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The Currently Reading Podcast
Season 8, Episode 41: Book Hangovers + Mid Year Reading Check-In
00:58:24
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. 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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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 reader deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go.
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A
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And my latest book, Hangover has wrecked me in the best possible way.
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B
It's a blessing and a curse. Meredith I am Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona. And at this rate, I'm really starting to believe in remarkable screen adaptations. This is episode number 41 of season eight and we are so glad you're here.
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A
Oh Katie, there are a lot that seem to be getting it right and what a good thing.
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B
Yes, right. Because we had that expectation for so long that it could never live up to the story we had written in our head and the things that we were seeing in our head. And I don't know. I don't know. It's getting good out there.
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A
It's getting better. All right, well, we're going to talk more about that, but first let me let you know that our deep dive today is going to be a slightly on the early side mid year reading reckoning. We want to just kind of get take a pulse on 2026 thus far before we get too far into the summer. But before we do that, we are going to talk about our bookish moments of the week. Katie, what are you bringing this week?
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B
Oh, Meredith, you already know that. Of course, you already know that. Last Friday, remarkably Bright Creatures debuted on Netflix and the number of DMs I got about this adaptation in the months leading up to May 8th on release day, especially after I posted about it. Did you love it? Is it perfect? I want all the thoughts. The limit does not exist. My DMs were fully filled with Sally Field, Lewis, Pullman and Marcellus the Octopus. I watched it the same evening that it released and which I normally I'm like, I'm a little behind the times usually and I'm fine with that. I marked this on my calendar so I would have time set aside on May 8th to watch it. I was so happy with it. I was happy with the way every single moment played out on screen. All of our book loving Hearts really want that perfect match. But that hour and 40 minute tight runtime was just enough to give us that full picture of the characters. Leave out some of the moments that made me really hate a certain character when I read the book and allow us to enjoy the visual elements of this story. It came to life beautifully in my opinion because Shelby Van Pelt, the author, was also an executive producer. So she helped to make sure that Netflix stayed true to her vision. I was fully pleased all the way around. I just. All the DMs I've gotten since then, I'm like, well, he'll have to wait to hear my thoughts. But y', all, I loved it. I loved it so much. And I may have just had a weepy weekend in general. Cause I also had a book destroy Me for the first time in a long time where I sobbed. But this one was right on the heels of that and I was already primed for tears. And they, they did not abate for quite some time. It was cathartic and beautiful and lovely. And now I'm newly obsessed again with Sally Field. I love her so much.
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A
She's such wonderful.
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B
She's just so great. She's about to be 80 and she just is still amazing. I love her. So had to be bookish moment. Marcellus, of course. And remarkably bright creatures on Netflix.
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A
I am so glad that that was a complete hit for you. That's kind of your happy place. Is that crying? But. But cathartic crying. I think that's a really good way to describe it because that seems that's a positive thing for you. And yes, I know I was going to say that I think a lot about adaptations are working because they aren't any longer forced to just be movies. And that I think that obviously the series format really can work quite a bit better. I haven't seen Margot's Got Money Troubles yet, but I've heard so much good buzz around it. And so that' another example of one that's come out recently. But I'm glad to know that even at that tight run time, they really got all the high points of this book.
- [04:29]
B
It really worked. Yeah. And there were parts that I think they put in just for the readers. Like there's a little tiny nod to the story that you don't really get if you haven't read the book. You're like, okay, she's holding that kind of weird. Like what's happening with that? And if you've read it, you're like, okay, I know what's going on. Here. But it doesn't matter to the watchers of the movie. Like, it's not going to ruin it for them. So I just thought they did a really great job at making sure everybody knew what was going on. But if you read it and you already loved it, you felt a little bit held by the story.
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A
Yeah. You wonder if Shelby Van Pelt had something to do with that moment. Well, my bookish moment of the week. As you know, I intimated earlier, I have had the worst book hangover, which is both the worst thing and the best thing. Because you only get a book hangover when you've read a book, or in my case, a couple of books that have really, really just bowled you over. And I'll tell you what, not an ad at all. This is literally the way my week has gone. After we did that last episode of the Indie press list where we featured the books and books store from Coral Gables, Florida, we had a stack of books that was really different than most indie press lists and really not necessarily in my side of the Venn diagram, but they ended up really, really giving me an excellent reading experience. And especially one of the books we talked about, the Wall, which is kind of a classic book from the six written in the 60s. That's the book that really gave me the book hangover. And I just for several days afterwards, I just could not lock into anything else. Now I have since then feel like my reading's back up and running, which is fantastic. But it is one of those double edged swords where you read something that really, really kind of does you in and then to take a break. And I just decided to give myself that time. Like I've been working a ton, but also I just felt like I needed a little bit of a break before I jumped into another book. And that's okay.
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B
Yes, yes, say it louder for the people in the back.
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A
Honestly, it's okay to need a little bit of a break. Your reading will always be there for you. All right, Katie, let's jump into our current reads. What's the first one that you're bringing this week?
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B
Mm. So happily I am thrilled to get to talk about Cleopatra by Sara El Arifi. I picked this one up. You probably saw this post, Meredith. I picked this one up after bookish friend Sidra posted about it in our group. Here's what she said. I'm just going to read her post because I think she does a good job giving us the high points, the cues. I would love to press Cleopatra by Sara El Arifi into everyone's hands. I'm not a huge Cleopatra or History of Egypt fan, but this book was so well done. One of my favorite themes is how history depends on who writes it, and this book is told from Cleopatra's perspective and breaks the fourth wall to give a nudge to the reader about of course we know how her story ends, but do we know how she lived and then she quotes that's the thing with stories, you must always know the story of the storyteller. She said she did this on audio and Adjoa Ando Lady Danbury from Bridgerton narrates it and it's excellent. I myself had have a notable a great affinity with Sidra. We have a lot of really wonderful overlap in our reading and I take her recommendations really seriously. Notably she did not tag me in this post. She did not press it into my hands. She just put it out there into the bookish universe. But it was a hit for me nonetheless. She posted about it on April 1 and I had finished it less than two weeks later. Sidra already set it up for us pretty well because it doesn't require a lot to tell you that we're reimagining Cleopatra's story from her own point of view rather than through just the little tiny snippets that we get in our history books. El Arifi draws out a lush Egyptian landscape you can feel like the swelter of the Nile river close by. She gives us the historical figures we already know in Caesar Augustus and Marcus Aurelius and this indomitable woman at the center of this story. This book was nearly perfect for me. It's historical fiction, so it's heavy on the history. There are battles and political ploys that play major roles in the life and times of Cleopatra and her children, and so I did some inattentive listening every once in a while when I was like, okay, here we go again, somebody's leaving for another battle. And okay, but the interpersonal relationships, especially with Cleopatra and the women around her, her sister, her attendance were really wonderful. So while this one wasn't perfect for me, I did love Sidra's recommendation and I'm glad I took to it immediately. But because Sidra is really great about telling her own recommendation sources, I'll also shout out Tina from Booktok etc and that Sidra says she listened to an author interview from Thoughts from a page PODC where Cindy is one of her go to recommendation sources for historical fiction. I am so grateful always for somebody who can kind of round out the places that currently reading where we don't necessarily have the deepest book list of things that we love to read, that we love to recommend in this niche area of the reading life. So great job bookish, friends and Citra, especially at letting us know that Thoughts From a Page is a great place to get those historical fiction recommendations if it feels like that's something that you need that currently reading isn't giving you, but also just doing the Lord's work at making sure that books that are really going to be hits for us are presented in the perfect way in the group. I gave this four and a half stars. Many thanks to Sidra for floating it across my radar gently and with no malice or, or ill intentions. This was Cleopatra by Sara El Arifi.
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A
Yeah, I had heard Tina talk about it too, on booktok, et cetera. And also I had heard that the narrator was Lady Danbury and that really, really interest to pick that one up on. Audio. So good.
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B
The audio is so good. It's just. It's so good.
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A
I love it. All right, well, my first one is squarely in my wheelhouse. This is the Children on the hill by Jennifer McMahon. Katie, do you have much history with Jennifer McMahon?
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B
I definitely have at least one or two of her books in my previously read list, both of which came from your recommendation or from having you put her on my radar. Right.
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A
Winter People is one that I often will talk about. Well, this one, the Children on the Hill is this story as all of. Well, I'm not gonna say all, but all the ones that I've read from Jennifer McMahon, who I really, really love. They all have two timelines. So one is in 1978 in Vermont. And there we have siblings, Vi and Eric, who live. They live with their grandmother, Dr. Helen Hildreth. But they have kind of an unusual life because they live on the grounds of a progressive psychiatric treatment center. And their grandmother is the lead doctor.
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B
Right.
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A
Nothing could go wrong in this scenario. Right.
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B
Everything's fine.
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A
Everything's fine. The grandmother's the lead doctor, and she is doing some really groundbreaking work with the mentally ill. Life is already a little bit strange here at what's called the Hillside Inn. But things get significantly stranger when their grandmother brings home a new child to live with them. And her name is Iris. Now, Iris is kind of seems feral. She's not talking. She's kind of mute when she gets there. And she has no memory of her past. And so she's not like any other child that poor Eric and Vi have met. And she is. Vi is like both unnerved by her, but also fascinated by Iris. And she's determined to make Iris part of their tight knit world, which includes what they call their secret monster club, where the kids catalog supernatural creatures and they develop strategies to defeat them. Because as Vi will tell you, monsters are everywhere. You just have to know how to spot them then our other timeline is in 2019 and podcaster Lizzie Shelley, who is the host of a show called Monsters Among Us, is chasing down reports of missing teenage girls and monster sightings that lead her back to Vermont and where she knows the story of the hillside in all right, I read this with my 666 book club and like I said, I'm a big Jennifer McMahon fan. So the Other Winter People and then the Drowning Kind, that was one Katie that that you've read too. Both really great kind of gothic horror. Both. You know, all of those are set in Vermont, which is a favorite place of mine. So I was thinking about where does Children on the Hill Land in her catalog. For me, this one is good. It's really good, but it doesn't quite reach the heights of the other two for me and still a strong recommendation because McMahon is better than most at this genre. What she does consistently is still really shows up here. That signature, like I said, dual timeline structure works really well. And nobody in my opinion does Vermont quite like she does. There's something about the way that she renders the landscape that makes it feel both really beautiful but also deeply unsettling. So if you've read her before, this will sound really familiar to you. I also really love the way that she writes Sisters. This is something I've noticed across all of her work and I genuinely love to ask her one day if there's a reason that she writes Sisters so consistently and so well because I have to think that there's a story about somewhere along there. Beyond the sibling relationships, McMahon has this gift for getting into her protagonists heads in a way that makes you feel like you know them really quickly. The pacing is excellent, she ratchets up the tension steadily and the twists are not spun out on their own, they always make sense. And in this one I appreciated the villain especially who's genuinely creepy in all the right ways. I love a complicated, well thought out villain, so I think this is one that I would totally recommend if you've read others by Jennifer McMahon and you loved. But if not already, read Drowning Kind and Winter People. Those would be the places that I would start Drowning Kind in the summer, Winter People in the winter, and then if you love those. Add this one to your list because it definitely is a good one. This is the Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon.
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B
Do you feel like the Children of the Hill has a season that it needs to be read in too?
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A
No. But now that I say the title again, I just continue to think that the title is. I feel like it could have a better title too. It's just one of those kind of nothing titles. Like I'm not going to remember the book based on the title. Yeah, like I'm going to struggle for the title's name.
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B
So.
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A
No, that is one unlike those other two that I think are really set in the season that they're written in. This one I think you can pick up anytime.
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B
Yeah, I like that. Okay, I have NonFiction for my second spot today. The book I'm going to talk about is Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz, which I had to look up their name to figure out how to say this one. Four Lost Cities is by the author of a book that Meredith talked about a few years back in season six. She brought the terraformers to the show. And I'm going to circle this back around which is why I'm bringing it up now. I had already had Four Lost Cities on my physical TBR shelf, but here we are two years later and I finally just picked it up because the book gods are capricious and we do what they tell us to. We have to listen to the bookish serendipity and when it strikes as a recently reformed and I say recent with quotes around it. Within the last decade of my life, lover of world history, which is different than historical fiction, I was excited to get into this story, this non fiction story of four cities around the world. Especially as during the school year we just completed at our house we were tackling world history again. So I have some of this like primer data already nestled in my head from the previous school year. We had recently read about and studied the civilizations around the cities of Chateauhuyuk in modern day Turkey, Pompeii which we all know in Italy, Angkor in Cambodia and Cahokia near the Missouri Illinois border in modern day US. I loved diving deep, but not too deep because each city is only one quarter of the book into the architecture, the social structures and most importantly the rise and fall of each of these lost cities. We learn so much through not just the archaeological evidence, but there's questions that are left to ponder here because archaeology can't reveal the relationships, right? Like we have to puzzle together and piece things together through this evidence. Many of these cities were affected by environmental changes like Pompeii, the eruption of Vesuvius nearby that left their inhabitants unable to survive or unable to stay in the places that they had built. Annalee Nuitz also takes time to dissect the unseen contributions that women, enslaved people, and immigrants made to cities and the ways that each one built and functioned. In 2021, when this book released, it was named a best book of the year by NPR and by Science Friday. And while Annalee Newitz has released quite a few titles overall, I was especially struck by the way that research for this nonfiction book must have informed their writing of the Terraformers in 2023, just two years later, as it was their next release. To take knowledge of the actual worlds and actual cities built by ancient civilizations and then turn it into a novel about building worlds, terraforming is the perfect evolution, the perfect adaptation of. Here's something I got deeply interested in. I wanted to rabbit hole. I decided to write a book about it. And now what else could I do with this? How could I play with it and mess around with it? So I actually now am looking forward even more to reading the Terraformers by Anali Newit, based on everything I know that she learned and then taught me through this book, which was Four Last Cities by Annalee Newitz. And of course, I love that this is an author named Annalee. I know they don't exist.
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A
She doesn't spell it with an O. Is it an A?
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B
It's a N, N, A, L, E, E. But it's pronounced the same as my daughter, which is just so unique to me.
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A
I love it. No, that's wonderful. And I really. They seem like the kind of author that would rabbit hole really well and then come up with something really cohesive around it. I still think about the terraformers. It's a really interesting book.
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B
Yeah, I'm excited to get into it now.
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A
All right. My second one is nonfiction and also a memoir. I feel like I have read more memoir in the last couple of months than I have read maybe in the last few years put together. This one is one that I'm not going to spend a ton of time on because I feel like it's been a lot of places. But I really loved it. It was Family of Spies by Christine Kuhn. Have you gotten to this one yet, Katie?
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B
No, but I know of it. Yeah, but I don't know if I know the setup.
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A
This is the one where it's in. So the story is that in 1994, Christine Kuhn, our author here, is a totally normal, like, suburban journalist. She lives in Maryland and she gets a piece of mail from a screenwriter who is researching a World War II story. And the subject of that story is going to be her family. And she's like, I'm sorry, what? Like what would. What possibly. Could you. Could this have anything to do with my family? So he tells her a little bit about some stuff and she's like, this is impossible. I would have heard about this. So she goes to her elderly father, Eberhard, and he does not deny it. In fact, he breaks down crying. And just like that, Christine's understanding of her own family history begins to unravel. This story is amazing. This story is amazing. It is as interesting, if not more than any work of fiction that I have read this year. It is so page turning. So what follows is a 30 year investigation that she does because she's a journalist into a secret that her family buried for decades. One that traces back to Nazi Germany, winds through pre war Hawaii, and connects to one of the most devastating moments of American history. I am telling you, my jaw was on the floor. You guys know, not a memoir person. Definitely not a World War II memoir person. So I started hearing, you know, buzz about this, wasn't interested at all. But again, and this happens to me a lot, you guys. What changed things was when Sarah from Sarah's Bookshelves Live did an interview with Christine Kuhn. I'm telling you, I also don't like author interviews, but Sarah chooses interesting ones and does them really well. And it shifted something in me. It wasn't enough for me to like buy it, but I did commit to getting it from the library. When it came in, I was like, I'm gonna give it 10 minutes to see if it just bores me senseless. I was completely in. I kept talking about what I was reading and Johnny kept saying, wait, is this fiction or nonfiction? And that's what I was asking myself the entire way through. Christine Kuhn writes this story in a way that feels cinematic and propulsive. More so, like I said, than most novels do. And the way that she writes her actual sentence level prose just goes down really easy. You know that feeling when you're reading something and the prose is. The prose is technically fine, but there's some invisible friction that slows you down. There was none of that here. There was the, the opposite of that here. I was seeing everything in my mind's eye. I was feeling what she was feeling as she pieced together the truth about her family. And that's really what is. I read this a couple months ago, but that's what stuck with me, is that I felt like I was. It was happening to me. Like there was something about the way she writes or maybe just that we're kind of similar people. Man, I really, really was in it with her. The narrative structure is a big part of why I think it works really well. Christine Kuhn moves fluidly between her own present day investigation and the story. What her family actually did during the war. And that back and forth not only is, is not disorienting, it's propulsive and it creates this mounting dread as the picture gets clearer and clearer and you're experiencing her very real shock in real time alongside her. That's a craft move and it landed for me immensely. I'll also say this. I learned a lot about World War II that I did not know before, and I'm really glad I did. Like, I genuinely didn't know about the specifics of the espionage networks operating in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor. And it's the kind of history that, at least for me, has reframed a lot of what I understood about that particular event. So if you love historical stories, you will definitely love this. I would also push this toward readers who think that they don't like non fiction or memoir, because this book could be one that changes your mind or pushes you a little bit out of your comfort zone, but into an area that you're going to be really glad that you traveled. This one is absolutely stunning. This is Family of Spies by Christine Kuhn. I highly recommend this.
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B
It sounds amazing. It sounds amazing.
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A
So good. I could, I could not believe it. I could not believe it.
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B
Yeah, I'm gonna need this one.
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A
It's really good. And I, and I do think that it would probably be really good on audio.
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B
Okay, good. Well, I will be looking for that. My third is fiction, but the title is the True True Story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother by Rabi Alameddine.
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A
Okay.
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B
It's a five star book alert for me. Absolutely. Blew me away and surprised me and exceeded my expectations. So I'm very glad that Katie and I decided to pick it up. Here's the setup. Raja and his mother live in his tiny apartment in Beirut, Lebanon. And when I say tiny, I mean it's small enough that they have to squeeze by the dining room table in order to get to the kitchen. There' actually no room for them. Raja has been a high school philosophy teacher. For many years, beloved by the neighborhood and by generation after generation of students. Even though he's kind of. He's curmudgeonly and a little bit cranky, but he's like, everybody can think of one teacher like this, right? Where they're like. And then everybody loved him anyway. He's also known as the neighborhood gay man, often the butt of jokes or on the receiving ends of stereotypes. But this story is not just about 63 year old Raja and his elderly mother. It's about his mother and their relationship. She is boundaryless, fierce, strong in her convictions, and willing to step out of society's expectations of her in order to protect her children, especially Raja. So when Raja is invited to a writing residency in the US and he's like, you know, I just need a break, mom, you're a lot. I love you so much. But like, we are so physically close together, I think this might be good. A little peace, a little solitude. It leads to him recounting his life and some really pivotal events, and especially the ways that they play in relationship to this overbearing and loving mother. Raja, our main character, our narrator throughout. He is sparkling. He's smart, he's philosophical, he's scathing and a little bit cranky sometimes. He's affectionate and empathetic and brutally honest. I loved getting to learn about his life, which is fiction, even though this is the true, true story, right through his very specific narrative voice. This is a voicey book. We read this one on paper, so I'm not talking about the audiobook narrator. I'm talking about the voice of Raja, and it blew both of us away. It has been quite some time, even though I mentioned it at the beginning of this episode, since I had a book touch me to the point of Tears, and I don't mean so. I did have a sobbing book right before I watched Remarkably Bright Creatures. That's not what this one was. This was like a sigh that kind of chokes up. On the way out, we were like, okay, yeah, you got me that time. Not through manipulation or trauma porn, although there are some very difficult memories that we wade through with him. And there are some descriptive sex scenes in this book. Even though it wouldn't go on a chili pepper level anywhere. This is one of them that we would mark in the spreadsheet as sex scenes. But not sexy, right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Instead, Rabi Alameddine, the Lebanese author of his story, is also a painter. And he paints here. That's what he's doing. He's got words painted into A story here. And in fact, after looking through his physical paintings that he includes on his website, I'd say for me, he's a better painter of words than he is of canvas and brush.
- [27:08]
A
Keep your day job is what you mean.
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B
No, I just think he's really exceptional in the written word and his paintings are a very specific taste that is not my taste. In fact, I've already picked up for my shelves his previous release from 2012, so more than a decade before. It's called An Unnecessary Woman and I hope to get to it soon. But I will reiterate that this book surprised me and it's because of the way that I saw it set up and the publisher blurb and none of that really emphasized to me how much I would be delighted by it. I didn't expect to smile as much as I did. I didn't expect to think it was funny or hypnotizing. It has hard things, but it's not a hard read. It's beautiful. It's almost lilting, like sing songy. Not sing songy. That makes it sound trite and yucky, but it pulled me through with. With the actual like gorgeousness of the way he wrote without it being high or lofty in any way. This book is tagged as emotional and reflective on storygraph and I see those adjectives, but they should be way further down. They're not the salient notes for me. It was funny, it was perfectly paced, it had me laughing out loud and it moved me very gently to tears. All markers of a five star read for me. Likely to end up on my best books of the year list. This is the true, true story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother by Robby Alameddine.
- [28:31]
A
Boy. Speaking of a book with a great title, right? Like a title with a few. You are not going to forget it. It draws you in because it's just different enough like we this that that's a title. I actually think that cover is really pretty too too.
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B
It really is. It's so gorgeous. Like chipped teacup. Y' all go look at the COVID on that one. It's so pretty.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah, I've heard great things and you know, a voicey narrator is always something that's going to pull me in. All right. My third one is a little bit weird, but it's an auto by author and I. I'm excited to read more by him. This is a book called Disillusion by Nicholas Binge. So here's the setup. Our lead character is Maggie Webb, who has spent the last decade watching her husband Stanley, her elderly husband, disappear piece by piece as dementia takes hold. It's a slow, slow progression and it's left Maggie lonelier than she's ever been. And then a mysterious stranger named Hassan shows up at her door, literally, with a revelation that changes everything. He says Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to keep a long buried secret from surfacing. Hassan has the technology to send Maggie into Stanley's mind, diving deep into his memories to find what's been hidden. What she discovers there is a past that she's never known about whatever happened, as he was part of a small group of gifted children at a very special school. Whatever happened among that group, decades later, something has been set into motion. And now, with pieces of Stanley's past vanishing faster by the day, Maggie's in a race to uncover the truth before there is nothing left to find. All right, Nicholas Binge, Absolute Auto Buy. I loved his first book, Ascension. I really, really, really loved Ascension. And I liked Disillusion very much too. A listener actually pressed this one into my hands for all things Murderful, and I'm so glad that I let that bump it up to the top of my TBR pile because this turned out one of those books that does a lot of different things all at once and somehow figures out a way to make them all work together as a satisfying whole. So I think the most useful thing I can tell you about this book is where it sits on the spectrum between two books that you probably already know. So if you loved the Time Traveler's Wife but wanted it to be less emotional and more science driven, I think there's something for you to like here. And if you didn't like Recursion by Blake Crouch because you thought it was was thin on emotion and character, you will really like this. I fell into, well, I love time traveler choice, but I definitely felt that way about recursion. Disillusion sits right in that sweet spot between the two. It's got the big, crunchy, satisfying sci fi brain of a Crouch novel, but it's wrapped around a love story that I was surprised to see that Nicholas Binge writes with a genuinely sweet hand. So you do need to know. You need to know that this is a time jump story. If those Terminator movie style elements don't work for you or drive you crazy, then this won't either. I want to be super upfront about that because I've had multiple people say that kind of thing makes my head spin and it makes me Uncomfortable, but I actually really love that. And what impressed me most about what, what Nicholas Bench is doing here is how cleanly he brings that all together. Because sometimes I can get really, really messy. The time hop stuff can. I mean, it can just get into circadian knots.
- [32:07]
B
Like recursion.
- [32:08]
A
Like recursion. And that doesn't happen here. Binge plants these little puzzle pieces early in the story that make perfect sense by the time you reach the end. And that payoff is one of my favorite things. Instead of writing himself into that knot, he threads the whole thing through to a conclusion that feels both surprising and also inevitable. But as much as this is a sci fi driven story, and it is, it's also so completely a love story. A love story about a couple who's been together for decades, well into their 80s. And if you love stories about those long term lifelong relationships, then I think you'll really love what he does with Maggie and Stanley here. The author's note at the end tells us that his grandparents had a 70 year marriage and he largely based the story on them, which adds. Has such an element of sweetness to it. You can feel that real life tenderness running underneath everything in the story. And it gives the book a warmth that a lot of sci fi thrillers just don't have. The structure does alternate between present day chapters that are moving you through the scientific and time travel elements, and then these backstory chapters that fill in who the characters really are. And some of those backstory chapters punched me in the gut more than once. They really did. Binge does such a good job of bringing you into full investment in these characters that when something lands in one of those quieter, more personal chapters, it really, really hit me that emotional weight is exactly what keeps Disillusion from being just another kind of clever puzzle box novel. It's. It's clever, absolutely, but it's also heftier than that. I really enjoyed this one. On a practical note, I do think it's a book that's best read fairly quickly. There are a lot of details to keep track of across the timelines, and I think if you spread it out and read it over over too long a period of time, I think at least I would lose the thread. I ended up reading it in about four longer chunks and I think the story was served well that way. So give yourself permission to just kind of settle in and let it rip. This is Disillusion by Nicholas Binge.
- [34:08]
B
Sounds like another great one, Meredith. I love time travel stories. It's a big. It's a big Win for me, usually. And yes, I've had ones that disappointed and ones that got too knotty, knotted up, and ones that I didn't love. But mostly that tends to work really well for me in my reading. So I'm. I like the idea of diving in this way.
- [34:28]
A
Yeah, I didn't have any trouble orienting myself through the timeline.
- [34:32]
B
And.
- [34:32]
A
And yet he doesn't, like, sometimes people are trying so hard to do that that you feel them trying to do that, and it's kind of like, ugh, this is very seamless.
- [34:40]
B
Good.
- [34:41]
A
Okay, so, Katie, it is middle ish of May, and so I thought maybe it would be a good time for us to do a little mid year reading check in a reckoning, A mid year reckoning, if you will. So I wanted to find out, like, what's working right now in your reading life? What isn't? Are you. How are you feeling this year is shaping up compared to other years? And are things going well? Or do we really need a midway course? Correct. Okay, so that's kind of the general tone that we want to hit. And let me just get your temp check on that to start.
- [35:18]
B
Well, this year, like, it feels strange to say this year is kind of standout in that it's a little weird because truth be told, since I moved back to Arizona, I've had a few weird years, right? I had the actual move year, the settling into a new community year, the divorce year, and now I'm in a new season again. And it feels like, rather than saying, like, this is my new season for the next 10 years, like, when I have a baby, it feels like fits and starts, jump starts, even where it's like, okay, yes, we can run with this.
- [35:48]
A
This.
- [35:48]
B
Nope, never mind. Throw those brakes on. There is nothing happening in my reading life. And that has been hard for me as somebody who counts reading as one of the core pieces of my identity, to feel like I don't have any control over it is really hard for me because I am a pretty controlling person in a lot of aspects of my life. It's just been strange. So I don't want to say, well, it's a totally different reading year, but it is another totally different reading year for me. And I don't know how it's going to end up by the end of the year year. So.
- [36:19]
A
So is it totally different, like, from a quantity perspective, is it different as far as, like, the books that you're picking up? Like, how is it different both in that?
- [36:30]
B
I mean, this is one of the questions that we're talking about a little bit as we get into reading goals. I don't set a number goal anymore, but last year, at the end of April, which is the last full month we have right now, I had finished 67 books. Books at the end of April this year I was at 49. So 20 less in just four months, which feels like a lot. If that continues throughout the year, we're looking at maybe 80 fewer books for the entire.
- [36:57]
A
As of that month, I had finished 46. So, like, you're tracking close to my reading.
- [37:02]
B
Right. Which is fine. And. But also eight of those are Emma M. Lion, which I treated as one current. Ready? So really it's 41 books. Right. Like, and it's so easy to eat away at that. One of those I reread twice. One that I read for myself and then read it aloud to my kids. So that already takes another book away. And so when we start to add in things like, well, this is indie press, so I'm not gonna talk about it until later. And then this one, I don't want to bring too many books in a row that I read with Katie. But a lot of my reading right now is because Katie is gently pulling me along, like, she's holding the reins almost of my reading life, where it's like, hey, did you read today? Just checking in. And I'm like, go. No, I need to read because somebody is counting on me and it's all of you. And then Katie is like, hey, just a gentle reminder. You do love reading. Yeah, I do. Do I have time for it? Is it there? But one of the other things that we're going to talk about is, like, where did we have some misses maybe in our reading lives so far this year? And that was really hard for me to answer because I've had a really great, satisfying reading year. Like, when I finish the books, they are hitting well. I'm looking at a lot of four, four and a half and five star reads, substantially more than I have had in the past as a percentage or a proportion of my reading. It's just not as many overall. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? What's. What's your general overview of, like, what's happening in 2026 for you?
- [38:26]
A
Yeah, I feel like my reading life this year is better than it's feeling better than last year. I feel like it's easier. Like I'm. It feels more like there's a lot of books I really want to read as opposed to me going, like, you know, like, especially front list. I'M feeling really pulled to a lot of front list which can be both good and bad. So from a quantity perspective, I think I'm tracking pretty normal for me. But I've kind of had that normal for a long time. But I have had some real standouts. So I think 2025 was very much a meh reading year for me. And so 2026 is feeling better. Better.
- [39:01]
B
Good.
- [39:02]
A
So what would you say has been your standout read of the year so far?
- [39:07]
B
My standout read of the year so far. I already just briefly mentioned it. It's the Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon by Beth Brower. I picked up the first one because we were going to talk about it on Love and Chili Peppers as this like very gentle romance to give a little variety to some of the things we talk about over there. And I did not expect it it to be a. A story about quotidian. Right. It's day to day life of Emma M. Lyon kind of finding her feet in a new season of her life. Which is maybe why it was so perfect for me. But all eight books in less than two weeks. I could not stop. As soon as I finished one, I could not wait to get into the next one. Even though it's not. There's one book that it's like, oh, this is a little bit of a cliffhanger and I really need to know what happens next. And otherwise it's like. And then I woke up the next day, you know, like there's nothing else happening.
- [39:58]
A
It was just an enjoyable place to be.
- [40:01]
B
Yes.
- [40:01]
A
Like. Right. Like it wasn't about what was gonna happen next. It was like, I'm just really loving being here right now.
- [40:08]
B
Right. I just wanted to live in that world and it was a comfort to me when I needed comfort. And it was Emma kind of looking at novelty in the way that I wanted to look at the novelty of my life and seeking joy in places that felt a little bit either day to day and. Or challenging in one way or another. And she was like, you know, but this is it. This is the life I was given and I'm just gonna live it. And I needed that. I needed that reminder for me. So it just. Mm. I loved it so much and I can't wait for the next one. Even though there's not a cliffhanger. Like, I don't need the next one, but I want it.
- [40:44]
A
Yeah.
- [40:44]
B
I'm excited.
- [40:44]
A
I wanna be back in that place. Right.
- [40:46]
B
I wanna live there again. Yeah. What about you?
- [40:48]
A
My standout of the Year so far is the Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty. And for me, I chose that not necessarily because it's going to be my number one book of the year, but because it was that reading experience that I'm always chasing. That, like, kind of fairy tale, you know, look like there's a love story, but it's not a romance. There's a badass lead female character. There's a lot of supporting characters that you really love. In this one, there happens to be a time travel element. All things that I really, really enjoyed. And they felt familiar, but also fresh. Like, it felt like a book where I was like, I know right now that I'm gonna wish I could go back and read this again for the first time. So I really, I loved the experience of reading that one. That was just a. And then lots of people read it after I brought it, read it around the same time, and they all really enjoyed it too. And that always makes me really happy.
- [41:45]
B
Yes.
- [41:45]
A
All right. What was. What's been your biggest letdown of the year so far? Do you have one of those?
- [41:51]
B
I do, unfortunately. And I know exactly how it happened. So the irresistible urge to fall for your enemy is by Bridget Knightley. And the flip side, the good side, is that there was only one book I could pick for this spot. Right? The biggest letdown, the biggest disappointment. The reason it let me down is because for those of you who've been around for a while, you'll remember how much I adored and it ended up on my Best Books of the year list. Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love, which is fanfiction, self published on Archive of Our Own. It's gigantic. It's like 90,000 words. It took me forever to read it. It destroyed me. I loved it. This is the traditionally published version of that book. I was looking forward to that same sweeping story, the same feels. And it turns out that when you take all the IP out of it to make it her own story, it was not good. It fell really flat. And this is a duology because it is like this. The self published 1 is 100,000 words or 90,000 words or some God awful amount of pages if you put them into a book. And so they're turning it into two novels, which is fine, but it just, I was like, this is. This is convoluted world building. These characters are not that interesting. And so it feels like she didn't have enough chops to come up with her own meat to sink into without relying on this previously published ip and if you had told me that when I was reading the fanfic, I would have said no, this is a phenomenal writer. She knows what she's doing. But really, she was really good at building out a world that already existed. And I don't even want to say that. Which is why I never brought it as a current read because I want her to be successful. But this was not a book for me. It did not work for me. And I was so bummed. I mean, letdown is the perfect word. I was so, so bummed. I was like, I just want. I wanted to love you. And I don't.
- [43:49]
A
I know that is. I mean, and that's exactly, you know, one of the worst feelings to have. Mine is not dissimilar. I'm bringing the Caretaker by Marcus Cleaver. And that's because I loved We Used to Live Here, his first one so, so much. And. But the. And I just. The Caretaker. I did bring it as a current read. And for me, one of the things Read or know thyself I care a lot about. I care a lot about my lead character. I. My happiest reading space is when I really like them and I'm rooting for them. It doesn't have to be that all the time. There are exceptions. But I cannot take a lead character who is just as dumb as dirty dishes. I just can't take it. And that was what we had here. Now what I will say is part of what's been fun about 2026. Like I said, I've been very pulled to Frontline list. My net galley is filled with a bunch of stuff I am really looking forward to reading. Some of it has served me really well. This one, if I had just waited till it came out and I just heard Tina from Booktok etc talk about it on the show and she really, really liked it. And I loved hearing her talk about it because she did it in a way where if I had just waited, I would have heard her talk about it. I would have recognized that what. What she liked or the pieces that bothered me didn't bother her. But she said enough about those pieces that I could hear, oh, okay, that. See, that would bother me and I would have just steered clear from it. So frontless stuff, really like, I don't spend a lot of time reading on the front list. And our friends who do. I'm always like, man, I don't know how you do what you do because I get really frustrated and let down when there's a book that I like. Oh, if I just waited, I would have missed it completely. So. So that was my big letdown. What's a book that surprised you the most so far this year?
- [45:39]
B
Well, this one's easy, and it's part of how I planned my current reads today. It's the true, true story of Raja the Gullible and his mother. Even the COVID The COVID is beautiful, but it looks literary. There's a broken teacup with a ribbon. Right. I just didn't expect to love it the way that I did, and I didn't expect to feel that effervescence that I did when I was reading it and to be desperate to read more because of the pacing and the way that he writes. It seemed like it was gonna be. And we've talked about this before. Like, sometimes you want an issues book where you're like, I am ready to get into it with this author. And sometimes you want transportative, bubbly, gorgeous fiction with great characters. And I didn't know that that's what I was gonna get there. And it turns out that's exactly what I wanted. Like, you know, sometimes you just need a really good burger, and you're like, I want to have to open my mouth so big and let it, like, get all over when I'm eating this delicious burger. That's what this was. It was, like, meaty and satisfying in a way that I didn't even know I wanted. I love it.
- [46:43]
A
All right, well, that issue of expectations is at play in the book that surprised me the most. I guess automatically it would be because of the way I phrased the question.
- [46:51]
B
Right, obviously.
- [46:53]
A
But sometimes I wonder why people pay us to podcast. That was a really stupid thing that I just said. But go ahead and leave it in because, you know, that's. That's how my mind worked just there.
- [47:00]
B
We just say the things that we think. It's okay.
- [47:03]
A
Vigil by George Saunders.
- [47:05]
B
Okay, Yes.
- [47:07]
A
I. Not only was I, like, I don't know what I'm going to think about this, I was pretty positive I was going to hate it. And going, that actually is something that's working really well for me. Going into a book and being like, I'm not. I mean, the same thing with Family of Spies. Like, I just don't think this is for me, but I'm going to give it 10 minutes. I'm going to give it 15 minutes. I'm going to give It 50 pages. Vigil by George Saunders was such a favorite for me, and I'm so glad that I read it. And I just could not be more surprised to like it because so, so many people have not just not liked it, but like viscerally hated it.
- [47:39]
B
Yeah.
- [47:40]
A
So that was a big surprise for me. Okay, Katie, do you feel like you have any reading goals that you need to adjust or is there any course correction that you need to make?
- [47:50]
B
The one thing I really want to focus on and. And we'll see if it works or not. But the one thing that I have been thinking about as well, we prepped for this week and I knew this was what we were going to be talking about today is that this year, one of the things I'm seeing in my reading life, and probably one of the reasons for the additional slowdown is that I feel a little bit like a lack of urgency to get from one book to the next. I'll finish my audiobook or my paper book or my Kindle book, and then I'm not chomping at the bit to get to the next one. Like, okay, well, now I have my audio TBR and I can go right into the next book or I can't wait to read all this stuff on my shelf. So let me dive right into the next paper book I have lost. That's the part of the steam that I've lost right now. So I. I don't have goals except to really love what I'm reading, which I'm doing. But in order to try and get back into that, like, mojo momentum phase, what I want to do is start giving myself again. And I used to do this in the past, kind of a priority tbr. Three or four titles that might work for my next in each of those slots in my reading so that I'm ready to get into the next one instead of floundering, because that's where I'm losing steam. So it's a goal, but it's. And. And it's a task, but it's more preparation. Yeah, it's a strategy. Exactly. What about you?
- [49:12]
A
I think that. I think that's a good way to describe it.
- [49:15]
B
The.
- [49:15]
A
One of the things that is working tremendously well for me is that toward the back half of last year, I really got back into using my library again.
- [49:23]
B
Again.
- [49:23]
A
And when I use the library, that means book flights and book flights are the way that I get into books that I didn't quite know were going to work for me, but then they do. And that just creates this very virtuous circle. Right. It means I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone. It means I'M bringing things that you're not hearing about everywhere else. It means that I go into a book with that lowered expectation and then it can surprise me in a really good way. And it also means I can really lean into my mood reader ness. So that's been working for me and I'm going to keep doing that, but I'm going to do, to be really intentional about doing that.
- [49:57]
B
All right.
- [49:57]
A
So that is kind of a mid year check in to our reading. I think, Katie, you and I would both encourage our readers, our listeners to do the same thing, like think about. You don't have to. It's not about quantity. It's not about any of the specific things that we talked about today. But just take a minute to think. How is 2026 treating me reading wise? And where do I give, where do I need to give myself Grace? Grace. And also where do I need to maybe try a different strategy or double down on a strategy that I know works for me to make sure that I can make it the best that it can be?
- [50:29]
B
I like it. Yep.
- [50:30]
A
Okay, before we go, Katie, I am gonna bring our Bookish Friend of the week. This was my favorite one this week. And there was, the group was really, really active this week, right?
- [50:42]
B
Yes, yes.
- [50:44]
A
Which is always. I mean, there's almost 3,000 members. This is our Facebook group where if you join us as patreon subscribers for $5 a month, probably the biggest single value add you get in addition to all the content or whatever is that you get to be in this group. So in this group, we had a friend who mentioned that she wanted to come to the group with something a little bit vulnerable. She mentioned that she had just moved to a new city, she had started a new job and she was finding it difficult to make friends. And she was being vulnerable because she was able to say straight out, I am feeling, feeling lonely. And she came to the group asking for a book recommendation that might match the kind of emotional mood that she's been in. What she got back was over 50 some, in some case multi paragraph messages, 50 bookish friends reached out saying, we are your friends. Like, it's okay if you don't have friends in your new job yet because we are all here. Like, first and foremost, you are in your group. Secondly, here are things that you can do. You go where the readers are. Here are some books that you might want to read. Where do you live? There's probably bookish friends nearby who'd want to meet up with you. Like today. So many people jumping in and rallying around her and making her feel less lonely. And that filled my cold, dead heart so completely. Readers are really the best. They're absolutely the best. So that was an example, and there's, you know, hundreds of others, other examples of why the group had so many great messages in the last week. But that one was really, really great. We also had a rousing. We also had a rousing discussion from the other end, our indie press list, which I started the show talking about that books and more indie press list that we did. That was a little bit of drama in the group, you guys. But when I say drama, hear me say it was route. There were a couple of posts that were rousing discussion with people coming at that episode from a couple different points of view. Nobody got nasty.
- [52:40]
B
Not a single reported comment. Comment. No, not a single reported comment.
- [52:43]
A
You and I were watching the comments, but never, ever even thought we were gonna have to step in because we know this group, right?
- [52:50]
B
Yes.
- [52:51]
A
Everyone was kind. Everyone was assuming good intentions on the part of everybody else. Everyone had their own opinion. Like, it's not like everyone, you know, agreed. But the discussion was always respectful and caring and kind. But also people didn't mind getting in and mixing it up. And that, to me, is what makes a really good group. I've now turned this into an ad for our Patreon, which is not what my intention was, but, like, I just. I love the sweetness of the message that I just talked about. I think it's really important. But also a family, like a good group of friends also.
- [53:23]
B
That's what it is.
- [53:24]
A
Right? You can also, like, get in there and mix it up, too, knowing that you're going to be okay.
- [53:28]
B
Yes, yes. It's. It's a safe spot to have a tender side, and it's a safe spot to explore a big opinion without thinking, well, now everybody's going to hate me. They're going to get me out of here. Like, that doesn't happen.
- [53:41]
A
I love it. I was so, so good. Just, like, so grateful for the people in our group this week. And it's such a big group. You would really. It's just really shocking that it has stayed with so much good, good spirit. All right, what about you? What's your. What do you want to add before we go?
- [53:56]
B
All right. I wasn't sure where I should put this in the menu. It's a little bit tbr. It's a little currently curious about, but really, I'm just excited to talk about the fact that David Sedaris has a new Book. Book coming out, and it's essays instead of diaries. And I'm just thrilled. I'm so excited to get my hands on it. And I didn't even know exactly. So I went to see him speak live last weekend after we recorded, and I was like, I wonder why he's even coming. He doesn't even have anything going on. And he said, y', all, of course I do. Of course I have something going on. I always have something going on. His book, the Land and Its People, classic David Sedaris essay. It is releasing May 26, which is the day before my birthday, so I am considering it. A birthday present to me.
- [54:42]
A
Yes.
- [54:43]
B
I'm so excited. And of course, he read a couple essays because that's what he does for his readings. He tells stories. He reads diary entries. He reads essays that he's workshopping or. I wrote this in the car on the way here, and I want to see how it lands for you guys. They're very interactive. They're very. He'll make notes in the margins while he's reading to say, like, to lean into something that really got a big laugh. It's a very, very. It's like a writer's workshop when you go see David Sedaris live. And so hearing the essays and then having him say, by the way, these. Some of these are going to be in this book. I was like, thank you, baby Jesus. We have been waiting.
- [55:20]
A
What?
- [55:21]
B
And then. It was a surprise. I didn't even know.
- [55:23]
A
I had no idea I am hearing this, you know, as you tell me. I immediately went. I always get these on audio, so immediate audio, pre order.
- [55:32]
B
Mm.
- [55:32]
A
It's got a great cover. It's also recorded live, which is interesting.
- [55:36]
B
See, look at. He's always doing new things, too. He had an opener this time. A guy came and read on stage with him, and he was like, I read this guy's book, and I sometimes ask people to open for me, and sometimes they're terrible readers, and I just have to deal with it for my tour. You guys are gonna love him. He was phenomenal. I loved him, too. I don't have his name written in my notes, but I'll make sure Megan has it before we. Before we hit publish on this one. He also. I'm going to gently mention that he said, a certain other person's book comes out on May 26th that is very high in our government. And his book has been very. It's been talked about. It's. It's Mr. Vice President who is also releasing a book that day. And David Steris would like to make sure that he is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So if you feel so inclined to put in a pre order order, now is the time.
- [56:27]
A
Interesting that I am so looking. I mean, it does, it feels like a gift.
- [56:32]
B
It really does.
- [56:33]
A
Automatically, it's one of those things that I will automatically start playing that day on audio, which, you know, for my audio listening is very weird. All right, that is great news and the perfect way for us to sign off. Katie. That is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me, I'm Meredith MeredithMonday
- [56:53]
B
Schwartz on Instagram and you can find me Katie Oatesonbookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putamong Evans. And you can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's reads.
- [57:05]
A
Full show notes with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps. You can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes, which are great. And on our website at currently reading
- [57:16]
B
podcast.com you can also follow the show at currentlyreading podcast on Instagram. You can subscribe to our substack, you can follow us on YouTube like and subscribe over there, read our newsletter or you can email us@hellourrentlyreading podcast.com and if
- [57:34]
A
you love everything we talked about today, about being in our group and getting more content and keeping this show commercial free, the way to do all of that, that is to join us as a bookish friend on patreon. It's only $5 a month and I think you'll really, really love it. If you do love what you hear too, you can rate and review us on Apple podcasts. That always helps. And you can shout us out on social media. All of those things make a huge difference in our finding our perfect audience.
- [58:02]
B
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends in the best of times and the worst of times. Thank you for helping us grow and get close closer to our goals.
- [58:10]
A
All right, until next week, may your
- [58:11]
B
coffee be hot and your book be unput downable.
- [58:14]
A
Happy reading, Katie.
- [58:15]
B
Happy reading, Meredith.