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Currently Reading

Season 7, Episode 41: Poolside Reading + Bookish Friends' Best Books Of 2024

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.71.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

  • Bookish Moments: poolside reading and friends who know your reading tastes

  • Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately

  • Deep Dive: it’s finally time to let you know the bookish friends’ best books of 2024!

  • 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)

2:30 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

6:42 - Our Current Reads

6:47 - Tempest by Beverly Jenkins (Kaytee)

10:31 - Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Meredith)

19:41 - The Dark Maestro by Brendan Slocumb (Kaytee)

19:56 - The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

21:40 - Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb

24:19 - Campfires & Corpses by Nikki Weber (Meredith)

28:10 - Woodworking by Emily St. James (Kaytee)

28:45 - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

31:59 - This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead (Meredith)

37:33 - Bookish Friends’ Best Books of 2024

40:11 - The Women by Kristen Hannah (#4)

40:13 - The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (#4)

40:17 - Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love by isthisselfcare (#4)

40:40 - The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (#3)

40:45 - Margot’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (#1)

40:47 - All The Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (#1)

43:36 - James by Percival Everett

43:37 - Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy

43:38 - The Wedding People by Alison Espach 

44:35 - In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

44:57 - The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

45:13 - All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby 

45:30 - You Are Here by David Nicholls

45:31 - The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

45:47 - Colton Gentry’s Third Act by Jeff Zentner

46:23 - The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (#1 disliked)

46:26 - The Fury by Alex Michalides (#2 disliked)

46:30 - Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (#3 disliked)

46:33 - The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (#3 disliked)

46:47 - Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

46:48 - Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

46:56 - I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

47:05 - Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

47:13 - The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

47:15 - All This and More by Peng Shepherd

47:30 - The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

49:18 - What Happened to Nina by Dervla McTiernan

50:13 - Meet Us At The Fountain

50:17 - I wish to press This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan. (Kaytee)

50:19 - This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan

52:38 - Shawnathemom on Instagram

54:31 - I wish book slumps weren’t a thing. (Meredith)

 

Support Us:

Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch

Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon

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

Connect With Us:

The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads

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

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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

0:22.0

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,

0:31.2

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 making

0:39.4

reader friends is incredibly beneficial. And I'm Katie Cobb. Homestchooling Mama 4, living in Arizona,

0:45.5

and it's mid-May, but it's officially summer reading season for me. This is episode number 41, season

0:51.5

seven, and we are so glad you're here. Oh, yeah, it is, it is summer reading.

0:56.3

We're going to hit 104 this week, which means you definitely are in summer reading. Yeah, actually,

1:01.2

it's 102 here today. It'll get hotter, but we have this cool stretch that was very weird for

1:06.9

May. And so it's feeling like it's actually exciting for it to be warm, which is weird. So,

1:12.9

I don't know. We're trying it out. We're trying out a new weather pattern this year.

1:16.2

Let's look at the upsides, right? Absolutely. Indeed. All right. Well, we are going to let you know that

1:22.7

we're going to do a deep dive today. It is May, Katie. It is. It is. It's fine. It's fine. We make the

1:31.3

rules. It's our show. Thanks for watching. Right. But it is strange because we are going to do a deep dive

1:38.9

today that is the best books of 2024 according to the currently reading bookish friends. We're completeists

1:46.9

here at currently reading. We forgot to do it. We need to get it done. We do. We do. And I was late

1:53.7

sending out the survey about this. And I'm positive. It's been months now. So half of them probably

1:59.3

forgot what they put on the survey it's

2:01.5

fine it's going to be great to be fair the end of 2024 was a little bit of an s-h-show period of time

2:08.2

for you especially for me yes you do our you keep the trains running on time so I think

2:14.4

giving some grace makes a lot of sense here. It's still interesting to see what

...

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