Season 7, Episode 33: The Perfect Reading Ambiance + Finding Hidden Gems

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

Allthebooks, Books, Read, Arts, Bookpodcast, Reading, Whatshouldireadnext, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Roxanna are discussing:

Bookish Moments: the perfect reading experience and hearing others talk about books
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
Deep Dive: how we find those hidden gem books
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)

1:43 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

3:24 - The Talking Scared Podcast

3:44 - Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

3:57 - Talking Scared Podcast episode 226

5:38 - Our Current Reads

5:52 - The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (Roxanna)

15:06 - Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette (Meredith)

20:02 - Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah

20:29 - Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

22:29 - Ruin Road by Lamar Giles (Roxanna)

25:49 - The Getaway by Lamar Giles

26:32 - When The Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (Meredith)

26:37 - Starter Villain by John Scalzi

26:44 - The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

32:45 - The Baddest B*tch in the Room by Sophia Chang (Roxanna)

36:47 - The Unseen World by Liz Moore (Meredith)

37:45 - God of the Woods by Liz Moore

44:38 - Finding Hidden Gems

44:56 - The Unseen World by Liz Moore

46:56 - Get Booked Podcast

47:07 - Currently Reading website

47:27 - From the Front Porch podcast

48:08 - Canada Reads

48:12 - Australian Fiction Prize

48:14 - Nebula Awards

48:15 - Hugo Awards

48:34 - Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction

50:03 - Ruin Road by Lamar Giles

52:40 - KJ Charles on Goodreads

55:26 - The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

57:31 - Meet Us At The Fountain

57:40 - I wish there was a site that categorized books by places around the world. (Roxanna)

58:08 - Tripfiction.com

58:18 - Around the World in 80 books group on Goodreads

58:32 - Strong Sense of Place podcast

58:49 - Shepherd.com

59:40 - If you haven’t yet, read God of the Woods by Liz Moore. (Meredith)

59:43 - God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. March’s IPL comes to you from our tried and true partner, An Unlikely Story in Plainville, MA.
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.
All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller
From the Editor’s Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry
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Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans

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Transcript

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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.
0:24.6	We're light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk, and our descriptions 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.
0:34.6	I'm Meredith Munday Schwartz, a mom of four and full-time
0:38.4	CEO living in Austin, Texas, and hearing people talk about scary books is my jam. And I'm
0:44.7	Roxanna Kasimkara, a mom, a marketer, and a mood reader living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And this
0:51.0	week, I'm embracing the capriciousness of March. This is episode number 33 of
0:56.4	season seven. And we're so glad you're here. Yes, Roxanna, I am so glad that you're here. As always,
1:02.6	we love to record together. And I know we have several books we are really excited about talking
1:08.8	together about. Yeah, today is going to be such a
1:11.8	fun conversation, Mayor. Absolutely. We're going to have to fight to keep it under two hours or
1:16.3	90 minutes like a journey to three pines. We love a 90 minute episode. Okay. Yes, we really do.
1:22.3	All right. So we are going to do a deep dive today about the question of how do you find hidden gems?
1:30.7	We hear people talk about that a lot, but how do you actually find them?
1:34.8	Spoiler alert, this is going to be a little bit of a one-sided conversation because
1:38.5	Roxanna is really, really good at it.
1:41.0	But before we do that, let's get to our bookish moments of the week.
1:45.0	Roxanna, what is yours? Okay, well, Meredith, I know March in Austin is beautiful and sunny.
1:52.1	I can see in your tank top now. Yes. As you see, I have a shawl and a sweater and a long sleeve.
1:58.7	You know, it is snowy and stormy and rainy and we had kind of the winter is
2:04.1	February we've had in many moons. So I'm really sort of embracing that and embracing kind of
	...

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