Season 7, Episode 40: Bookish Friends Step Up + Boss My TBR

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Bookish Moments: shifting our perspectives and bookish friends stepping up
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
Deep Dive: we are bossing some more TBRs
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)

1:23 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

5:36 - Our Current Reads

5:47 - My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Kaytee)

8:16 - Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

8:21 - Beartown by Fredrik Backman

10:16 - Night Film by Marisha Pessl (Meredith)

15:23 - The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Kaytee)

20:29 - The Big Four by Agatha Christie (Meredith)

22:38 - Poirot by Mark Aldridge

24:28 - The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

26:00 - Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa (Kaytee)

26:38 - Pride by Ibi Zoboi

31:05 - The Beast and the Bookseller by Eva Devon (Meredith)

35:15 - The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare

36:42 - Boss My TBR

From DactylJD

38:19 - Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall

39:42 - The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

39:45 - Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

39:48 - Real Americans by Rachel Khong

39:51 - Belle Green by Alexandra Lapierre

39:55 - The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

From Terri Melton

44:42 - Hyde by Craig Russell

44:43 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

44:49 - Falling by T.J. Newman

45:02 - Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London

45:04 - Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie

45:07 - To Shape A Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

45:11 - A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher

49:05 - Meet Us At The Fountain

49:12 - I wish for us to try new things. (Kaytee)

51:32 - I wish to press Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore. (Meredith)

51:38 - Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore

Support Us:

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Bookish Friends Receive:

The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. May’s IPL is a new indie to the rotation - Dog Eared Books in Ames, Iowa.
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
The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts

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The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna

Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans

Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. 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 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
0:21.5	having strong opinions, so get ready. We are light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk,
0:26.8	and our conversations will always be spoiler-free. Today we'll discuss our current reads,
0:31.1	a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit The Fountain. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four
0:35.8	and full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas, and our listeners, well, they know how to deep dive.
0:42.3	And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama four living in Arizona, and sometimes past Katie is overly optimistic.
0:48.6	This is episode number 40 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here.
0:53.1	Oh, man, past Meredith is my best friend. She is
0:56.6	the key to my existence and I'm hoping that past Katie does the same thing for you.
1:03.9	She failed this week, but it's okay. Oh no. Oh no. All right. Well, we're going to get into that.
1:09.2	But before we do, we're going to let you know that, yes, we are going to boss two people's TBRs this week. I know you guys love this segment. And we are, we have two really good ones, I think, to do. But before that, we are going to get into our bookish moments of the week. Katie, tell us about Pass Katie. Oh, pass Katie was so sweet,
1:29.2	and she planned a reading retreat for me this weekend. It was supposed to be ending today.
1:34.8	A few days away solo, just me and the dogs, planned many weeks in advance, blocked on the calendar
1:40.6	and everything. But Meredith, life conspired in a big way against me this week with
1:46.2	various high urgency, high importance things that came up just days before, some of them hours
1:53.7	before I was supposed to be packing my car to drive up north. Oh, no. They were impossible to
1:59.2	ignore or push off and the stress ate into all the joy of
2:02.8	getting a bag out that I could put, you know, 12 books in that was like, because you plan for
2:08.1	three times as many books as you're actually going to read. And yeah, I just gave myself a different
2:12.5	type of gift. I allowed myself time to work on the things that were high importance, high urgency.
2:18.2	I took away the three and a half hours of driving that the actual retreat required
2:22.1	and then scheduled a few solid blocks of reading time at home instead.
	...

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