Season 7, Episode 28: Books As Equalizers + Losing Momentum In Our Reading
Currently Reading
Meredith Schwartz
4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing:
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Bookish Moments: books as equalizers and kiddos who love books as much as we do
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Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
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Deep Dive: what we do to keep momentum in our reading lives
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The Fountain: we visit our perfect fountain to make wishes about our reading lives
Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site)
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1:33 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week
6:35 - Grassrootz Bookstore
8:08 - Our Current Reads
8:21 - Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Meredith)
10:26 - The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
11:44 - Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
11:55 - Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle (Kaytee)
12:21 - Pounded by the Pound by Chuck Tingle (amazon link)
12:31 - Taken by the Gay Unicorn by Chuck Tingle (amazon link)
12:41 - Aardvark Book Club
16:30 - The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (Meredith)
17:41 - The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
22:13 - Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Kaytee)
22:35 - The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
26:16 - Come Closer by Sara Gran (Meredith)
27:42 - 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered by Sadie Hartmann
31:08 - It Came from the Trees by Ally Russell (Kaytee)
35:19 - Deep Dive: Losing Momentum In Our Reading
49:21 - Meet Us At The Fountain
49:27 - I wish to ask if you can find actual smutty books on the shelves in bookstores (like monster romance etc with the wild covers). (Meredith)
50:01 - The Dragon’s Bride by Katee Robert
50:32 - Neon Gods by Katee Robert
51:07 - Open Door Romance via Novel Neighbor
51:08 - The Novel Neighbor
51:15 - The Ripped Bodice Bookstore
52:04 - Still Life by Louise Penny (special edition w/sprayed edges, releases Sep. 30, 2025)
52:27 - I wish it was easier to get pretty versions of our favorite books. (Kaytee)
52:35 - The Hunger Games box set by Suzanne Collins (special edition with sprayed edges)
53:23 - Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
53:53 - Quicksilver by Callie Hart (special edition, pre order, releases Aug 19, 2025)
55:11 - The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
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Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | 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. |
| 0:23.6 | So get ready. |
| 0:24.8 | We are light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler-free. |
| 0:29.6 | Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit the fountain. |
| 0:34.0 | I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four and full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas, and I think books are the great equalizer. |
| 0:41.3 | And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama four living in Arizona, and part of the fun of raising readers is always having a bookstore date. This is episode number 28 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here. Katie, you're so lucky that one of your kids will |
| 0:56.0 | always want to go to the bookstore with you. I have no joy with my youngest. If I say I'm going |
| 1:00.5 | to the bookstore, I might as well have said, hey, do you want to go to the dentist? |
| 1:05.7 | My kids actually like the dentist too, so that doesn't work in my family either. |
| 1:10.3 | They're sick. they're sick they're sick |
| 1:12.3 | they're sick Meredith today we are going to talk about for our deep dive losing momentum as a reader |
| 1:21.1 | and that could be a mood thing a time thing a funk thing a state of the world thing whatever it is |
| 1:26.7 | affecting your reading mojo. We're going to |
| 1:29.9 | talk about that a little bit. But first, we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish |
| 1:34.0 | moments of the week. What do you got? All right. So this week, we are doing, in my day job, |
| 1:40.2 | here comes the guide. We are doing some hiring. So with hiring, of course, comes lots and lots and |
| 1:46.6 | lots of interviews, which we do video interviews because we're a fully distributed company. So |
| 1:51.7 | everything we do is online or done virtually. And so we've been doing all of these interviews. |
| 1:57.1 | And I realize this week we happen to meet up with several people who when I will often |
| 2:03.4 | ask the question something along the lines of like if if you didn't have to like if money was no |
| 2:10.1 | object if you could be as rich as you possibly wanted to be what would a Wednesday look like for you |
| 2:15.7 | and so oftentimes people will mention that they love to read. |
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