythe. Sometimes I just don't know what I was thinking.
- [45:17]
B
Well, and then shortly after that, you pressed the Count of Monte Cristo, and yet you hadn't done that two years before when we started the show.
- [45:25]
A
Right. And I think I remember pressing the Count of Monte Cristo more to feel like I was being a completist, because I fe. Like, we had talked about that book multiple times. And so I always was like, I don't want to press it because it's come up in so many different ways, but my completest soul had to be satiated by. By putting it on there. I do notice that we. That we pressed both My Lady Jane and My Plane Jane in season three. Those deserve a place on the press list for sure.
- [45:52]
B
Indeed.
- [45:53]
A
The Fact of a Body. That's another really great, but really dark true crime.
- [45:59]
B
Yes. Paper Magician, which I pressed. And then eventually you read and loved. That made me so happy.
- [46:06]
A
Right. And I've got some. You know, Debbie Macomber, the Shop on Blossom Street. That's a perfect kind of press. That's part of why sometimes I miss this segment is like books like that where it's like. And that's why I'm glad that we changed it, because the Shop on Blossom street is so perfect for what it is, but it's not perfect for everyone. And so I like this idea of being able to call it a sleeper hit, which is now what the. Like the segment of our grab bag that we could pull from to put, you know, to talk about a book like this. And I just like having a place for that without the pressure of it being a book that we would want to press into everyone's hands. Because surely not everyone is going to want to read Debbie Macomber. But. But the Shop on Blossom street is one of my favorite books of all time. I love that whole series.
- [46:57]
B
I've got Expecting Better by Emily Oster. That's only for pregnant people to read y' all like. But it's a great book. It's a great book, but for everyone. Right.
- [47:09]
A
I've got Bringing up Bebe on this list again. A book I hand to almost anyone who's having a baby, but not appropriate for most people at most times of their lives. So it's a. I. I really think it's fun to take a look at this. I think it's also fun to look back. Just if you keep track of your books, you keep track of your reading. And if you make top 10 lists, it's really fun to look back at your top 10 list, which probably scratches the same kind of itch.
- [47:37]
B
Yeah.
- [47:37]
A
Like, look back at what you were loving or rating five stars back 10 years ago. It's. It's interesting to see how we've changed and also how we haven't. The things that we see still have an abiding love for.
- [47:50]
B
Yes. Because there are still so many, so many great books on this list.
- [47:55]
A
You know what I think we should do? Katie for Megan, because we love her. I think instead of making her for this segment of the show, go in and do presses or do links to every one of them. I think she should just say go to the page and all the links are there. Right. Like, I think we should let her do that here because we've just been like throwing them out willy nilly.
- [48:17]
B
Well, and really what we want is for you guys to go to this page as listeners to scroll through this gallery of covers. It's like visiting a bookstore. If you want to use your find capabilities on your browser. They are all typed at the bottom of the page as well. So you will be able to find specific books when we talk about them. And it says the timestamp, the episode and who pressed it in text at the bottom of the page. But looking through it like a bookshelf of favorites. This is like if Katie and Meredith had a bookstore this would be in our, like, staff picks section. It would be a very large section of the store, y'. All.
- [48:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, it definitely would be. But I was thinking that exact same thing. It's like shelf talkers, you know, for each, you know, each one of these books. It is. It's a really good list. I'm really, really glad that we did this. And I do think, Katie, that we should. Do, you know, what you said, I think we should do some more things with this because it's a great. It's a great resource.
- [49:16]
B
Yes. It can live on in other ways.
- [49:18]
A
All right, thank you so much, by the way, to Laura for her question. We really, really love to answer questions that you guys have. You can send an email to our new big girl email address, which is hello, currently reading podcast.com that will come to both of us and you can tell us. This is what I would love for you guys to talk about. In a deep dive, you don't have to. You don't have to do our work for us. We're more than capable of coming up with deep dive ideas. But we do love it when you guys say, like, I would love to get your take on this, or here's a question I would love to know your answer to. We love to talk about it. Okay, Katie, let us go to my new favorite part of the show, which is before we go.
- [49:59]
B
But you have to have that little pause ahead of it.
- [50:01]
A
Before. Before we go, I want to talk about my favorite. And there were a couple from this last week. I had a front runner all week as we got ready to record, and then, boom, one showed up in the feed.
- [50:13]
B
It's like a horse race.
- [50:14]
A
Yes. And I was like, this is what I love. I love it when there's a post that makes me really think about my reading in a different way. My experience of reading. This morning, our good bookish friend sue posted this. She said, I have unwittingly created a new way of rating my book books. I call it the Sigh of Contentment. It's what happens when I finish another volume of the Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon. I finish the book and I sigh. These books are both huggable and sighable. And she asks, or she says, what a lovely series we've been given by Beth Brower. And then, of course, people. I'm sure I haven't gone back to look, but people will talk about how they felt about Emma M. Lyon or other books. What I loved about it is catching that moment, because this happens to me. When I'm reading, sometimes it's at the end of a book where I'm like, oh, that kind of huggable sigh of contentment. But sometimes it's when I have to, I have to close the book because I have to go do something else and I'll be like, okay. It's the sigh of contentment, of being within a book that is feeling really good to me in some way. Maybe it's the wonderful heart lifting way that Emma makes us feel. Or maybe it's just like I get so satisfied when I'm in the middle of a book that I just can't wait to find out what's going to happen next or a new clue has been revealed and I can't wait to see how we're going to puzzle that out that will get a sigh of contentment. So what I loved is can we pay attention to that moment where we feel that sigh of contentment in our book and can we learn, can we market and learn something from it? Because that, I think that will help us to know ourselves better as a reader.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah, I like that. Because it doesn't have to be something heart happy. Right. To make you sigh. It can be. I'm so immersed in this story that setting it aside means I have to kind of reset myself to re enter the world as it stands outside my book. Right.
- [52:19]
A
Yeah.
- [52:20]
B
So yeah, siability.
- [52:23]
A
Okay, back to the real world. But I'm loving what I'm reading, so I love it. Okay, thank you, sue for that moment of reader know thyself kind of inspiration. All right, Katie, what have you got from the grab bag?
- [52:36]
B
All right, before we go, I want to tell y' all something that I'm currently curious about. And this comes from our dear friend Laura Tremaine's substack. This week she shared all the pre orders and new releases for the first half of 2026 that she is excited about. And substack is kind of where Laura has moved her thoughts, audio opinions since 10 Things to Tell you closed last year. So it's, it's always, it's like a grab bag of stuff that we get in these emails from her. I love getting a Laura email. Even though we're not book twins, she's not, you know, exactly matched up with me in any way. But this email is so chock full of books and she's ranked them, not ranked them, but ordered them by when they release. So all the January releases, all the February ones, of course some have already released because January and February are over. But A lot of them either were already on my pre order list or on my radar or I had no idea, like you're talking about with Blake Travis Community Library that this author was releasing something new. Because Laura did all the work. I get to read it like a book page magazine. Right. I get to scroll through it. I get to click over to bookshop.org, i get to add to TBR or put in my pre order right away. It's so easy because somebody else is impassioned about looking forward. Oh my gosh, Blue. Sorry.
- [54:01]
A
If you can hear a bunch of noise in the background, it's blue. Blue has decided we should be done. I'm so sorry to interrupt you, Katie.
- [54:09]
B
Delightful though. So I just, I love that A, Laura does this work and then B, she shares it with us. So whether or not you have a Venn diagram of overlap with Laura, which some of her books that she chooses, I'm like, no, I would never read that. And that's okay. I know exactly where my overlap is with Laura. So the ones that are right for me, I know which ones they are and I can pull them directly from her email. I am curious about finding all the right ways to make sure that not just the ones that overlap with Laura, but all the books that are perfect for me are on my radar for the rest of this year. And Laura is the one who put that in my brain.
- [54:44]
A
And I'm curious as to what are those pre orders that you have in that you're like, oh, I can't wait to get my hands on that book. I know for a lot of us actually by the time this episode comes out, a lot of people have been waiting for Lady Tremaine.
- [54:57]
B
Yes.
- [54:57]
A
Speaking of Laura, it actually came out last week so people have been like so excited. But that's always something I'm curious about. What is the pre order that you are most looking forward to?
- [55:07]
B
Yes, and I have highest on my list was just last week or two weeks ago now. Kin by Tayari Jones. I have been waiting for years for anyone from her. And then further on in this quarter or next quarter of the year we have Whistler by Ann Patchett coming out which I'm very excited about as well as an ever living Ann Patchett fangirl. Yeah, that high on my list.
- [55:31]
A
Maggie o' Farrell has a new book out as a new book coming out land. And then of course Louise Penny has a new political thriller, spy thriller coming out. So I'm excited about all of that. All right, well that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find the show newly on Substack so if that's a place that you like to hear about us, find us there. You can also follow us as individuals. I'm Meredith MeredithMonday Schwartz on Instagram you
- [56:00]
B
can find me Katie at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putamong Evans and you can find her on Instagram at most of Megans reads full show notes with
- [56:11]
A
the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com, which is of course the where you can also find the list of books that we pressed into your hands and so
- [56:27]
B
many other great things. You can also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram or substack or YouTube. Yes or you can email us@hellourrentlyreading podcast.com
- [56:39]
A
and if you want more of this kind of content, you can become a bookish friend for just $5 a month you can join us on Patreon and you get so much more content. You get fantastic community and you make sure that this show is always commercial free. You can also rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. We always appreciate that. And you can share us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [57:05]
B
Yes, Bookish friends are the best friends. Thanks for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [57:11]
A
All right, until next week.
- [57:12]
B
May your coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [57:15]
A
Happy reading Katie.
- [57:17]
B
Happy reading Meredith.