Episode 33: The Best BIG Bricks That'll Blow Your Mind
The Currently Reading Podcast
Meredith Schwartz
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2019
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're back to regularly scheduled programming around here and happy to welcome so many new listeners!
You'll hear a "bookish moment of the week" from each of us: a TV-show experience that only happened because of bookish friendships, and a win in the "raising readers" world, one of our favorite places to report about!
Next, we discuss our current reads for the week: brand new titles, buzzed about books and ones we think need more play in the book world.
For our deep dive this week, we are focusing on Brick books for the Currently Reading challenge. We qualify these as books over 700 (or maybe 650) pages, and we've got a lot of them for you to choose from.
As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we'd like to press into every reader's hands. This week's picks include two more giant tomes: an unforgettable, series that defies genre categorization, and a non-fiction biography.
As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you'd like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don't scroll down!
.
.
.
.
.
7:26 - Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
9:40 - Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
10:44 - Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
10:48 - Episode 14 with Amy Allen Clark
11:01 - Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
12:57 - He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly
17:48 - Lucy & Andy Neanderthal by Jeffrey Brown
18:00 - Diary of A Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
20:15 - Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown
20:17 - Goodnight, Darth Vader by Jeffrey Brown
20:55 - Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
24:15 - Interview with Dani Shapiro on the Happier Podcast
24:54 - The Current by Tim Johnston
29:27 - Bookshelf Thomasville Shelf Subscription
32:10 - 11/22/63 by Stephen King
32:39 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
32:55 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
33:02 - The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet
33:33 - The Physician by Noah Gordon
34:48 - A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
35:04 - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
35:46 - Shogun by James Clavell
35:56 - Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
36:32 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck
35:38 - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
37:02 - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
37:45 - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
38:00 - I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
38:39 - The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
38:58 - What Should I Read Next episode about big books
39:09 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
39:38 - The Passage (trilogy) by Justin Cronin
40:33 - It by Stephen King
40:35 - The Stand by Stephen King
40:35 - The Shining by Stephen King
40:36 - Needful Things by Stephen King
40:59 - Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
43:18 - Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
44:27 - Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
45:26 - Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
*Please note that all book titles linked above are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey readers, welcome to the currently reading podcast. We are two bookish best friends |
| 0:15.2 | who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently, and as you know, strong opinions |
| 0:22.0 | are welcome. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz a mom of four and |
| 0:25.6 | full-time CEO living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I read to help me manage |
| 0:30.6 | through the very busiest seasons of my crazy job. |
| 0:35.0 | And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama four aged 8 and under, living in New Mexico, and I read, |
| 0:41.0 | but every once in a while I get peer pressured into watching a TV show as well. This is episode number 33 and we're so glad you're here. |
| 0:48.0 | We did give you some peer pressure last episode. |
| 0:52.0 | That was, yeah. |
| 0:52.8 | Episode 32 was rough on me. |
| 0:54.5 | You and Mindy were. |
| 0:55.6 | We gave, were strong opinioned. |
| 0:58.1 | Right. |
| 0:58.3 | We gave you the rough hustle is what we gave you. |
| 1:01.0 | Totally. |
| 1:01.5 | Right. All right, good. |
| 1:03.0 | Well then, in just a second, we're going to get into our bookish moments of the week. |
| 1:06.8 | But first we wanted to make sure listeners that you guys know our deep dive this week, which |
| 1:11.0 | is going to come on the other end of the show is going to be |
| 1:14.3 | about those brick books books that are over 657 hundred pages and more if you're |
| 1:20.9 | doing the currently reading challenge we're going to give you some great ideas for brick books that you might want to dip your toe into. |
| 1:27.0 | Mm-hmm. And our listeners, a lot of them already know that this is like my scary spot for books like I don't like |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meredith Schwartz, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Meredith Schwartz and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.