Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:11]
B
Hey readers, welcome to the Currently Reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready.
- [00:25]
A
We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a readerly deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go.
- [00:35]
B
I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and full time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I love Kate McKinnon in any form.
- [00:44]
A
And I'm Katie Kub, a single homeschooling mom of four in Arizona. And I love adding a bit of bookish sparkle. This is episode number two of season nine. And. And we are so glad you're here.
- [00:55]
B
Oh, Katie, now I know what your bookish moment of the week is. Oh, I can't wait to. I can't wait to talk about that.
- [01:01]
A
Yes, I have a visual aid this week. I'm very excited. But first, of course, we will let everybody know that the deep dive this week is about reading and tracking the books that we only dip into that we just taste a little bit of. How do we play with those on our tracking spreadsheets or wherever else? That'll be fun to discuss. But first we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. Meredith, what is yours?
- [01:26]
B
All right, I happened upon. I've been, you know, audio's not my easiest format. Audio's the one that I tend to get stuck behind the most or go really slowly on. But I have been trying to quit things quickly and try things that I might not normally dip into with the hope of keeping my audio rolling along. Well, in that vein, I happened upon an audible original called Heads Will Roll that comes from Kate McKinnon and her real life sister, Emily Lynn. Have you heard of this?
- [01:59]
A
I've heard of it, but I haven't. I haven't gotten into it, so do tell.
- [02:02]
B
Okay, so this is a novella. It's only two hours on audio and it is an audio original, an audible original, like I said. So you can only get it there. But it is a rollicking good time. This is a highly produced, highly produced full cast audio. It's of course got Kate McKinnon and her sister Emily Lynn, who you will recognize from the Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science and the follow ups to that book which we read and absolutely loved. Now, Heads Will Roll is something decidedly different. Katie, do not put heads. Heads Will Roll on your apple carplay with your kids in the car. That will be a mistake if you do that. This is not. Millicent quip, because this is not safe for children or for work. This has got. It's got a lot of cussing, it's got a lot of raunch, but it is hilarious and it is a rollicking good time. In our story here, Kate McKinnon plays Queen Mortuana of the Night Realm. And she has. She has a raven who's her minion named Jojo. That's her sister, Emily Lynn. And they receive a prophecy that there. There's going to be a peasant uprising. And so they have to journey to find the Shard of Acquiescence, which will put down the rebellion and save the throne. I laughed the entire way through. There's also a second one that a season two coming out that's called Heads Will Roll Heir apparent. So if you like it, you will have more to enjoy. So this is my bookish moment of the week. Laughing to a book that's maybe not quite a book, but still gave me a bookish good time.
- [03:48]
A
Right. When I'm looking at it, it says it's a raunchy, original, scripted audio comedy.
- [03:54]
B
It's not really a book. Play with it. It's play.
- [03:58]
A
Right.
- [03:59]
B
It's so much fun because it's like a lot of SNL people are on it, like Chris Redd, Heidi Gardner, Alex Moffat, Aidy Bryant, Bob the Drag Queen.
- [04:07]
A
There's Meryl Streep and then Carol Kane, Tim gunn.
- [04:10]
B
Yeah.
- [04:10]
A
Audra McDonald. God is stacked. Carol Kane.
- [04:14]
B
And like, if you like a very highly produced something in your ear and you're okay with the. The raunchiness and the. And the cussing. It is so funny.
- [04:23]
A
All five of the Queer Eye guys. Yeah.
- [04:25]
B
And it's very. It's like, full of Perry menopause jokes. Like, it's very full of. It's very full of Perry. No question.
- [04:32]
A
I. I need this in my life. I need a little fun comedy zhuzh in my life.
- [04:38]
B
Yeah, that's a good way of describing it. A fun comedy zhuzh.
- [04:42]
A
I just love the word zhuzh, honestly. I try to deploy it whenever I can. All right, y'. All. I also love sparkles. So I am going to talk in my bookish moment this week about one of the other fun activities that I fit in during our month off. It was my very first book, Bedazzling. Class slash event. Some people already knew what they were doing. I did not. I invited a few of my local book besties. So Jen Jen and Lizzie and I visited the Craft Tomato in Tempe, Arizona on a Tuesday night and we each brought a book to Bedazzle. One of the gens brought Nevermore, which I really loved. So she had like the umbrellas to Bedazzle. It was so cute. I thought that was so fun. I decided to bring along For Whom the Bell Tolls by J.C. lynn. Look at shiny.
- [05:28]
B
That was a good choice.
- [05:29]
A
So happy. Yeah. I thought that the COVID would lend itself to it and then it worked out really well for me. So I did circle back to talk about this book once more at the end of last season to tell y' all how much I loved it. And that's what pushed it to the top of my to be bedazzled list. My tbb. Yeah, it turned out beautifully. If you are watching on YouTube, you did see me show it off a little bit. But it also lives on my new bedroom bookshelf where some of my prettiest book beauties live. The process was simple, although it does require very like tiny, precise gluing. Right. You do like a line of glue and then do maybe five gems and then another line of glue. You can't just make a whole gluey cover and go for an hour, right?
- [06:15]
B
Do you have like a, an implement? Like you're not putting the gems on with your fingers, Right?
- [06:20]
A
So interesting. So when you do diamond painting, which is what these gems are from, you have like a little pen that has a piece of wax on the end of it and you use that to pick up each gem. They just gave us a single Crayola crayon and we used that. It's the same idea, right? It's a piece of wax that you're using, but it's just enough tactile stickiness to be able to pick up one at a time. And we used that to pick up our gems and stick them to the book wherever we wanted to put them. It is detail oriented and you are hunched over a lot looking at your book. So two hours was a long session to work on this. All four of us and the other people at our table and in the room were tired and a little sore by the end of that two hour session. I would say an hour to an hour and a half is the longest you want to go. But we chatted books. We met new people who were also crafty. Bookish people highly recommend this activity. We had such a good time. And it looks so pretty on my shelf. Like, out and just catching the light.
- [07:25]
B
It does look really pretty. How sturdy is it? Like, how precious do you have to be?
- [07:31]
A
They're on there. Okay. They're on there.
- [07:32]
B
So you could even. You could even, like, put it into, like, not like you would want to do this, but, like, you could put it in a bookshelf.
- [07:39]
A
You could. If it were tight, I would think that the other cover would rub against it hard enough that it might come off. But if you had some space in there and you could put this one in and then stick one next to it, it would be fine.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah.
- [07:51]
A
Some people also did the spines of their books, so. Oh, yeah. That would be a fun way to show it off on a bookshelf, depending on how you want to play with it. It was really fun. It's fun. Yeah. I was like, oh, convenient. What a bookish moment for me.
- [08:04]
B
I like a book adjacent hobby.
- [08:07]
A
Yeah, definitely. All right, but let's talk about some of the books that we've been reading. What's your first current read this week, Meredith?
- [08:15]
B
All right, well, I'm really happy with the variety of books that I'm bringing this week. So every one is very different from the previous one, and that always makes me happy. This first one is called in the Blink of an Eye by Joe Callahan. Here's the setup. Our lead character is DCS Cat Frank, who is a very newly widowed single mother and a seasoned detective who has just returned to the Warwickshire police force after bereavement following the death of her husband. She, Cat Frank, has asked for something low stakes while she finds her footing again. And what she gets instead is the assignment. To lead a pilot program pairing her with an aid aide that's an artificially intelligent detective entity. Hers is nicknamed Locke. Locke can process vast amounts of data in seconds, filter out human bias, and Locke never misses a detail. What Locke cannot do is read a room, understand grief, or navigate the complicated, messy, irrational terrain of human behavior that is Kat's department. And the two of them instantly have beef. Together, they are tasked with revisiting two cold cases involving missing young men. Cases that have been. They've been cold for years. But when those cold cases suddenly become active again, Kat and Locke find themselves in a real investigation with real stakes, and one where more people could disappear.
- [09:41]
A
All right.
- [09:41]
B
It's funny the way this one came to me. Three different bookish friends reached out to me about this one before I had even picked it up. Three of them. One of them was our bookish friend Kristen, who I got to meet in person at fabled bookshop's Book Lover Weekend. And I ended up recommending this book on all things Murderful while she was right there in the room with me, which was fun. Kristen and fellow book recommenders, you were right. I liked this book so much. Now, before I go any further, I do want to address the AI element in the room, because it is absolutely there. I know people have really strong feelings about AI in general, and I respect that. And AI in mystery fiction is having a moment, and I have complicated feelings about that as a category. The good news is that wherever you stand on those issues, the AI issue, especially whether you think this technology will make us smarter and more effective, or whether you're deeply skeptical of replacing human judgment with algorithms, this book does not walk in with its own agenda. Both perspectives are represented with real weight and with real fairness. I appreciated that a lot. It's not a sales pitch at all for AI policing, and it's also just as much not an argument against it. I liked it because it trusted its reader to work out for themselves what they think. What I was not expecting and what I think is actually the most important thing to tell you is, is that I went in assuming the AI versus human dynamic between Locke and Cat Frank would be the main event. I thought it was the central kind of pull of the book. And while that tension is genuinely interesting, it is not the reason I couldn't put this book down. What I couldn't put down were the actual cases. The two missing persons investigations at the heart of this story are fascinating and they spool out in a way that is really fresh and really propulsive. The ending especially, which was. I mean, it just was handled really, really well I didn't see coming. And I really loved how Joe Callahan tied everything together here. And then there's Cat Frank herself. This is a character who is fully realized in a way that not every police procedural protagonist manages to be. She's experienced and wise. She's a genuinely good leader of her team, which is something that you very rarely get in crime fiction, where usually our lead detective is kind of the lone wolf who's been saddled with the team that is kind of running to keep up with him. Cat is not a lone wolf. She is herding cats, including one junior colleague who is very much too big for his AI britches. And watching her manage all of that with skill and the particular authority of someone who actually has been through a lot of real life, that was an element of the book I didn't expect, and it was one of the things I loved the most. So thank you to every reader who who sent me a DM and pushed this one toward me. You knew exactly what you were doing. Please keep doing that. This is in the Blink of an Eye by Joe Callahan.
- [12:47]
A
Oh, interesting. I like that it almost plays on at least homophones with the title. And I AI like it feels like there's something really smart happening with the title there.
- [13:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. And kind of the cat and lock element, there was something there too, although I can't quite work out exactly what it was.
- [13:08]
A
But when you first said cat and lock, I was like, what am I?
- [13:10]
B
What am I? Yeah, exactly.
- [13:12]
A
What's happening.
- [13:13]
B
There's something really interesting here. The Lock character is kind of an, but not in a way that you would fully expect. Everything was just like a little better than I thought it was going to be. It was done a couple notches better. And I really, really think we're going to see a lot more of this issue of AI in the the mystery genre. So for whatever your mileage may vary.
- [13:35]
A
Yeah, all right. I am going classic for my first one, but it was also a recent Indie Press List pick. My first book this week is Ella Minnow P by Mark Dunn. This was an Indie Press List pick from booktenders in July. And as a reminder, if you're new here, especially at the beginning of a season, this is our Patreon episode where our bookish friends receive a list of five books once a month when we partner with an independent bookstore somewhere in the US and they press five books into our hands, specifically curated for our listeners in July. Book Tenders in West Virginia, our newest anchor store, decided to give us a stack of five books that included this backlist epistolary gem, which coincidentally, Meredith, same thing I have heard about for years from our listeners, being like, katie, you love epistolary. Why haven't you picked this up? Katie? Katie, what's wrong? Well, guys, this is what it took. I have to read. We both agree to read 10% at least of any book on the Indie press list before we record the episode. And that was enough for me. Here's how they set it up. This is an epistolary novel and a reading experience like none other. Ella lives on the island of Nolip, named for the man who created the Pangram. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. A statue of Nolep stands in the town square, and one day letters start falling from the famous sentence. The town elders decide that those letters must be outlawed, neither spoken nor written by any Nalapian. The first letter to go is Z, which is no big deal, and the book proceeds with eloquently flowing prose between the characters as more and more letters drop. The book in turn also quits using the letters, making the syntax super misspelled and a little hard to understand, but it's really fun for word nerds to try to figure out what word the characters are really wanting to use but not allowed to. In the background of all of this wordplay is a community fighting against censorship. I had no idea what this book was about, even though all these people had told me to pick it up for years. I finally dipped into it to get ready for our Indie Press List episode to get a feel for the tone and the writing style, and I couldn't stop. As soon as I read those first letters from one Nilopian to another, I knew that this was going to be a book that I had to finish. As soon as I finished it, I reached out to my reading partner Katie and asked her to prioritize it as well. I let her know that I put this up against 1984 for any classroom that wants to introduce the concepts of censorship and government overreach, as well as community members banding together to figure out how and when to resist all feels very present and timely. Even though this book came out in 2001, I feel like there's so many ways to dive into this book and it's rich with discussion, it's witty and fast paced. It's easy reading despite the weirdness with the language and the lettering as the story continues along and I'm so happy to have finally read it. I did decide to put it directly onto my school shelf for future years, but I'm a little conflicted about that because it's epistolary and the language gets weird. It is much easier to take in with your eyeballs and process that way than it would be for me to read it aloud to my kids. So I'm trying to decide if this is a let's buddy read this when you're in high school situation versus A Guys, I can't wait to read you this story. I wouldn't hate some guidance on that for now. I loved it. I even love the COVID of it. It's very sparse but graphically perfect, which I really enjoyed. And the way this one ends is Chef's Kiss. This is Ella Minnow P by Mark Dunn.
- [17:17]
B
It's got a very sweet cover. Yeah, the whole Time I was reading it, though, I kept being like, isn't this a problem that could have just been solved with, like, a good glue?
- [17:24]
A
Better glue? Guys, have you heard of screws? I mean, right?
- [17:28]
B
Screws? Yeah. There you go. Screw it into the wall and the.
- [17:31]
A
Right.
- [17:31]
B
The quick. The quick brown fox.
- [17:34]
A
What's the pants over the lazy dog.
- [17:36]
B
Right. So it's famous because that sentence includes every letter of the Alphabet.
- [17:41]
A
Right. It has. I think it's 36 letters in it total. And there are 26 letters in the English Alphabet. So even it only repeats 10 letters. And that becomes a very central point in how this book resolves. Like, is there anything better than the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to get every letter in the Alphabet into a short sentence?
- [18:04]
B
I wonder how the audio is on that. I didn't. I did that one in print.
- [18:08]
A
I tried it. The audio was good.
- [18:10]
B
Did you listen to the back half?
- [18:12]
A
Right. That's the thing is, I was like, well, what are they doing with some of this stuff? Later on, at the beginning of each chunk where a letter has fallen off the wall, he reads the Alphabet and he makes this weird hiccup sound whenever a letter is missing. So it'll be like A, B, C, E, F. And it was atrocious. I hated it so much. I apologize to anybody who just heard me make that sound, actually, because it was awful to listen to, especially as you get to, like, 15 letters missing and it's that same sound over and over and over again. Yeah. And then even trying to pronounce words with letters missing is a challenge. So I think it was artfully done in that they had to figure out a way to do it. But it. It's not a fun listening experience. Yeah.
- [18:57]
B
Do it in print.
- [18:58]
A
Okay.
- [18:58]
B
All right. This next book that I'm going to talk about is absolutely one that you need to do in print because it is a cookbook every once in a while, every couple of years. I mean, it is very rare. I'm currently reading. We bring a cookbook, and I had to bring this one because I am literally using it every single day. This is Artisan Sourdough Made simple by Emily Rafa. I'm using it every day. I had to bring it as a current read. I've had so many of you reach out to me as I've been going through my sourdough journey and starting my sourdough starter, Agatha crusty and making bread. And I've had so many people reach out saying, I'm interested in. Is there a book that you use. That was really, really helpful. Okay, here's the setup. So you, like me, maybe have created your very own sourdough starter, and you've mastered the classic loaf, which is the round boulee.
- [19:50]
A
Right.
- [19:51]
B
But you might be asking yourselves, now, what do I do? Like what, what do. I can't just make a round sourdough over and over again, can you? Can, but there's so much more. There's so much more that you can do. Well, I mean, there. There's a lot more that you can do. Emily Rafa is a classically trained chef who walks beginners through the entire process. From starting your own starter, which I did, and I highly recommend you doing, to pulling that first loaf out of the oven with this calm confidence of someone who's done this hundreds of times, but really, really loves teaching beginners. That's an important piece of it for me. There are a lot of very expert sourdough bakers. They don't all seem like they want beginners to learn. Emily really does. The master recipe is the backbone of everything that we're doing in the book. And once you have it down, the rest of the book opens up from there. So inside, you'll find more than 60 recipes, everything from classic country loaves to several different kinds of focaccia, all of which I have made multiple times. Bagels, cinnamon raisin swirl bread, which I you not literally made Johnny cry. I am not joking. And these rosemary and garlic like knots, sourdough knots. There's smart guidance on what to do with your discard. So there's like discard recipes plus full page photos that really, really just make you feel like you know exactly what the end product is supposed to look like. It's so, so good. I picked this up from the library. Obviously, I always try to do that with my cookbooks because it's the best way to figure out if you're actually going to want to spend the money on a cookbook because they're not cheap. They have to earn their keep for me, for me to actually purchase one. And within a couple of days of having this book at home, I had baked six of the recipes. Every one of them turned out perfectly and I was like, I immediate. I knew that I needed this and I have. You should see my copy. It is ridiculously page flagged. I've written in it, you know, because I'll write things about, like little notes for myself. What Emily Rafa does really well and what I think separates her from a lot of bread writers and bread Writers are their own thing. Like, I did not know this before, but it really is. Is the way she walks you through, step by step. She's very comforting, and she keeps things really simple. She has this tone that makes you feel like it's just not that serious and everything is going to be okay. And a cookbook that talks to me like that is one that I'm actually going to use, especially about bread, which I was really intimidated by, to be perfectly honest. So I absolutely think that every one of these recipes that I've done is one that I will make multiple times. But her very particular honey sourdough sandwich bread is one that I literally have to make two of every single week, because it's the only bread that. That anyone in my house will eat now. And we love it. It's become our basic. It's become what we call the plain Jane. So I think that this book sits side by side really well with one other book on sourdough called the Perfect Loaf by Maurizio Leo. And together, those two books form my perfect little mini sourdough library. Betsy recommended the Perfect Loaf to me, and she was absolutely right. That is like a compendium by an expert to really help you hone your techniques. And side by side with Emily Rafa's artisan sourdough, it's just the perfect one to punch. I think if you've been intimidated by sourdough, maybe you've tried a starter before, or you've tried. You've had a starter and you've tried a loaf before, you absolutely should dip in again. Do it with Emily's help, because she will help you lower your shoulders and remember that everything with sourdough, it's just not that serious. This is artisan sourdough made simple by Emily Rafa.
- [23:55]
A
Love this. I am now very hungry. I also think that somehow your algorithm has infiltrated mine, Meredith, because I am not making bread at my house, but the number of bread videos that I get on social media.
- [24:10]
B
Yeah, I've been talking about bread, and your phone is probably nearby, so.
- [24:13]
A
Well, and I. I Google the titles when you talk about them.
- [24:16]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [24:16]
A
But I also. I mean, woe is me. I will not turn on my oven if I can help it in the Arizona summer. So I have aspirations to someday make bread, but it will only be from October to March.
- [24:30]
B
Yeah, well. And however, you know, how warm you keep your house really depends on the success of your sourdough. And those of us who live in the, you know, the air conditioning tundra. Like, I Do like, I have to really take it. I have to take into account how cold I keep my house because sourdough loves a warm environment.
- [24:48]
A
But I would love to eat some sourdough.
- [24:51]
B
I wish you were close by, Katie. I would make you so much sourdough. I have been making this sourdough croissant loaf that is like a regular sourdough, but you put a stick of butter in it, you grate the stick of butter and then just as you're doing your coil folds or your, your stretch and folds, you're folding it in and then you just pop that baby in the oven. Every single person who has had this has been like, it's like sourdough, but it's like sourdough got real sexy and I don't quite know why it's a stick of butter.
- [25:25]
A
I mean. Cause we all know stick of butter will make anything better, so.
- [25:29]
B
Oh my gosh. So good.
- [25:31]
A
All right, well, someday I'll come visit you. I'll go to Waco, I'll eat bread,
- [25:36]
B
we'll stuff you full of bread and make you buy a bunch of books.
- [25:39]
A
It'll be great. I love it. All right. My second book this week is Steamy Romance. It is not steamy bread. It's steamy romance. I cannot wait to tell y' all about Chasing the Wild by Elliot Rose, which if that's not a pen name, she couldn't have written anything better than a cowboy romance with the last name Rose. I will happily admit that I bought this book based only on the sprayed edges and it was still a good choice. Rebecca and I had recently done an episode on Love and Chili Peppers about age gap romances when this one basically jumped off my shelf into my hands to tell me, hello, I am an age gap romance. Would you like to read me? So I picked it up and I dove right in. This is cowboy age gap romance that starts with a snowed in premise. We are checking a lot of boxes here. Layla, our female main character, is down to her last dollar, but on her way to a large animal veterinary internship when she's called about a loan that her ex boyfriend took out in her name and it has now come due. She drives to his last known address, a sprawling ranch in the mountains, to confront him and is greeted by his grumpy cowboy of a father who is perpetually disappointed in his good for nothing son. As Layla makes her way up the road to the ranch, the winter winds start blowing and by the time she gets up the hill, it's no longer safe to drive down again. Problem because now she has no internship to go to either. Money is the issue. Snowed in and missing her first day of her internship because the roads just won't clear, the two have to make do at the ranch together. Layla and Colton, her ex boyfriend's dad, triple his maturity and twice her age. As the snow keeps coming down, the house continues to heat up, probably enough to make sourdough starter as longing glances turn toward feelings and Nobody has to know this book was Steamy as all get out, I found myself rushing to do chores so I could listen to the audiobook, which was fine, but my favorite was when I could sit down and read my beautiful paper version instead. It has dual narrators on the audio version, which added a really great depth and grittiness, especially to Colton's narration, but this one is steamy enough to almost be uncomfortable listening, and we have talked about that. For me, that's not usually an issue, but for a lot of readers, when you're listening to romance, you're like, hi, can you get out of my ears please? Right? Romance I.O. does give this one five chili peppers on its scale, which is described as explicit and plentiful. On my personal scale, that's closer to a 4 because it doesn't include some of the elements that kick it all the way up to a five, which I'm not going to go into because sometimes children listen to this podcast, but just know that we are talking four and a half to five here. I told my girl Toni about this one after I read it because she grew up around horses and it felt like a great fit. She's already gone on to read more in the series, as this is a standalone romance series where each book features the complete story of a new couple. I'm very glad that I ended up with a pretty copy as it continues to live happily on my trophy shelf. Yep, it's back there right now. This one was delightful, warm, steamy, very cowboy. Definitely a little bit of a praise kink situation in here as well. This is Chasing the Wild by Elliot Rose.
- [29:01]
B
Okay, I like it. Well yeah, Katie. So often I already know that I don't want romance in my ears. We already know that about me. That's just my own personal preference. But so often when I put AirPods in, Jackson also has AirPods in and we're constantly having to disconnect from each other and I'm like, no. I just never, never ever, ever ever ever would would want there to be an accident where he was like, what is mom listening to like, that would just scar us both.
- [29:31]
A
This happens in my new car. I got a new car in February. And when it connects to my phone, it starts playing whatever audiobook was playing. I have tried to shut off that setting. I've done all kinds of things. So now my finger just hovers over the pause button. And as soon I don't care what I'm listening to, as soon as it starts playing, I hit pause and I go check. What is it actually going to expose my children to? That's.
- [29:52]
B
That's smart to pay attention to that. All right, my third book is squarely in my wheelhouse, but it was so, so, so good. I can't wait to talk about this one. This is called Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall. Here's our setup. The story starts in a quiet Dorset village. It's the dead of night. A sleepy village resident is driving home when he comes upon the fright of his life. A man propped up in the middle of the road, tied to a chair, a massive crown of stag antlers fixed to his head. That's the image that opens up the book and it is creepy as I'll get out. The dead man we quickly find is Jim Tiernan, the beloved landlord of the village pub, the White Hart. Like H A R T, he's the publican, if you will. And somebody went to a lot of things, theatrical trouble to leave him exactly like that. Then we have Detective Nicola Bridge, who has just moved back to Dorset, trading big city policing for the kind of sleepy country posting that's supposed to be good for a marriage that's having trouble. But now we've got to murder. So, so much for sleepy Nicola and her young, very inexperienced DC Harry Ward catch the case and they start pulling threads and they find that the pretty little village of Fleetcombe is hiding a great deal beneath its postcard surface. The victim was the man everyone confided in, which means he knew every secret in town and where it was buried. So the question isn't whether someone wanted him dead, it's which one of them did. All right, this is another book that came to me via a bookish friend, and she is another one who knew which buttons of mine to push. The this is a new UK police procedural. It's got that very strong introductory premise and here's the kicker. It's the debut novel from the creator of Broadchurch, which is one of my favorite British mystery series of all time. So I went in reading as a Broadchurch fan and that ended up being a really great thing, because there is no question that this book has a lot of things in it that made me. That also made me love what I found in Broadchurch. Most especially, it's got that great detective, in this case, DI Nicola Bridge. And just like in Broadchurch, you're not only getting that steady, capable leader, you're also getting some insight into the very recent, very difficult things that she's been navigating in her personal life. That juxtaposition, the calm leader of the first murder investigation that this town has seen in decades, set right alongside some very real pain in her marriage going south. That gave the book depth that I really, really liked. But at its core, this is just my favorite kind of book, especially when I'm feeling like the world is kind of going crazy. This is the kind of book where things make sense, people have motives that make sense, the detective follows clues in ways that make sense, and then everything gets wrapped up. And I know that Tidy can land like a backhanded compliment for a lot of people when they hear a mystery book being discussed, but I don't mean it that way at all. When I want this kind of book, Tidy is the whole assignment for me. And here's where the Broadchurch comparison gets even more interesting, because this is also where the two kind of go in different ways, one from the other. In Broadchurch, the murder at the center is extraordinarily difficult to even wrap your mind around. If you know, you know. But here we have a victim that was definitely found in strange circumstances. But we learn really quickly that there are all of these people that want this guy gone, which means you get to set aside a lot of broad churches about the heartbreak we have for the victim. And we're just trying to solve the puzzle of that. But here, this is a different, less dark reading state. So I think if you like any of those Brit Box mysteries, especially like Vera Happy Valley, you're really going to like this one. I also think if you really love early Tana French, Dublin Murder Squad Tana French. This is a book that I think you could pick up and be really happy about. The pacing here is better than Tana French, which to me, Tana French can get slow, a little slower than I like, but you still get that deep English village kind of slow burn. And the what secrets might be unearthed kind of situation, which feels really, really good. I like this one a ton. This is Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall.
- [34:34]
A
Sounds good. I like focusing in on a PI too, or a detective that has a complicated backstory yeah, that's a good one. That works well for me in my reading. Excellent. Okay. My third is also firmly in my wheelhouse and an author I've been really looking forward to since I read a book from her years ago and it's Kin by Tayari Jones. As soon as I found out Kin was announced, I pre ordered it right away. I have loved Tayari Jones since I first read An American Marriage, which a lot of US did in 2018. Eight years later, we finally got a new novel from this master storyteller and I couldn't wait to get it into my hands. I picked this one up in the summertime, even though it came out, I think in February of this year. It is true slightly Southern fiction though, so it felt right to lean into the swelter of it and read it during the hottest months here in Arizona. Right away we meet our main characters, our girls, Vernice and Annie. These girls are close in age and both are motherless and being raised by family members. While they aren't related and their lives are not at all the same, they are kin to one another. Vernice, or Niecy, as she's called by Annie, is being raised by her aunt after her mother was killed in a murder suicide when Niecy was just a baby. She leaves Honeysuckle, Louisiana, as soon as she's of age to attend Spelman College. There she broadens her horizons while learning about the true imbalances of this world that she inhabits. Annie's mother, however, left when she was just a baby, leaving Annie to be raised by her grandmother. As Annie comes of age, she becomes fixated on the idea of heading north and finding her mom and convincing her to come home. Each girl leaves Honeysuckle, this tiny, tiny town in Louisiana, knowing that the sister of her heart is out there rooting for her, cheering her on in her quest and praying for her success. They write each other letters as we follow each on their journey and their paths wind away and toward each other over the years. This is literary, it's sweeping, it's beautiful. This book was beautifully written with the depth and the character that we've come to expect from Tayari Jones's other works. I have loved her over the years. I did find her with American marriage like most of us did. But I've read the Silver Sparrow as well, and I think she just writes her characters with such care and tenderness, even when they're going through things that are really hard or making decisions that I wouldn't make for myself and that's important here. This is not tidy. This is life on the page. It is literary in that way. The ending of this one held surprise for me as a reader. It wasn't open ended like I complained about last week with one of my reads. It was just not what I thought would happen to these characters. It was hard, but it stuck with me. This book deeply celebrates the women in our lives, the ways that sisterhood is not always about who you were born into family with, but it's rather about the women who sister us along the way. It explores what makes someone a mom versus a mother, and it teases apart the nuanced ways that black womanhood especially is portrayed on the page. And Tyree Jones takes time to write her novels, but you can tell that she invests in it because of the time that she took. I gave it four and a half stars and honestly, the way I keep thinking about it, it's probably leaning to 5. I was just so surprised by the ending that I was like, oh, no, it's not five stars. But it is. It's a fantastic story. This is Kin by Tayari Jones.
- [38:08]
B
So do you think you just needed a little bit of time for the ending to set? Like, I don't know what the ending, but, like, you needed to accept it or.
- [38:15]
A
Absolutely, yes. Because even as I walked by it later on my shelves or I talked to friends who were going through my outgoing bookshelf and they were saying, what about this one? What about this one? The very first week or so, I was like, not that one. Hold on. Because I just don't know for you as a reader if that's gonna work for you. And then later, the next friends who came over that looked at that book on the shelf, I was like, you have to be willing to hold this one. You know, you have to be willing to sit with it and let her take you where she wants you to go at the end of this novel. And that was the difference. I also had to sit with it and let Tayari Jones take me on the journey that she wanted to go on. So, yeah, it was one of those. Like, it had to percolate. So immediately, four and a half. And then later I was like, no, that's not right. That's not right. It's five. Yeah, it's really. It's really exceptional.
- [39:06]
B
I'm so glad that that was good.
- [39:08]
A
Yes. All right, y'. All. Those were our six current reads. We had a lot to say this week, but we're excited to get into our deep dive about tracking the books that we only dip a toe into. And this came from a listener email from Amy Clark. She said, hello there. I find myself in a conundrum regarding my nonfiction reading and I don't know who else to ask, but she knew Meredith and Katie are going to have opinions about this. Normal readers, she says, don't seem to keep copious notes like I do. But I know you girls sure do. Anyway, here's my problem. Sometimes I purchase or borrow a book that I'll probably never read entirely. How to books, Cookbooks, generalized informational books. You know, books you pop into and out of. For example, if I'm trying to grow the world's greatest sunflower in my garden and I pick up a book on gardening, I'm probably only going to read the chapter on sunflowers. How do you mark those books in your reading trackers? It's not tbr, it's not finished. I don't consider them a dnf. I want a way to check them off without assigning a label. How do you handle this? I. I have a growing stack of these that are simply mocking me on my never ending reading lists.
- [40:20]
B
Help.
- [40:21]
A
Love, Amy. This is such an interesting question, Meredith.
- [40:24]
B
It's a real. Yeah, it's a really, really, really good question because I think real readers are going to be like talking out loud to their, you know, car sterers or wherever you're listening to us. Like yes, this is exactly it. So I do do this, but I have some pretty stringent rules about it.
- [40:44]
A
Yes.
- [40:45]
B
And, and so I think as with everything, you guys get so sick of me saying this is, you know, I always am asking myself what's the result that I'm looking for from my tracking that's going to be different from maybe not so different from what you're looking for but like Amy and I might have very different results that we're looking for from our tracking. But for me, I like to remember what I read because I a might want to bring it to the show, right? Like if it's non fiction, even if I, if it was super helpful for me and I only use 25% of it, but for that 25% it was like amazingly useful. Then I might bring that to the show and then in that case I would add it to my tracker if it had nothing to do with the show. But I just want to remember it because later I might want to get that book again or remember that was a great resource so I can recommend it to someone else. I do put that in and I Usually try to note it with got what I was looking for. So that's how I track those books. It's a book that I read and I got out of it what I was looking for.
- [41:55]
A
This is almost hilarious. But yes, exactly that. I don't put anything in my spreadsheet reading tracker or, or on my story graph unless I read it from COVID to cover. Right. Or if I DNF'd it. I do want to note that somewhere so that I have an idea about whether or not that's something that still needs to be read or if it's gone dead to me forever. If I do a dip in read recipes, how to projects, even sometimes like self help. Every once in a while I'll pick up an Enneagram book and be like, I probably don't wanna read this whole thing. I know quite a bit about the Enneagram, but I am interested in what this specific author has to say about my specific type. I don't count that as a red book. If there's something in it where I want to keep a piece of it, like a recipe or a crochet project, I will use my camera and I'll scan it in as a PDF onto my Google Drive so that I can refer back to just that little five page chunk later if needed. And I have different folders in my Google Drive for stuff like crochet projects or recipes that I want to try. But for Amy's specific tracking issue, I basically suggest exactly what you're talking about here, Meredith. To make an exclusive shelf or a tag depending on how she's tracking, called dipped in or got what I needed or I personally like wham bam yeah, because we know what the end of that is, right? So it's going to be something short and to the point and she can use that exclusive shelf to track off these books. It keeps it off of her read shelf. It keeps it off of her DNF shelf and her TBR shelf. But she has a record of it. Oh yeah, I already picked that up. That's why it sounds familiar. Or that's why. So that she's not kind of racking her brain. Why does this look familiar? Have I already read this? It's notated somewhere. Yeah. For our specific spreadsheet that we put together here at currently Reading, it would also be really easy to mark a book as read and then only put the number of pages actually read or hours listened to. If the goal that you're looking for is making sure that that's an accurate stat, that you have if that's something, right? If that's something that matters to you. As we like to say, no one is in charge of your reading life except for you. And there are no reading log or spreadsheet police or even storygraph police. Do what makes sense to your brain. Keep track of it in a way that works, right?
- [44:13]
B
And. But the only rule in my mind is that you do need to have a sense for yourself. The result that you are looking for. You have to have thought through it. It doesn't need. Again, it doesn't need to be anyone else's result. But in order to make decisions like this, having made that decision, what is my tracker for? Why does it matter to me? What am I going to use it for? That matters. Because then a whole bunch of your decisions come out of that one single decision. It just makes it a lot easier to figure out things out. I mean, I started keeping a log of my books. You know, we've Talked about this 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago, and it was primarily because I wanted to be able to recommend books to other people when I loved them. Or maybe, you know, I wanted to be able to recommend books really well to other people. That is something that really matters to me in my life. It's the whole reason that we started currently reading. I get so much joy out of being able to say, here's a book that I loved. This might sound good to you. I love it when people email me or DM me and say like, hey, what do you think about da da da da. For me, my tracker gives me the ability to do some quick searches now that it's all. It's not on paper anymore that enable me. So for me, that's the result I'm looking for from my tracker. So then all of my decisions about something like this can flow from that. I want to put it there. Can I just highlight though how much my soul loves that? She said, for example, if I'm trying to grow the world's greatest sunflower in my garden, I am so attracted to notions that are like that I want to learn to do this one thing really, really well, or I want this one result and everything else doesn't matter to me around this topic of conversation except this one thing. My soul is so attracted to that,
- [46:12]
A
yes, knowing your place and putting like the round peg in the round hole
- [46:17]
B
and just the process becomes so clear when you're like, well, there are a million different kinds of flowers. I don't need to learn how to garden. I am trying to do this and like all the decisions that you make that lead to that one. And she was using it as an example. Although, Amy, if you actually, if you actually did, if that actually was your goal, can we talk about it? I just love, I love that part of her message. So. But this is a really good question. We, of course want to hear from you guys. Do you track this kind of thing? When you heard us do this deep dive, what was your reaction? Y' all are crazy. Or thank God I found my people. Because I think about this too. We want to know that. How do you keep track of this? You know, all of the processes that you would use for something like this. We will put on social media. We'll do an Instagram post about this. Let us know. Let us know what you're thinking about this.
- [47:08]
A
Yes, definitely. Because even if this didn't quite scratch the itch for Amy, because she has very specific goals in mind, maybe one of your comments will and that that's why the community discussion around this matters. It is normal. Readers don't seem to care about this. But all y', all, we're all part of the special readers club. We're the currently reading readers.
- [47:30]
B
That's right. That's right. And Amy, you're listening to us, sister. If you achieved the world's greatest sunflower,
- [47:36]
A
we want to email it to us, please.
- [47:38]
B
Yeah, it reminds me of the Will Ferrell going into the coffee shop and being like, you guys did it. You've the world's greatest.
- [47:46]
A
Yes, yes. Bring that elf energy to your sunflowers. I love it.
- [47:50]
B
Oh, God, I love that so much.
- [47:52]
A
All right, y' all be. Before we go, we are going to talk about the bookish friend of the week, which this week I chose Claire. Here's what Claire says. I am totally in a reading slump brought on by a major life change and summer coming to an end. I'm a teacher. For the last few months, I've needed comfort reads and got dragged a little too far into Dramione fanfic. I'm looking for any recommendations to get me going again. Here are my last few five star reads. Emma M. Lyon. Obviously a hug for your soul. Big Fan by Alexandra Romanoff, Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh, London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, In a League of Her Own by Liz Tom Ford and America's Found Son by Bob Crawford. And then she says, help. Why am I highlighting this? Because Claire knows exactly who to ask for recommendations and how to get the ones that are going to work for her. Yes, she told us about herself, her current reading season, her recent five star reads that gave us this readerly profile to go off of the readers who responded to her request gave her a huge variety because her five star reads also span a lot of genres and types of reading. Some of them she had already read that were hits for her. Some went directly onto her TBR for this season. And I loved that she knew exactly how to ask for what she needed within the bookish friends group. And then they delivered.
- [49:18]
B
I love it. That was a great thread. I saw that too. And I was like, well done.
- [49:22]
A
Asking for God bless the teachers.
- [49:24]
B
Oh, well, first of all, God bless the teachers. And I always feel so bad when they have to go back. I'm like, oh, they were looking forward to summer so much.
- [49:32]
A
It's already come to a close.
- [49:34]
B
It's already over. Oh my goodness. So, yes, and I'm so glad that, that she got so many good recommendations.
- [49:41]
A
Yes, indeed. What do you have before we go? All right.
- [49:44]
B
I kind of love this new section because it has given me permission to track something that I haven't tracked before, which is books I dnf. Historically, you know, I don't actually track those. I kind of just move on. But in this case, now with this segment, I have reason to pay a little more attention to that. Here's a book I DNF'd and why this week. This is a certified reader know thyself moment, which is part of why I loved it. The book I DNF'd really surprised me. It's called Dissection of a Murder by Joe Murray. On paper, this one should absolutely work for me because I love a British legal thriller. This is also a Sunday Times best selling debut. It's about a barrister, an attorney in England whose name is Layla Reynolds. She lands her first big murder case defending a man accused of killing a judge and her client will not tell her anything. So it's an interesting premise. It's well written too. It truly, truly is. But if I had looked just a little bit closer, I would have realized it was not going to work for me because, and again, this is for me. I do not like an unreliable narrator trope. I just don't like it. I want to like it. Every time one of these comes along, I pick it up thinking, hoping that this will be the time that it works for me. But it never is. And I need to know myself as a reader, right? If I had taken that beat and really thought it through, I would have said, meredith, you have a lot of Other books. Anyone watching me on YouTube can see how many books I have behind me. All of these are unread. I have a lot of other books I could have read. So this is not this book's fault. Because I think if you do like an unreliable narrator or you're even just okay with it and you like a legal thriller, this is one to pick up for sure. Because it really is well done. Multiple readers that I really, really trust their taste have really liked this one. So it wasn't for me. I'm at peace with that. But it might very well be for you. It is good on audio. This is Dissection of a Murder by Joe Murray.
- [51:51]
A
Interesting, because I just got a question directly to me about what do catnip tropes mean in the spreadsheet? Cause we have a column for that, and that goes way back to season one or two, I think, when we had a discussion about catnip tropes versus Venus flytrap tropes. And Venus flytrap ones are the ones that tempt you in somehow, but then you get stuck in it. You get mired in it. Right. And it was actually a trick the whole time. I should. I'm a mystery reader. I should like an unreliable narrator. Right. And so that is part of knowing yourself as a reader. What is that keyword that either is catnip or it's actually a trick? It's a Venus fly trap trope for me.
- [52:31]
B
Right. Or what are those things that are. What are the things that don't work for you so much that it's going to cancel out all of these other things? The catnip. Right. And so Unreliable narrator is one of those things for me that it. I just need to know it's going to cancel out anything that is really, really good about it. Also, women that should be smart but are acting in a dumb way that may or may not also figure into this book. That's also something I really struggle with. So. But again, lots of people have. This has really, really worked for people. So your mileage may vary. I hope it does.
- [53:07]
A
And tell us about it.
- [53:08]
B
If it did, let let us know. All right, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me. I'm Meredith at Meredith Monday Schwartz on
- [53:18]
A
Instagram and you can find me Katie at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Our editor is Megan Putam Evans, and you can find her on Instagram at most of Megan's Reads Full show notes
- [53:28]
B
with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps, so you can zoom right to where we talked about. It can be found in our show notes and also on our website@currentlyreading podcast.com
- [53:39]
A
you can also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram, chime in to our discussions, or email us @hellourrentlyreading podcast.com. if you head to our website or our substack, you'll be able to sign up for our Reader Know Thyself newsletter, which helps you hone in on exactly what works in your reading life, your catnip tropes and your Venus flytraps. If you're interested in watching this episode and getting that blue check for each one, you can also find us on YouTube where we're constantly adding new features. Is anybody curious what a blue check is?
- [54:11]
B
Does anybody know what a blue Katie's been saying this for weeks and I didn't know what she what she meant.
- [54:17]
A
Y', all, I got a blue check today. Meredith's Boston terrier is named Blue and he sleeps on the chair behind her and every once in a while he pops up and he rearranges the pillows underneath him and he scruffles about a little bit and then lays back down silently. When you see blue, you get the blue check. That's all that means.
- [54:35]
B
At the end of last week's episode, I was like, katie, I feel really bad about this, but what the hell is a blue check on YouTube? I thought it was like a technical thing.
- [54:47]
A
No, no, it's not even like a verified watcher or anything like that. It's just a made up little piece of jargon. It's ridiculous. That's funny.
- [54:55]
B
All right, well, if you love this content, there's so much more for you behind the paywall. On Patreon, we have hundreds and hundreds of hours of fantastic episodes. You also get a ton of community as we've talked about. Fantastic bookish community. And you help keep this podcast commercial free if you support us. So feel free to do that. You can also, and we would love it if you would rate and review us on Apple podcasts or on Spotify. Those things really, really help us to be fed up higher in the search engine results. And you can also do us a favor by shouting us out on social media or telling one of your bookish friends about us. Every one of those things helps us to find our perfect audience.
- [55:42]
A
Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.
- [55:48]
B
All right, until next week, may your
- [55:50]
A
coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable.
- [55:52]
B
Happy reading, Katie.
- [55:54]
A
Happy reading, Meredith.