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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 8, Episode 40: Airplane Reading + Books For Every Enneagram
01:18:59
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Foreign.
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Hey readers, welcome to the Currently Reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
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We are light on the 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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I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I have once again been sucked into Sarah J. Maas universe.
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And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And I think airplane reading is a superior experience. This is episode number 40 of season eight and we are so glad you're here.
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B
So now, Katie, you can figure out why I had like four different versions of my bite sized intro and I was like each one was less appropriate than the one before, so I just had a straightforward one.
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A
Yep, we could have gone really punny there at least, right? All right, y', all, we are so excited to be back on the mic together today and I will let you know right here at the top that our deep dive today is books for each Enneagram type. It's been a while since we did a deep dive about the Enneagram, so we're gonna get some questions, but we're gonna talk all about the Enneagram and the nine types. Before we do that though, are gonna get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. Meredith, what is yours?
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B
All right, well, this week, actually riffing a little bit probably off of what yours is gonna be. I had the pleasure of going on a trip to California this week, and as I did that, I had the equal pleasure of having three and a half hours to read on a flight uninterrupted. And I had Crescent City right with me. The House of Earth and Blood. It's the first in the Crescent City series by Sarah J. Maas. I'm doing this read along that is being hosted by Holly's Literary Magic on Instagram, one of my good bookish friends. She's been telling me forever that we needed to read this series. And of course, in advance of the new Acotar books coming out in October and in January, we wanted to get this series read between now and then because Holly's been telling me, Meredith, there. I think there are some places where the two universes of Crescent City and Acotar meet up and wouldn't it be so cool? And I will tell you, Crescent City. So Acotar, obviously everybody knows it's got a very heavy fairy tale vibes. That's a happy place for me in my fantasy reading especially Crescent City is more urban fantasy. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it because, you know, I've tried Throne. Throne, Throne of Glass. Why does that not sound right?
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It's Throne of Glass.
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Throne of Glass multiple times. Can't get into it. Crescent City grabbed me by the back of the neck and just threw me into the universe immediately. It's a really long book. The first book is 800 pages. Ish. I had read 350 before I even blinked. I mean it. Absolutely. It's all of the stuff that I love about Acotar, only I think the sentence level writing is even better because this is written, of course, after the beginning of the Acotar series. Unlike Throne of Glass, which is her debut, this is a much more mature version. I really like the main female character. I love the world building that she's doing. It's got a lot of the same kinds of like organized like houses and certain creatures and certain areas have this and that and like the spring and the summer and the night courts of. Of Acotar. So it's got a lot that I like from that series, but it's its own own thing for sure. It's really well paced. I'm really loving it. So if you want to join the that Crescent City read along, you can. It started on May 3, but honestly, even when you're hearing this, you would be able to jump in and catch up, I guarantee you really quickly. That's Holly's literary magic on Instagram that will link you over to her substack, which is where that is taking place.
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A
Nice. We love Holly. She always puts together such great stuff and really helps like bring books to life for me in a different way. Right.
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B
And that's the thing is she's doing a lot of writing that is really helpful in putting a lot of this stuff from the series into context as we're reading the book. It's very, very interesting way to do a slow read.
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A
Excellent. All right. Well, as you know, Meredith, I just got home from a nine day trip to and from Paris with all four kids. It was, it was magical. It was bucket list. It was all the best things. We saw the sights, we ate so many baguettes. We visited all the place. But the best reading time I had was the two six hour flights each direction. It's actually like five and a half and six and a half, but a lot of time in the air. And I kept thinking about why that is, because I don't think I would have said previously that airplane reading is my best reading time. So it has changed for me. This is a new season that I've entered, which is exciting for me, which is why I wanted to talk about it. So first, my kids are now a little older than especially the last time I did a big trip like this, right? Analy is seven and a half, almost eight, Noah is almost ten. Right. Like we're moving into this different age where they're a lot more self sufficient, they can order their snacks without my help, that kind of thing. And they mostly entertain themselves. Second, of course this has not changed the white noise of the plane, that droning hum of the engines and the air system drowns out other random noises. It's perfect. It's like the brown noise really is what it is. And third is that I'm not a great plane sleeper. So while my E reader usually when I lay in my bed behind me and I prop up my Kindle every night, three minutes, that's all the reading time I get. Like, I just don't have invested time where I'm sitting and clicking, clicking, clicking through pages. But I am just uncomfortable enough on a plane that I finally get into E reader flow state where I am just blasting through pages. I read a 600 page book on one flight and it was like, oh, this is the magic. I didn't have the interruption from the kids. I got to enjoy the white noise and I was not tired enough to push through the E reader Melatonin or I was just tired enough that the E reader Melatonin didn't work on me, right? So it was great. On the way there and the way back, I finished a book each direction, which felt very happy and productive for me because during the trip itself we were very busy every day. There was not a ton of reading time. And it just like capped my trip in a really wonderful way.
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That is wonderful. There is nothing better. I had this woman sitting across the aisle from me who at the end of our the flight where I was doing all that reading of Crescent City, she was like, it took me forever to figure out what you were doing because I was sitting and I had my Kindle remote.
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Oh.
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And so I had my hand, I don't know why, when I lay down and when I sit down, I tuck my Hands underneath, like, my legs. So I had my. My hands tucked underneath my leg, but I was doing my remote like that.
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Yes.
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And so she was like, it took me forever to realize you were holding still for so long that you were turning the pages. She was like, I guess maybe she thought I was just, like, staring at one page, I don't know, forever. And then she was like, yeah. But then she realized I was turn. I was turning the pages. So even on a plane, the Kindle remote comes in. So in fact, maybe even more so, it comes in so handy.
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Is yours a clicker or a ring?
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A clicker.
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Okay. I have a ring one. And I think it's the bee's knees.
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Yeah, I would. Yeah. When I need a new one, I'm gonna. I'm gonna definitely play around with that. But this is one I got forever ago. And it was so inex.
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Right.
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And it just. And I never have to charge it. Like, I never have to charge it. It's so amazing to me.
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So I've had mine, I think, a year, and I don't know if I've charged it since I first set it up.
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Right.
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Because I just. Yeah, it's so great. I love that.
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I don't know what I would. I don't know what I would do without my Kindle remote.
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The best things in life are $10 or less, let me tell you.
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Yes.
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Let's get into some books, y'. All. Okay. Meredith, what have you been reading lately?
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Okay, this is one that I really want to talk about, but actually I have a few books that I want to talk about today that my feelings about them are complicated, but they're. They're books I would definitely recommend, just maybe not to everybody. So it's a little bit of a complicated thing we've got here. This first book is the Midnight show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne. Have you read this one, Katie?
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No. I don't even recognize those author names.
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Oh, really? Okay. So it's been kind of everywhere. Well, you will recognize Jennifer Thorne in just a little bit. Here's the setup. So we're in 1980s New York City, and it's 80s comedy is still very, very much a man's game. And so into this world walks Lillian Martin when she and a group of her college improv friends land a spot on the brand new late night show called the Midnight Show. And it airs from New York every Friday night. Lillian is the one that everyone can't stop watching. She's obviously the star of this. This group, the star, the New comedic star of a generation. And the show becomes a cultural phenomenon really quickly. So the cast goes from being absolute nobodies who have no experience whatsoever on TV to being on the COVID of Rolling Stone. So one winter night in lower Manhattan, Lillian disappears. No resolution, just questions. And 40 years later, a journalist sets out to piece together what actually happened to Lillian Martin. And in doing so, pulls on threads that a lot of very famous people would prefer to stay unpulled. So the whole story unfolds through interviews, articles, and transcripts, which means you're getting it the way oral histories work best. They're contradictory, messy, and, for me, very page turning. Okay, I came to this book with a lot of goodwill because, first of all, I heard several people talking about it and really loving it. And there are a lot of people who unreservedly love this book. But Jennifer Thorne wrote Diavola. Do you remember that book? That's the one with the. Yeah. One of my favorite horror novels of all time. So she had a lot of cred going in this for me. So she writes it with her writing partner, Lee Kelly. And it's. That piece of. It was really interesting because the book was already on my tbr. But then Sarah from Sarah's Bookshelves Live did an interview with the two of them. And Sarah did what she does best. She asks really interesting questions. But here she did that. But then she kind of just stepped back and let the two of them, who've written a few books together and are clearly really close friends, they kind of just jam. In this interview that she does about writing this book, about their process together, I was completely fascinated by that interview on Sarah's Bookshelves Live and immediately said, no, I'm reading this book next. I was ready. And the book delivers on a lot of fronts. It grabs you immediately. Again, that oral history multimedia format is one that I really, really like. This one moves fast because of that. The structure pulls you in, and you just have to know more. No more. No more. So I ended up giving this book only three stars, which, for those who know my reading, know that that's fairly low for me. This is where this gets interesting and complicated for me. And it's where Reader Know Thyself does its most important work, because most of the issues that I had with this book, almost all of them were me issues, not the book. And they would likely not be issues for many, many, many other readers. But I have to be honest about it. So the first stumbling block. Again, this is a me thing. This book has a Ton of drug and alcohol use all the way through it. It's not peripheral. There's drug and alcohol abuse that are active, abuse that are actively affecting these characters day to day lives and their ability to perform their work. This is really triggering for me personally and also this is really accurate to what was happening in 1980s New York. The book had to have like, it had to be there, right? So, you know, it had to be written this way. It's not a flaw. But for me it was an impediment that was. That was hard for me from the beginning. The second thing, and this is the one thing that I really don't know if it's just a me thing, I struggled to take extremely seriously the idea of how extremely seriously these characters took what they were doing on this comedy show, which is clearly like Saturday Night Live, right? Like, it's clearly a stand in for that. These characters are wholly consumed by what they're doing on the show. Like, the intensity is complete. And reading this in 2026, it started to feel a little bit thick. Theater Kid is to me, like it was so impassioned and earnest. At a certain point, just, I was like, did they really think that what they were doing here was this important? Like, just at a certain point it was very navel gazy. It took itself. So the characters took what they were doing so seriously. You'll have to. Your mileage may vary on that.
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Now.
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There are a couple of things that it felt a little less personal just to me. My biggest quibble was that the way that the interviews are formatted in this book is something that I found messy. The oral history format works brilliantly, I think, in a lot of books, but especially like the book that this is going to be comped to. Daisy Jones and the six where you know whose voice you're hearing and that architecture is really clean. But here it would start with one person and it would kind of tell you like a transcript of an interview on this date and time with this person. And then other voices would get woven in that were from previous interviews. But then I would get confused about who was actually sitting in the room, which mattered to me because that gives context to what people are saying right now. Sarah, you know, when she was interviewing them, the authors kind of covered this and they talked about the way. The fact that this was a storytelling device that they used deliberately. But for me, knowing that it was intentional didn't actually make it land any better for me. So to me, it felt a little deus ex machina. It felt A little like a really convenient way to move the story along. Hopefully that will be one of the few times I use that phrase in a book review on this show. But here we are. And the last thing I'll say is that there's a really strong pro feminism thread running through the book. And I want to be fair here because this is something that I feel really strongly about. I never love it when books pound you over the head with a message. But also I really, really believe in feminist trailblazing women fighting for each other in a world that didn't want them there. All of those things are true at the same time. And these women are brave. The characters audacity of being in the room where all this is happening and having to fight for their place there is really real. But the women in this book all throughout behave just as badly as the men do on almost every metric, which would be fine, actually. Women are complicated people and why should they be held to a higher standard than men? But the book wants credit for them being both at the same time kind of better morally and character wise and then also giving them the ability to not be. I just found that I wanted. Wanted the messaging to kind of pick a lane or do a better job at holding it all together. So that's a lot. Like I said, this is very. I took a couple of days to figure out how I wanted to talk about this book because I thought about it a lot and that's the mark of a book that I think I'm really glad that I read. I think this would be a great book club book. It's fast, it's easy to read, People are going to have a lot to say and a lot to talk about. So for that reason, I would highly recommend it. This is the Midnight show by Leigh Kelly and Jennifer Thorne.
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Interesting. I know we are like, well on record of loving those mixed media formats. So when you first started describing this, I was like, well, yes, absolutely. And like that 1980s scene, I'm thinking like last night at the Telegraph Club, which I really loved a couple years back. There are some books that really work well for me in that scene. And then the showbiz element again, Daisy Jones. It feels like a recipe for really good stuff. But I absolutely understand that tension of, like, how do we hold women to the standard that we've been given and also be feminist and say, like, can't men meet that standard as well? And then also celebrate women being crude and sarcastic and like, yucky toward each other just because, like, it feels like you can't have all that at once. Right, right.
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And. And I think what they wanted to do, and I understand the choice was to be able to have all of that at once. I really do. Especially because the. The construct of the book is that it is being written by journalists 40 years after the events. So all that framing, like we're supposed to be taking all of that into context. So like I said, it's complicated. And I think you're, you know, every reader's mileage will vary. And also it's getting really, really good feedback. So again, I'm not saying that I didn't like it. I'm just saying that I didn't like it unreservedly. And there were some really big things that kind of I had to mention because they were really pinging me the entire time.
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Right. That makes sense. I do want to acknowledge for the people that do a blue check, that today blue is under a pillow. And so when he moves, the pillow moves. And it's like an experience happening in the background there. So if anybody else is distracted watching this on YouTube, that's what's going on back there.
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I tried to get him to come from under because that pillow was heavy. And I tried to get him to come from under it. Cause I was like, dude, I feel like that's really. But then he is like very touch focused. Like he wants to always be like touching. And he doesn't just touch. He like leans. Like he wants to really be touching. So, you know, he's. He's found his cuddle mate while I'm recording.
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A
I like it. All right. My first book this week has some historical fiction elements. Very women centered, but very different from what you were just talking about. Meredith. I am bringing the Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali. I had finally picked this book up this year after intentionally avoiding it for many years. And that is because I did not love her breakout hit the stationery shop, even though nearly everyone else did. It just wasn't a win for me on a number of levels. Especially the focus on like a love story element just didn't work for me at the time. But historical fiction centered on women has been working well for me lately. So I grabbed it, finally decided to dip my toes in here. We bounce from right at the beginning, present day USA to a continuous narrative. So this is not dual timeline. We just start in the present day and then jump backwards to 1950s Iran, where we meet Ellie and her best friend Homa. Ellie's fortunes have recently changed. She was kind of A bourgeoisie, upper middle class young girl. And then her father unexpectedly passes away. Fortunes change. She and her mother become kind of hand to mouth. Thankfully, on her first day at her new school, she meets Homa. And that friendship and the way these two young girls going into young adult women and then adult women love and support each other changes the course of their lives. We know from the beginning though that they have not spoken in many years and Homa has just recently reached out and broken that silence. So then, and then we jump back. So you're. The whole time you're wondering what happened with Ellie and Homa because this friendship seems everything right. This book is centered on that female friendship and that coming of age story, but it also includes a really fantastic historical context for the Iranian revolution. It gives a lot of texture and commentary to what we see now in current events, which is why I picked it up when it when I did. There's a huge turning point in this book, the central conflict that helps explain that difference from the way the book starts with our protagonists alienated to the story that we get into. And that turning point worked really well for me. I liked the way that she developed the story, I liked the way she developed that central conflict and then the way it resolves by the end of the book. So I thought she really like her plot arc here was just really fantastic. That journey to get there is beautiful and pivotal and she really vividly depicts both the time and place of this storyline and gives us these complex characters to root for as well. So even though the Stationery Shop wasn't a great hit for me, this one met and exceeded the expectations I had set before it. And it's because I went in with a lower bar, of course. Right. Everybody loves this one, but everybody loves it's a stationery shop, so I probably won't. And instead I did. The story itself was beautiful and the writing was stellar. And I think really importantly for this reader is it wasn't focused on a love story. It wasn't about the relationship between Ellie and the who becomes her husband. It's about Ellie and her friend and what happens to them. It's the lion women. It's not the lion couple of Tehran. It was notably hard and it needs to be mentioned. It's notably hard to read about the cities, the culture, the significance of Iran during a time when it is featured so heavily right now daily in our news headlines. And they're a country in turmoil during that time as well. So it feels very current and present. Even though this book came out a couple years back because I finally got to read it in paperback. It stayed in hardback for forever. Just know, especially if you're a sensitive reader, that your mileage may vary with that because there's a lot going on in these pages that are, there's, there's trigger warnings, a number of trigger warnings that I recommend you search on storygraph for if you have sensitivities to violence or sexual violence. But if you are a lover of historical fiction with strong women protagonists at its core, you've probably already read this one. But if not, it's is sure to be a hit for you. It absolutely was for me. I gave it 4.75 stars. So really, it, it knocked it out of the park for me. This was the Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali.
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B
Do you have a sense of what would have made it five stars?
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It's. I mean, it's hard to say it really was without getting spoilery. That central conflict, the fallout after it is a little bit based on miscommunication. And that is one of the. One of my least favorite things as a reader. Right. My reader Know Thyself profile says miscommunication being a central piece of the puzzle. It doesn't work for me very often. So that's where I was like, oh, come on. If we just talk to each other, don't you think we could fix this? Yeah. So. Yeah.
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So close. Well, I'm glad. That was really, really good for you. All right, I'm going to do a business book next, so if you're not interested in this, you get a reprieve. You can fast forward. I'm going to talk about a book called Radical Focus by Wadke. So Radical Focus is, like I said, a business book, but it's about something called OKRs, which is objectives and key results. But hang with me. Don't let that dry sounding description scare you off, because the thing that Wadke teaches, uses to teach, the entire framework is a fable. We all know that. I love this. So in this fable, we follow Hannah and Jack and they are co founders of a struggling T startup who get an ultimatum from their investor and they have to figure out fast how to stop doing everything wrong and start doing things the right way. And these people are a hot mess when the when the Winner story starts. So Watki worked at or helped companies like LinkedIn and Yahoo and the New York Times, so she's got a lot of street cred here. And she shows you how in this book to set one ambitious goal, attach measurable key results to it, and then build a weekly rhythm of check ins and accountability that help you reach that goal. And then the second half of the book drops the story, drops the fable and gets purely tactical about how you can actually use okrs in your own company. Okay, so here's some context before I get into how I felt about this book. Because it's complicated. So my company, here comes the guide, runs on something called the Entrepreneur's Operating System. It's also called eos. It's also called Traction because the book that it is based on is called Traction by Gino Wickman. Both my brother and I run our businesses on Traction. That's what we call it, it's what most people call it. So we've been doing it for four years now and Traction has genuinely transformed how both of our business operate. Our just acolytes of the Traction operating system. So when I picked up Radical Focus, it's important to know I was reading it through that lens and I think it's useful to know because if you're someone who's been looking for a framework to run your business or your team, these two books are essentially operating different operating systems, but they, they run the same machine. It's worth, I think, putting them side by side and figuring out which one clicks in your brain for your organization. So okrs are mentioned all the time. I follow a lot of business accounts on TikTok. That's largely what my TikTok is, that and Sourdough. And so I didn't know anything about the whole system of OKRs, objectives and key results. So I wanted to educate myself. So I grabbed Radical Focus. What I didn't know going in was that Wadke teaches the concept again through this fable, which made me love it even more. And I think that was really, really important because the underlying methodologies of OKRs, in my opinion, make things way more complicated than they need to be. And that story, that Fable format at the beginning does a ton of heavy lifting to make the whole thing more digestible. Without the Fable, I think I maybe would have gotten 20 pages into this book. So the book, as I said, structured in two halves. In the second half you get this execution mode and it walks you through how to actually implement okrs in your own organization. And that is where it lost me friends. There are graphs, charts, different levels of implementation and a lot of content, essentially telling you how confused your team is going to be by this and how much time you will need to spend convincing people to adopt this way of working, which, and I say this with great respect for the work of Watke and everything she's done here. This doesn't seem necessary to me because the principle itself is actually really simple. Set one ambitious objective, decide how you're going to get there through measurable results, check in weekly, rinse and repeat. That's it. That's the beautiful core of akrs. But the execution framework that she builds around it adds so many layers of complexity that it started to feeling like. To feel like I was having to assemble IKEA furniture when you could have just bought the table already built. You know what I mean?
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I love building IKEA furniture.
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B
Okay, but not when you have business to do and money to make, right? So this is where the traction comparison becomes really stark for me because traction and OKRs are really solving the same fundamental problem. How do you get everyone on your team rowing in the same direction toward the same goal? The goals that actually matter. But where traction simplifies relentlessly, Radical focus complicates. So as I said, after four years of traction, I feel strongly that it is the superior system, cleaner, more intuitive, and so much easier to get your team to buy in on. That said, I think if especially you run a product focused business or team in tech environments where this methodology was really born and where it was baked, it's going to probably be baked into your culture in a way that would make implementation a lot easier. So if you're comparing frameworks, I would recommend reading Radical Focus and Traction and seeing which one speaks to you. If one clicks in your brain more easily than the other. This book is Radical Focus by Christina Watke.
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A
Very nice, Very nice.
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B
For the 10 people who are interested in okrs versus traction.
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A
Well, we know that there are some interested. We know that there are some. There's always somebody who says thank you for bringing those. So.
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B
Right, Exactly.
- [28:51]
A
I have a niche, nonfiction as well for my second, because apparently we're on the same wavelength today. My second book this week is Disney Adults by A.J. wolf. And of course I chose this book. And then today, as we are recording, it is May 4, which is star wars day. So I am wearing my Jedi Master mom shirt. It fits perfectly well into what I'm about to talk about. This is nonfiction about the world and culture of Disney, especially the Disney parks and the adults that love them. This is the author of the Disney Food Blog, which is a huge. I mean, it started as a blog, that's why it's the Disney Food Blog. It's a huge online community place for information. You can plan your trips there. You can get inside info about all the parks and all the food and the rides and everything about them. And this author has now penned her first full length book. While there is a large spectrum of what constitutes a Disney adult, Capital D, capital A. And I'm closer to the bottom end of that spectrum rather than the top. I am still a person who loves the parks and the movies. And Even as a 40 plus year old woman, I am of that prime millennial generation that grew up during the 90s Renaissance of Disney movies. That's Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Little Mermaid. It was a huge time in Disney culture and we had those big chunky VHS cases. Like everything about it, it sings to me as the child that I was in the 90s. My parents took us to Disneyland in California every few years and my love of the parks shines through, especially when I get to see my kids loving their days there as well. It's a magical place for me. And this book by A.J. wolf capitalized on all of that in the best ways. She, she does this really well. She takes us through what causes that deep love and nostalgia for the parks, the thrills and the pitfalls of loving something that is frankly very expensive, right? It's one thing to love making sourdough bread at your home, and even if you get deeply invested, your flour cost is probably going to be, what, less than one ticket to the park for the whole year because it is just, it's a lot lower. Buy in. Disney is an expensive place to love. So there are chapters within this book about that tension between like, I love this thing. And also, I need to like work a real job, so I can't take vacation constantly. And I don't have money coming out of my ear, so I can't just pay for this every single day. I can't live there like I'd want to. She has chapters though, about the smells, the sounds and even the tastes of the park. The things that we go back for over and over again because of the nostalgia associated with them and the ways that Disney has so intentionally played with our senses in order to capitalize on that nostalgia. So we already know this, right? If you smell your grandma's house when you are out in the world today, it will immediately transport you back in that same way a Disney adult, if they smell the broming of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, it will immediately transport them back to the park. She makes a point to address the ways that Disney adults can get stratified Right, that by class, because again, we've already talked a little bit about the money that goes into loving Disney or even racially. There's a really good, detailed chapter about the way that black Disney influencers have been marginalized pretty often over the past few years and the ways that Disney is trying to change that with intentionality. She interviews Disney influencers from across the world and opposite ends of each of these spectrums. And then she polls her considerable audience to build out some of the data and the narrative pieces of this book as well. It could have been just a memoir of one woman being a child and growing up and becoming a Disney adult. And instead, it was rich. It's much richer than that. She interviews imagineers. She talks to people the world over who have experienced Disney in all its many forms. I requested this book for Christmas and my kids got it for me. And that was a gift to me. Right? But it worked out really well in their favor because it increased my love of the parks, my love of the Disney enterprise as a whole, and it increased my desire to get to the park sooner than later. So while we were in Paris, we made time for a single day at Disneyland Paris, knowing that we would probably never get that chance again. And I will happily confirm that it was worth it. It was worth every penny. Except the food. The food was terrible, but I knew that already because of A.J. wolf.
- [33:18]
B
You wouldn't think the food would be terrible. I mean, food is great at Disney, period.
- [33:23]
A
Exactly. It was so disappointing because Disneyland, I have favorite restaurants that I can't wait to go back to. I have favorite flavors that I can't wait to pursue.
- [33:33]
B
The corn dog. The best corn dog in the world.
- [33:35]
A
Don' California Dole Whips and the Bengal Barbecue Skewers. Like, I just. I love it so much. Disneyland Paris was like, hey, have y' all tried American food? Because we got hamburgers and hot dogs. Are you interested? It was so. It was so disappointing for me. But we opened and closed the park that day. From rope drop to fireworks. And even exhausted and jet lagged, we loved every second of it. I have goosebumps just thinking about the ways that my kids are now, like, living into the Disney adult ness that I brought to that trip for us. I loved it. It was delightful. And this book really helped me appreciate it in completely new ways. So five stars from me. This is Disney Adults by A.J. wolf.
- [34:19]
B
I love a deeply under misunderstood subculture. I love everything about. I mean, I would read books on. I mean, this one, I'm very tempted to read this Book just because I love all things. I mean, like, I'm not a Disney per. I'm fascinated by Disney as a business.
- [34:35]
A
Right.
- [34:36]
B
Yes.
- [34:37]
A
Right.
- [34:37]
B
Even though. And sure. Like, I like the movies, and I love Disneyland all. It's the, you know, the best Disneyland.
- [34:43]
A
It is the superior theme park.
- [34:46]
B
And, you know. But I would never consider myself, like, a, you know, a rabid fan at all. But this book sounds really interesting, and I think this kind of thing, like this. This, like, the Disney food blog that she started is peak Internet. Like, this is. Yeah. It is the best that the Internet brings to us. Bringing together people who love a certain thing beyond all reason, and they find each other and they find resources, and they make it better because they're able to resource their knowledge and their. All of that. I love every single thing about this. I am inordinately fascinated by this. And if people know of other books about weird subcultures, but, like, where people are not, like, weird. Not like weird sex subcultures. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, like, you know, like, people who love to go on cruises. Like, I think that's a weird subculture.
- [35:37]
A
Right. Or like, the bronies, like the. The boys who love My Little Pony. That.
- [35:42]
B
Okay. Yes.
- [35:43]
A
That's a whole thing.
- [35:44]
B
I love a subculture. And the ways that the Internet brings us together. I mean, certainly all of us.
- [35:50]
A
Us, or like, comic cons, book nerds.
- [35:52]
B
I mean, all of us readers. Right. Like, but, you know, it's. It is. The Internet has enabled us to know each other and to expand our hobby and what we love together more than we ever could before. I just love it. I'm so glad you brought that book. I'm endlessly fascinated for Disney adults. If you like. Did you do it on audio? Did you say that? What version did you do? Or did you get the hard copy?
- [36:13]
A
I have the hard copy, and I actually went back and forth, so I got the audio from the library, but because I wanted to, I wasn't highlighting. But I. I hold things better in my head if I look at the words at the same time or if I go back and look at those words. So I did read the hard copy and listen to it as well and kind of jumped back and forth depending on what was happening in the chapter.
- [36:34]
B
Okay. But the hardcover isn't like a.
- [36:38]
A
Like a multimedia experience. No. Right.
- [36:39]
B
Or illustrations that you need to see or anything like that. Okay. All right. Good to know. Excellent. Okay. All right, Katie. My third book is right in my wheelhouse. And it was one that I very much loved. Five star book for me will be on my list of best books of the year. This is when the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy. Here's the setup. Our lead character is Jess. She is a struggling actress in LA working at a diner and really honestly, just barely squeaking by. One night after work she discovers a terrified five year old boy hiding in the bushes outside her apartment and she does what really any of us would do. She takes him in. What follows is a full throttle chase through the night as Jess and this tiny mysterious child run from something that is very, very bad and very, very close behind. This book. This book. I read this book with my 666book club and it is one of my top two favorites that we have read together. We are all saying like we're so there was so much to talk about with this book. This is straight up horror. It's gory from the jump, no warm up laps, no stretches to get you into it, just bloody from out the gate. Know that. And Grady Hendrix compared this book to the big swinging horror novels of the 80s and yes, but I want to push back on that framing just a little bit because somewhere in the first third of this book I realized that it's not just a horror novel. And you know that that's when I fall in love. This is a horror novel about something that I actually deal with on the regular. I don't want to say any more than that because I genuinely think that you'll get so much more out of this book if you don't know what I mean until you get into it yourself. What I will say is that this is horror at its absolute best and it does something that no other genre does quite as well. It gives form and shape and teeth to what is in our minds formless, shapeless and toothless. But. But still things that we carry around every day without a name. That's what this book does. Nat Cassidy takes something every single adult in the world navigates daily and makes it visible in the most visceral, can't look away style possible. Every single person in my book club felt it. Everybody who made it through this at a near sprint said the same thing. Like, I am so glad I did not read this book alone. I cannot wait to talk about it. Now I have to talk about the lead character, Jess. I love Jess. Nat Cassidy in his author's note at the end, which you must read, makes clear how personal this book is to him. So it's a fascinating choice that he Wrote this book through that level of personal stuff with the female protagonist. It's a very interesting choice. And I will say he writes women really, really well. I was never once pulled out of Jess's narrative by thinking, wait, is a guy writing that? Like, he really, really gets it? She's flawed and funny and way braver than she even realizes her own self. And the way that Nat Cassidy gets into her psychology, especially her self doubt and her really complicated relationship that she has with a couple of her family members is excellent character work. And that's happening. This, like, excellent character work is happening underneath all this chaos, loss, and this blood that's kind of happening up here. By the time I got to the ending, and I will tell you, this is one of those books that you just wonder, what. How the heck is he gonna end this? I was genuinely moved. I'm a little surprised that that's how I felt, because I think this ending. Well, I know for sure just from our book club, the ending really divides people. Some readers are going to feel it deeply, and some are going to feel that it didn't stick the landing. And I think where you land probably says something really interesting about you as a reader, which is exactly the kind of conversation that I love to have with my book club, which is six really great readers talk, really willing to, like, get into the meat of it together. And horror gives us the ability to do this right. It gives us imagery and language to talk about things that otherwise I don't think we would be talking about. Suddenly we all knew each other better on the other side of that conversation because the book got us there. And that is what a really good book does, whether you're doing a buddy read or book club read. So go in knowing that this book is graphic. Go in knowing that it's relentless, knowing that the ending may or may not satisfy you. But if at all possible, go in with at least one other reader by your side. I cannot stress that last part enough. This book is better in community. This is when the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy, who I just have so much affection for.
- [41:33]
A
That sounds good. I also think almost every book is better in community, so I'll just put my little opinion there.
- [41:40]
B
Yeah. And I don't. I don't think that. So when. So when it. When this occurs to me, like, it's a very specific kind of book, I
- [41:48]
A
guess, discussable and arguable.
- [41:51]
B
Arguable. But also, like, for me, this one even more so. Like, yes, there are lots of books that are. That are discussable. And really you can have great book club discussion this one. The very act of having the discussions gets like, cuts through a lot of layers really quickly that I find really satisfying. Like I like to be in deep conversation with smart women. That is a very satisfying experience for me and this book gave us that and the quality of the people in the book club. All that together.
- [42:26]
A
Magic, alchemy. Good stuff. Okay, my third one this week is called Empire of Shadows by Jacqueline Benson. This is Indiana Jones esque historical fiction meets almost entirely closed door romance. Okay, so it's a little, a little something different from your girl here. Let's talk about it. Ellie Mallory is our main character and unfortunately she was just arrested, so she lost her job and she is just trying to figure out her life. But this is Victorian, at least 1800s historical fiction, so the fact that she was arrested is a pretty big deal. When she happens to find a map to a mysterious ancient city, she is holding a chance to revolutionize history, which is pretty cool because that's what she's been studying for her entire life. There's just a small complication, which is that her uncle Slash, a dastardly villain, wants that map. He wants to be the one to find this ancient lost city. And Ellie is all that's standing in his way to get there. First, she employs the surveyor of the forest that she needs to navigate. His name is Adam Bates and he wrangles snakes and takes off his shirt more often than he probably should because they end up in very shifty situations. He's a problem and so she tries to avert her eyes, but also employ him to help her get through the jungle to this myster lost city. However, Ellie is not just facing this like rival gang of looters. They are searching for an arcane lost secret that may or may not hold the secret to eternal life. This is little Fountain of youth E. Ellie has to figure out how to get to this secret city, how to keep her hands off of Adam, which is the biggest challenge of all, and how not to die in the process. Very high adventure, very high stakes. This is the first book in a series called the Raiders of the Arcana. And you can bet your patoot that I will be reading more of this series. I was delighted by the high stakes. The fact that they're not just like, well, if I don't, then daddy won't pay my dowry. Like this is they're genuinely in peril. Often in this book there's the energy of those protagonists working toward each other. Ellie and Adam working toward each other and then trying to evade these dastardly villains and this big troop of people that are following them through the jungle. I love this Victorian era romance that there's also so much, like, longing and chatter with each other without much spice. And normally that's not my favorite thing, right? Like, half the time Katie will go on record saying, if, if there's no spice, why read it? Right? Like, that's kind of where I land on that spectrum. But this just worked really well for me. This was a recommendation from my friend Candice. She loves this series and pressed it into my hands and I knew it had to be good because, like me, she rarely loves closed door romance. And this is that. It scratched that adventure itch for me. I love Indiana Jones. I love Harrison Ford just in general. I love that, like, older archaeological bent. I think all of us at some point either wanted to go into oceanography or into archaeology. Right. And there's a past like that somewhere in the life of yourself or someone you love. Because I love that, like ancient cultures and like digging in the dirt and then finding like a golden idol. Ooh, that would be so exciting. This absolutely played on that for me. The closed door romance made it feel swoony instead of spicy. And that, that worked really well here for me. It matches up with the COVID of the book as well. Like, it just, it was very full package. Like, I opened this little box of chocolates and it had every single flavor of the things that I really loved. A dastardly villain, a complicated and sexy leading man, a brilliant leading lady, coupled with the natural beauty and danger of the Amazon and archaeology. It was the whole package, the whole box of chocolates. I loved it. I gave it five stars. That's two five star books. For this episode, I've had a banger of a reading month. This was Empire of Shadows by Jacqueline Benson.
- [46:30]
B
That sounds real. I love, like, high adventure. Sometimes I have a mood where that's exactly what I'm looking for. And I have no desire to dig in dirt. But I do have a ridicul, large desire to have a dastardly villain as an uncle.
- [46:45]
A
Right?
- [46:46]
B
Oh, like how great.
- [46:47]
A
Chasing you on, like, a ramshackle boat down the Amazon river.
- [46:52]
B
I would love to match wits with my dastardly villain uncle.
- [46:55]
A
Yeah. And he just happens to have a sword. And like, what are you gonna use the machete that you. I mean, just all of it. It's just perfect. It was so much fun.
- [47:02]
B
I love it. I love it.
- [47:04]
A
Okay, good stuff. That was a lot of Good books, even if some were a little bit complicated for us. But we are gonna get into our deep dive, which is books for each Enneagram type. And I will do a little callback here. So season three, episode 37. We talked about how each Enneagram type chooses their next book. And I must have had two cups of coffee that day, because I still remember recording that episode five years ago. And so today, we're doing something a little different. We're going to pick some perfect books for each type or the best books for each type, which is up for debate, of course. And in the interest of time, Meredith and I have already discussed that we're going to try and keep these quick and to the point. So if you need a primer on the Enneagram, this is not your episode. Right. We have lots of resources for where you could go to learn about the Enneagram in general. But for now, we're going to talk about once, you know, you type your type or the types of people you love. Here's our picks for their best books. We're going to alternate back and forth. Meredith, do you want to start us out? And let's not start at type one. What do you think?
- [48:03]
B
That's fine. We can start with nine. A lot of. A lot of people start at nine.
- [48:07]
A
Okay. Yeah, we're going to do reverse order. I like it. So we're going to start with type nine, the Peacemaker. Do you have anything to add about how you chose your books, Meredith?
- [48:15]
B
Well, I mean, this is fairly easy for me because I do look at the entire world through the lens of the Enneagram. And I would highly recommend that. If you don't know what we're talking about or what your Enneagram type is, I will always recommend. Go take a test. Read about it more after you take your test, see how that. How your results feel to you. Because, man, I just find the Enneagram to be very, very useful. But I will say that for each of these, I. I'll kind of go back and forth, depending on what your choice is or what my mood is. But for some of these, they are like, this is a really, really great version of that number, a really healthy version. And sometimes, you know, I chose one where I was like, oh, this is a cautionary tale for this type. So. And also, I know, and I can't wait to hear like, like, disagree with us if we type somebody and you're like, oh, no. In fact, there's going to be one here that I wholeheartedly disagreed with the way that most of the Internet types this character. So we want to hear that. So for type nine, I had two. I had American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, which has Claire Quillen is the fictionalized Laura Bush. She's a nine. She's a very particular kind of nine. I think the more interesting choice, if I had a nine, the way I looked at this is if I have, have a friend who's this type, what is the book? I would want to press into their hands for a deeper understanding of their, of their own type. That's how I made my choice. So I'm gonna go with Zori by Laird Hunt, which is a book that I gave four and a half stars to. This is a very quiet book. Again, it puts you, you know, we're in the Windle Berry kind of character driven novel here. But it is so good, it's not very long. Zori herself is one of the most purely nine characters that I have ever read in literary fiction. She never asserts very strongly. She doesn't demand. She accepts and absorbs what life hands to her with a lot of strength. But also you have to ask yourself, is it strength or is it a passive aggression that we see at play? Because that can happen with nine. The book's power here, I think is in its ambiguity, in ambiguity in the answer to that question, is Zori at peace or has she just never fully inhabited her life? So Zori by Laird Hunt is my. Is my choice perfect?
- [50:45]
A
Okay. Yes. So I leaned into kind of what Meredith was alluding to there, which is the shadow side of each of these nine types. So my picks are going to pick up on, for example, with nine, the passive aggression. Right. It's when you're not totally healthy in and integrated in your enneagram type. And I, I have two picks for each of them. So kind of on the fly here. I'm making each choice. I think the more interesting one of the two that I have is Beartown by Fredrik Backman in which the entire town is a passive aggressive type. 9. They have all agreed, they know this thing happened, this big central plot point, which is sexual assault, by the way. And that's established right at the beginning. And they all agree, we're not going to talk about that. We're going to keep the peace. We're going to make sure that hockey is our top priority. Right. And so they have to figure out how to integrate as a town and how to hold things in tension rather than silencing people who are saying something a little different than what they're comfortable with. With. So I thought that was a really cool example of.
- [51:48]
B
Yeah.
- [51:49]
A
Of a community working as a single Enneagram type. I thought that was really fun.
- [51:53]
B
That is. That's very interesting.
- [51:55]
A
Okay, so let's alternate. I will start Next with type 8. Does that sound good? That's the challenger. And the shadow side of type 8 is when they decide that dominance instead of vulnerability is the more important thing. So type eights are warriors for justice, but their tender side will let them, like love on others. Well, in order to raise everybody up, a shadowy eight is kind of a mess. And my favorite pick here, of course, is Razor blade tears by S.A. cosby. These are two dads. Their sons have been killed, and they are out for revenge. And they have to put aside any kind of vulnerability around the fact that they have ostracized their gay sons from them for so many years. They're just not willing to face any kind of tenderness in their eightness. So they both have to protect by dominating, and they do learn tenderness. That's part of each of my picks, is that eventually, by the end of the book or the end of the series, in the case of Beartown, we're getting into a more fully integrated self, but it takes the struggle of the novel to get them there. So that one's Razor blade tears by S.A. cosby.
- [53:05]
B
All right, my choice for eights, which, you know, I live with two eights. My husband and my son are eights. And eights are fantastic, and they also can be a lot. And we see that in the lead character of where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Now, Kya is our lead character. She is a fantastic lead character. She has survived abandonment. She has made her way in very, very difficult circumstances. But the way she's done that is to build sort of a fortress of self sufficiency around her. She trusts the marsh and she trusts herself, and that's it. She doesn't trust anybody else who might leave her, try to control her. That's the 8's biggest fear, is being controlled or anyone who might betray her. This is the classic eight wound. So the growth opportunity here is about whether Kaya can let someone in through the story or without feeling like losing autonomy is going to mean that she's losing kind of the pieces that kept her alive. So I think where the Crawdads Sing does a female 8 in a very interesting way.
- [54:16]
A
I like that.
- [54:17]
B
All right, for seven, I'm going to go with. Where'd you go, Bernadette? By Maria Semple. So seven has another female protagonist. We have Bernadette Fox, who is brilliant. She's very funny. She is scattered and has been running from a lot of things. She's been running from settling. She's been running because she does not want to feel her feelings. This is the main thing that Sevens do not want. She will use her wit, her humor, everything as a shield. But when she finally cracks, she does the most seven thing imaginable, and she books a trip out of here. This is the whole thing is Bernadette careening from one way of deflecting feelings to another and finally ends up integrating. So the growth arc is really, really rich here, and I just. I love it so much. Sevens are some of my favorite people and some people that I understand the least. Least because I'm a one. And Sevens are where we go in health. So I am always trying to move toward seven. And Bernadette is an example of a very complicated seven, I think. So that's. Where'd you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.
- [55:38]
A
Okay. Mine has some similarities to it. Even though this is not a book that Meredith loved. I chose Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Lara, our main character when she is young, and that. That's what we're doing with this novel, right? She is youthful, and she is telling the story of youth. She's a seven through and through. She is chasing experiences. She is just wanting to live life, sucking the marrow out of the bones. Right? She frames her heartbreak as adventure, and anything that asks her to stay and be present, she's like, no, no, thank you. None of that. But we also know by the. By the beginning of the book that she has chosen to stay. She has these daughters. She's telling her story during lockdown, basically. So she is finally leaning into the life she chose instead of the one that she kept imagining throughout her youth, because she has finally integrated as a seven. So I felt like that was the perfect shadow seven. That's like, oh, I will never sit still. I will never do anything that requires me to, like, sit with myself. And then figuring out her actual place in the world.
- [56:44]
B
Yeah, I think that's a great example.
- [56:46]
A
Okay. Type. Type 6. The loyalist I this one is was a little harder for me, but I decided to go with We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. This is a World War II novel, which is probably why it was a little harder for me to pick, because I don't. I don't love them anymore. But this is also one that Sarah's bookshelves live put in my hands years ago because she knew Georgia Hunter. So the interview with her absolutely sold me on this book. This is a family diaspora novel of World War II in which every character is making decisions under this, like, radical uncertainty, which is the bane of the Sixes existence. Right? They want to be sure and solid in their footing. Do you stay? Do you go? Do you trust? Do you lean in? Do you resist what's happening? So the whole novel is that type 6 experience of trying to, like, push against the anxiety of living into this really tumultuous time and world and trying to figure out where your stability is going to be. So I thought that was a good fit. We were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter.
- [57:49]
B
Excellent. I think that is a really, really good fit. Mine was. This is one that was easy because I think about it all the time. Mine is the Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendricks. I love this book, Katie. This is not a book that you loved, but our lead character, Patricia, is a textbook 6. She has organized her entire life, life, around security, right? The rules of Southern womanhood, the expectations of her husband, the social order of the neighborhood. She defers. She second guesses herself. If her thoughts ever go against what everyone else is thinking. She looks to authority, even when authority is completely wrong. But what I love about this is it's such a redemption arc because when the system fails her catastrophically, she acts anyway, even when she's afraid and unsupported and. And doing it alone. That is hard for a Six. And here the horror genre is almost too perfect for this, because Sixes live in a horror movie inside their heads, anticipating every possible threat. This book externalizes that and then asks, what do you do when the monster is real and the people you trusted tell you that you are the crazy one? So for Sixes, I love the Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hinton Hendrix.
- [59:09]
A
Honestly, you're right. I did not love this book. But that is a really good pick for this category.
- [59:15]
B
Yeah.
- [59:15]
A
All right, what do you got for type 5?
- [59:17]
B
Oh, type 5 is hard for me. Type fives are always hard for me. I cannot figure out five. Well, I mean, I can figure them out, but it's just hard for me to, like, get. It's hard for everyone with. That's the whole thing about five. It's hard to get underneath the. The hood with them. So I'm gonna go with. I mean, the easy pick would be Station 11, Emily St. John, Mandel Kirsten The. You know, Raymond has the fives really defining quality in that she observes everything. She doesn't trust a lot of people. She maintains a lot of her own autonomy, you know, so that's, I think. But a really good example of a textbook five, I think, is in the Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Steven, that was mine, the butler. Oh, okay. I'll let you talk about that, because I do think that that's a really good pick for this.
- [60:01]
A
This. Well, I mean, I'm. I'm excited that we both had the same pick for this one. But, yeah, Steven's the butler. Quintessential type 5. Right. He is so observant. He's so. He, like, flies completely under the radar, understands everything that's happening around him and. And therefore has, like, systematically cut off every relationship in order to, like, focus completely on serving perfectly. Right. He has. Has to reckon with that. And by the end of the novel, he is. But it's like. Like he has lived this entire life just isolated because of the way that he has given of himself to the outside world. Oh, I think that's such a perfect shadow Five living into their full self by the end of the novel that it's perfect.
- [60:46]
B
It's got a good arc to it. I love that.
- [60:48]
A
Definitely. Okay. Type 4. Our individualists are, like, high emotion friends. Right? I went with Shark Heart by Emily Habeck. So this is a woman whose husband is slowly transforming into a shark, and that's literally what's happening in the book. That sounds like the setup for, like, oh, this is satire and it's metaphorical. No, they live in a world where sometimes people turn into animals. It's told in a very fragmented way. But she has decided to, like, cling to her loss as the core of her identity, and her wound becomes her entire identity. And then throughout the novel, we get to understand why that wound is actually, like, her core childhood wound as well. And that pivot and the way that Emily Haybeck brings us further into that story was so interesting to me, even though I was like, what are you talking about? This is a book about a woman whose husband is turning into a shark. That's crazy. This was so good. Okay, what's your four?
- [61:42]
B
I wouldn't have. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that one. Well, of course, we all know that Anne from Anne of Green Gables is the patron saint in force.
- [61:49]
A
Right?
- [61:49]
B
So I couldn't. I couldn't actually. Can't not mention that, but couldn't have that be my choice? I chose the Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I think this is a very for book because Nora has spent her entire life convinced that the life that she actually has is the wrong one. That her real, like the significant life that she should have lived is elsewhere. And that is a thought spiral that I feel like fours can really, really understand. It's a trap for them. But Haig builds a whole magical structure around it. The growth arc here is that Nora learns to stop comparing her reality to a fantasy of a life that she hasn't actually lived. So for fours who I think struggle with idealization and like grass is always greener, I think this is a really, really good one. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
- [62:44]
A
Yes, that is a good pick. I like that. All right.
- [62:47]
B
For threes. Oh, God, for threes. You know, everyone's going to talk about the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the original three cautionary tales. But I think a more interesting, not a much. I know a much more interesting novel is Olga Dies Dreaming by Soshi Gonzalez. Do you remember this one?
- [63:05]
A
I.
- [63:06]
B
The Wedding Planner.
- [63:08]
A
Yeah, but I don't think I finished this one.
- [63:10]
B
Olga has this career and this reputation. She's building a wedding planning empire. She is performing success. She is a, a virtuoso at that. And she is avoiding at all costs the question of what she actually needs. This is a three story through and through about when authenticity eventually kind of demands its due.
- [63:34]
A
Right.
- [63:35]
B
This is a sharp novel. It's going to go right at a three. It's going to hit you right at your soft center. But I think that it can be really, really useful. So Olga Dies Dreaming by Soshi Gonzalez.
- [63:46]
A
Okay, I like it. I went with Erasure by Percival Everett, which my own journey was with. This was complicated in that I read it and hated it and later on reread it and really enjoyed it. This is the type 3 novel for me. Our main character, Monk, is a struggling writer. He decides to perform success by writing a parody of what he thinks is like the top selling black trauma books. And what do you know, Publishes it under a pen name, goes to a bidding war, gets sold for millions of dollars. Like it, it performs success into real success. And the entire time he's so angry that his authentic self cannot be the actual achiever that he had to pretend to pivot into somebody else. So it really, it talks about like performing identity and the market value, like how much is your authenticity worth to you and only being seen through the mask that you put on through other people that really was not supposed to be. Be the real you ever. It's so good. As an unhealthy type 3 trying to figure out how to reconcile themselves into living into the world that we actually live in. This one's fantastic. And again, I hated it the first time and then I loved it the second time. So your mileage may vary. This is Erasure by Percival Everett.
- [65:06]
B
All right, who's your. What's your book for? Enneagram Twos.
- [65:09]
A
Okay, Type two again. Shadowy first. Right. And we have to go toward integration. I chose Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. She is an inverted, too. She has spent so much time serving of herself, especially her mother. There was a disastrous childhood involved that she has shut down her need for connection. Eleanor has decided she's completely fine. She doesn't need you, and she doesn't need any of you. So after being exploited for so long, she starts presenting as cold. Nobody can crack through they this, like, tough exterior. But really she's just hurting herself. She slowly has to learn how to need people again and let them need her back. And that's a scary journey for a two that had to, like, flip the off switch on themselves. How much does it cost to let yourself be your full self? It's so good. This is a. This is a hard book, though. Beloved by many for a lot of great reasons. This is. Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine. What did you pick, Meredith?
- [66:11]
B
I. I had a really strong shadow. One that immediately, like a cautionary tale, I think is the Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. I'm not going to talk a lot about this, but that mother, Elsa, I think is her name. Martyr with a capital M. And then all the other letters. Oh, God, that is tough. That is a tough book to read. That is an unhealthy type 2. My favorite one. My favorite book of all time and my favorite two of all time. And I will fight anyone who does not believe that Count Rostov is a type 2 is in a gentleman in Moscow by Amor Toles. Count Rostov sometimes wrongly, inaccurately, gets typed as a seven just because he likes the finer things in life. Screw you. You don't understand the Internet. You don't understand the Enneagram, if that's what you think. Come on. He is a type 2. He is the ultimate healthy type 2. Of course. I love him so completely. He is obviously placed under house arrest in the Metropol hotel in Russia. What does he do? He makes himself completely indispensable to every single person in the building. The chef the seamstress, the little girl who wanders in and out of the hotel and eventually, you know, becomes really meaningful to him. This is the two's operating system. I will find out what you need and I will work to provide it for you. He does it really, really well. The book, I think, really is making a case that a life built around loving and serving others is its own kind of freedom. This book is the ultimate for type twos who want to say, see, being a two is the best thing you can possibly be. This is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Toll.
- [67:57]
A
Such a good pick. That's a great pick. I love that.
- [68:00]
B
It makes me so mad when people type him as a seven. I. I can't even tell you how
- [68:05]
A
angry it makes work that doesn't even work makes sense.
- [68:09]
B
Oh, my gosh, he is a two. He's the best two.
- [68:13]
A
All right, do you want me to start with the Type 1 so you can finish it or like, what's the perfect option for you?
- [68:19]
B
Yeah, you go ahead and start and I will.
- [68:21]
A
I kind of thought that you would want to. To cap our conversation for this one. So type one, of course. Our beloved Meredith. We love our type ones here. I went with a pretty recent read for me. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a three, a three story, braided narrative. But each of those storylines features a character who has a really rigid belief system about the right way to do things, the right way to live what should be allowed in the world and how nature should react to. To us. And each one of them has to reckon with the world, not complying with what is right in their minds. So each character has to kind of reconcile themselves to the fact that you can't, you can't force the world around you into perfection, and that's not going to lead to a fulfilling life. And the way that she braids them together is perfection. It's so. It's so good. This one is an oldie, but a goodie from 2000. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.
- [69:19]
B
That's a really good one for a one for sure. So I will tell you my healthy and my shadow side. These are favorites for me. And the healthy version, of course, I'm going to say, is Louise Penny's Three Pines series. The lead detective, Armand Gamache, is the ultimate healthy enneagram1. Although over the course of 20 books, we get to see him in stress as well as in health, so we get to see. See all the parts of him. He is a very, very textbook and very excellent type 1 so you can get to know him very well over the course of all of those books. But for me, if I meet you and you, I figure out that you're an Enneagram one, I am probably going to buy a book for you. I have bought it for myself over seven times. It is in my top three books of all time. It is the Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield. Fisher talked about this book on the podcast many times. It was written in the 1920s. It is don't let that stop you though, because it is imminently readable. It is so easy to read for readers today, does not have difficult or old fashioned language. Our lead character is Evangeline Knapp, my soul sister. The very unhealthy enneagram1. She is. It's the 1920s. She's a stay at home moment. She hates being stayed home mom. It drives her ape. Doo doo her husband. An enneagram 7 if there ever was one. He works. He hates working. He wishes that he could be home with with his kids and just having fun and playing games all day. Well, luckily in the very first begin, just the very start of the book, luckily I say he the husband gets injured and he can't work anymore. And so they have to this is the 1920s. This is really, really revolutionary, groundbreaking switch. She goes to work in department store. He gets to stay home with the kids. The arc that this woman goes through when she realizes that she was just a frustrated one the entire time. She loves her kids, she loves being a mom. It's just that that role put her into the unhealthy version of her all day, every day. And when she got the ability to live into her superpowers, then all of a sudden she could also live into her superpowers as a mother and their marriage got better. And, and, and I it is, it is uncomfortable as a one to read this book because in the first third of the book when good old Evangeline is still working at home and are still at home with her kids, it is hard to see how difficult we Enneagram Ones can be when we are unhealthy. There were many times when I was reading this book and I've read it multiple times where I'm like, oh, that is a just dagger to the heart. Because I know I've said that or done that with my kids especially. But it also has a really, really beautiful redemption arc and she gets to be healthy by the end and all of us ones get to learn a lot from her. So The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher is my absolute strongest suggestion for any enneagram. 1. You will see yourself, you will feel so seen, and you will feel so understood.
- [72:27]
A
Is it terrible that I wrote that down before you finished saying the title? I mean, I had already written it down.
- [72:32]
B
You'd have to know that that was
- [72:34]
A
going to be my choice after eight years, right? I knew, yes. All right, y', all, that was 18 books plus a couple bonus picks for you. So hopefully we have just stacked your TBRs and let us know, of course, if you disagree with us or if you thought that we absolutely nailed something. We want to hear from you. Who are your picks or which characters are your picks?
- [72:55]
B
Yeah, I would love to know which you. Which book would you press into the hands of an enneagram of which of the numbers?
- [73:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, now before we go, we have a little bit more to chat about. First of all, I have our bookish friend of the week, which is Jessica. This week she said, do you ever look at your growing TBR and think, wow, when I'm retired, I will finally have enough time to read all the books. I really want. As much reading as I fit into my teacher mom life, it's never enough. Greedy. She says retirees, please don't burst my bubble. Comments about how fulfilling your retirement reading life is are welcomed. Winky face. And what follows is a whole slew of comments either affirming or gently correcting our friend Jessica or chiming in in solidarity about our own wishes. Me too. I can't wait to retire and read all day long. It's a community spirit of fun and looking forward to later life delight, which I am all about. My 60s and 70s will definitely be my reading witch era. I'm hoping to be fully gray by then. I'm excited to lean into like a cottage in the woods as a reading witch and nobody can tell me otherwise.
- [74:05]
B
I love it. Yes. And you can make your retirement exactly what you want it to be.
- [74:10]
A
That's the beauty.
- [74:11]
B
If you plan long enough and hard enough.
- [74:13]
A
All right, what do you have for us, Meredith?
- [74:15]
B
I am bringing a sleeper hit because this is a book that I read last summer and it really at the beginning of last summer and it set my summer reading up so well that I just have to bring it up again. This is a book called Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes. I love this book, but it is so good for by the pool, on the airplane, when you're traveling. It's just fun, frothy, delightful summer reading. We visit And I don't think it's a town. A region in the Cotswolds in England called the Bottoms, which is not your grandma's quaint English countryside where, like, people are dying. This is a glittering enclave in the Cotswolds. This is really true. And it's populated by what Plum Sykes calls country princesses. So there's this, like, this huge social circle. Our main character is. Is the eminently named Tata Hawkins. She has left her grand mansion to go to her estate's coach house because her husband, she found a receipt for some jewelry that she never received. She goes there with her very, very competent butler, Ian Palmer. Like, come to this book for Tata. Stay for Ian Palmer. He is my absolute favorite. She has a couple of friends. We hear about their problems. They all want to seem like their life is effortless, but underneath, we know it is not. They are all going through their own problems. And then a mysterious American divorcee comes to town. Very British hijinks ensues. I love this book because it is frothy, it is easy, it is soapy. And also, you think you're going to get kind of Real Housewives of the Cotswolds. That is not what you're getting in this book. This is very much, much about characters who care for each other. They care about their friendship. They care about their marriages. They care about their kids. Yes. They also care about their parties that they're planning and what they're wearing. But they're more than just that. They aren't trying to tear each other down. They. They hold all of these things in tension together. And I was fascinated by how all of it worked. It's very early Instagram aesthetic, very great British baking show. Kind of filtery kind of aesthetic. But also there's a lot of calming friendship and not a lot of cattiness. So I liked it. It's kind of a story of feminine loyalty and also, like, kitchen supper parties, which are a whole thing that I had never heard about. I just. It was so good. It was fascinating. It's got a terrible title. It's Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes.
- [76:58]
A
Agree. All right, maybe I'll pick that one up this summer. I'll let you Sleeper hit it right into my book.
- [77:04]
B
It's just the most fun. It's a book I wish I could read again for the first time. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me. I'm Meredith, Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram.
- [77:16]
A
And you can Find me Katie@notesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putovong Evans. And you can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's reads.
- [77:26]
B
Full show notes with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about it. Good lord. Those are in our show notes and on our website. And Megan is. That's a lot this. This episode.
- [77:41]
A
Yes. You can also follow the show at Currently Reading podcast on Instagram or email us at that hello@currentlyreading podcast.com Be sure to check out our substack, our newsletter and our YouTube channel as well. And check on Blue because he is just under that pillow.
- [77:58]
B
He really is. Yes. And if you want to learn more about our series that is on Substack and in our newsletter called Reader Know Thyself where every other week I send you a question for you to answer about your own reading. Go to our website and you can join us there. Or you can go to Substitute Deck. It's both places. All right. If you want to have more of this kind of content, you can join us as a Patreon subscriber. It's only $5 a month and you get so much more content. You get a ton of community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also help us by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts and shouting us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [78:38]
A
Yes. Bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you all for helping us continue to grow and get closer to our our goals.
- [78:45]
B
All right, until next week, may your
- [78:46]
A
coffee be hot and your book be unput downable.
- [78:49]
B
Happy reading, Katie.
- [78:50]
A
Happy reading, Meredith.