Episode 34: Engrossing Non-fiction + How We Rate our Books (and an Unplanned Rant about Bookstagram)

The Currently Reading Podcast

Meredith Schwartz

Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kaytee and Meredith are back in your earbuds for some more great book chat this week!

You'll hear a "bookish moment of the week" from each of us: Meredith's Little Free Library update and Kaytee's piano lesson reading.

Next, we discuss our current reads for the week: there's a lot of interesting non-fiction in this week's selections, as well as a number of titles that friends and family had pressed into our hands a few episodes ago!

For our deep dive this week, we are focusing on book ratings. What does 1-star mean to you and what does 5-star mean to you? We also take an unexpected detour into the bookstagram world and the way that "bookstagrammers" follow-up on their book posts.

As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we'd like to press into every reader's hands. We've got a title that has Amazon all confused and one that serves as a companion to a previous book press.

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!

1:09 - Lost Boy by Christina Henry

1:46 - Episode 19 with Meredith's brother Scott

6:33 - Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

9:33 - Episode 29 with Anna Hithersay

9:35 - White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

13:11 - The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson

16:20 - Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

17:28 - Currently Reading Challenge for 2019!

17:57 - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

20:14 - Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

21:00 - Big Nate: In A Class By Himself by Lincoln Peirce

23:27 - A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindburgh

32:51 - The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

34:28 - The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

34:31 - He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly

43:10 - North and South by John Jakes

43:15 - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

47:46 - Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

48:18 - The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton

*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

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0:00.0	Hey readers. Welcome to the currently reading podcast. We are two bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently and get your library card ready. We have got lots of great books for you this time.
0:24.3	I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four
0:26.5	and full-time CEO living in the San Francisco Bay Area,
0:29.6	and I read to expand the ways I connect to people.
0:33.7	And I'm Katie Combe, a homeschooling mama four, aged eight and under, living in New Mexico, and I think
0:39.1	the surest way to slump is to let others dictate your reading life. This is episode number 34 and we are so
0:46.0	glad you're here. We are and I so wholeheartedly agree with you about that. I think we've both
0:52.1	been battling this a little bit lately.
0:54.0	We have.
0:55.0	Yes, yes, my, and it's because I've gotten behind a lot of shoulds.
0:59.0	I've really, I've gotten, I've let myself say, I should read that or I shouldn't read that.
1:05.0	Or somebody really thinks that you should read that?
1:07.0	Right.
1:08.0	Right.
1:09.0	Right. Or like I've wanted to read Lost Boy really badly, but I felt like, oh Katie just talked about, you know what I mean?
1:15.1	So I've gotten behind a lot of shoulds in my reading.
1:17.8	Well, why don't we focus on the better side of reading then and tell me about your bookish
1:22.2	moment of the week? Well, your bookish moment of the week.
1:24.0	Well my bookish moment of the week is not going to surprise you at all because I put I put some
1:28.6	stuff on social media about it but my little free library went in on Sunday, which is a few days ago.
1:36.3	And today's Thursday, when we record on Thursdays, and it went in.
1:39.9	We had this beautiful weekend, and I was so grateful because my brother Scott who's so
	...

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