Episode 38: Five-Star Novels + Our Bookish Demerits
The Currently Reading Podcast
Meredith Schwartz
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2019
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kaytee and Meredith are back in your earbuds this week to bring you Episode 38, including a few literary confessions or demerits.
We have a few important announcements right at the top of the show, one of which requires your help, listeners! Send us your Ask Us Anything questions via email, Direct Message, or as a comment on show notes, and we'll feature them in a future episode! If we use your question, we'll send you a coveted Currently Reading bookmark (and our everlasting thanks, of course).
You'll hear a "bookish moment of the week" from each of us: an indie bookstore day recap and a bookish "retirement" gift.
Next, we discuss our current reads for the week. We both read quite a few books that we REALLY loved this week, so don't hesitate to use those show notes below!
For our deep dive this week, we have decided to give ourselves bookish "demerits" a la Gretchen Rubin's Happier podcast. These are places in our reading lives where we think we could improve. Sometimes we commiserate with each other and sometimes we chide each other!
As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we'd like to press into every reader's hands. This week we are talking about a fantastic mystery/police procedural, and a multi-generational family saga.
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!
.
.
.
.
.
5:23 - Thriftbooks.com my favorite used book website!
6:02 - A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
9:43 - Harry's Trees by Jon Cohen
11:07 - A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
11:24 - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
14:18 - Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson
15:22 - Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
15:23 - The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
15:25 - Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
16:49 - My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd
17:15 - The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms
21:18 - A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer
21:42 - Beauty by Robin McKinley
25:16 -Uprooted by Naomi Novik
25:17 - Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
26:48 - Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
27:05 - Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat by Patricia Williams
27:47 - The Elephant in the Room by Tommy Tomlinson
28:38 - The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
30:45 - Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
30:47 - The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
31:01 - Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend
31:02 - Winterhouse by Ben Guterson
32:30 - Robert Galbraith series
32:45 - Three Pines series by Louise Penny
32:47 - HP Series by JK Rowling
33:02 - Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins
33:02 - Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer
33:34 - Scythe by Neal Shusterman
42:01 - A Place of Execution by Val McDermid
42:09 - Tana French books
43:25 - Distant Echo by Val McDermid
43:51 - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
*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 who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently, and we don't shy away from having strong and sometimes snarky opinions, so get ready. |
| 0:24.1 | I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four, and full-time CEO living in the San Francisco Bay Area, |
| 0:29.6 | and one thing I know for sure is that book hankervers are real. |
| 0:34.5 | And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama four aged 8 and under, living in New Mexico, and I read voraciously |
| 0:40.7 | when I'm stressed out. |
| 0:42.4 | This is episode number 38 and we are so glad you're here. |
| 0:46.6 | That's very interesting because when I am super stressed that's when my reading tends to go down |
| 0:51.4 | So I think that's a great thing that when you're stressed your reading goes up. I think that's a great thing that when you're stressed |
| 0:53.6 | your reading goes up. I think that's a great coping mechanism. |
| 0:56.8 | Unless it leads to procrastinating. Like, you know, I'd rather sit down and read this book |
| 1:01.4 | than pack my children's toys so we can move next week. |
| 1:05.0 | Yeah, which is what's happening right now. |
| 1:08.0 | That's true. |
| 1:09.0 | Yes, that can definitely be, that's a very stressful thing to do a big move too. I mean it's so so much work. |
| 1:14.8 | It's a little crazy. Yeah. It's okay. Anyway I'm excited to be here today and I wanted to let our |
| 1:21.7 | listeners know that we have a deep dive coming up today where we're giving ourselves bookish demerits, which, you know, it's a little bit of a confession time and maybe some helping each other out on that. |
| 1:32.6 | And then also I just a reminder from last week |
| 1:35.8 | that we are still looking for, ask us anything questions. |
| 1:38.7 | We're going to be doing a special episode later in the summer |
| 1:41.0 | and we want to know what you guys want to know about us. |
| 1:44.4 | So send those over to us, direct message, email, however you want to get them to us, we can't |
| 1:49.7 | wait to hear what you want to know. |
... |
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.

