Season 7, Episode 42: Replant Your Reading + How To Talk About Books In The Wild

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

Bookish Moments: reading slumps and how to replant your reading life
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
Deep Dive: how to talk about books “in the wild”
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)

1:21 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

7:18 - Our Current Reads

7:37 - Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen (Meredith)

14:11 - My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (Kaytee)

14:22 - CR Season 3: Episode 1

18:34 - My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

19:49 - The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan (Meredith)

24:49 - She Memes Well by Quinta Brunson (Kaytee)

28:02 - Lexicon by Max Barry (Meredith)

31:26 - The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

31:35 - Babel by R.F. Kuang

33:52 - The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl (Kaytee)

35:01 - The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

35:03 - World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

35:08 - Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

35:09 - The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

35:12 - An Immense World by Ed Yong

37:14 - How To Talk About Books In The Wild

39:27 - Shawnathemom on Instagram

43:56 - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

45:56 - Lexicon by Max Barry

47:24 - Babel by R.F. Kuang

52:10 - Meet Us At The Fountain

52:19 - I wish the next book I talked about was a book I liked, rather than a book that I did not. (Meredith)

52:36 - A Small Porch by Wendell Berry

54:47 - I wish to always have the right book for the person in front of me. (Kaytee)

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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
0:21.5	strong opinions. So get ready. We are light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk, and our
0:26.7	conversations will always be spoiler-free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive,
0:31.7	and then we'll visit The Fountain. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, a mom of four and full-time
0:36.3	CEO living in Austin, Texas,
0:38.7	and I wish that reading slumps had better timing.
0:42.1	And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama four, living in Arizona, and I'm thinking about
0:46.1	replanting my reading life.
0:48.4	This is episode number 42 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here.
0:52.3	Oh, that sounds interesting. I'm like living in
0:55.5	allegory land right now. I don't know where I am. I like it. It's fun. I'm very interested in that.
1:02.2	Y'all, today we are going to talk about how to talk about books without making people roll their
1:07.9	eyes at you, which is a little bit of a cumbersome deep dive to spit out
1:12.5	off the cuff. But we're very excited to get into this topic. It was requested by a listener.
1:18.0	So first, we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week.
1:22.6	Meredith, what is yours? All right. Well, my bookish moment of the week is actually not exactly of this last week,
1:30.3	but it's when I was on vacation in Hawaii, I got into a massive reading slump in the middle
1:38.4	of not only a week of vacation, but a week of vacation that was really well designed to give me a lot of
1:46.0	reading time. And I just want to kind of call out the fact that that is one of the most frustrating
1:52.1	things. When you're in a place where you're like, I'm going to be able to just read and read,
1:58.3	and then nothing you pick up feels good to you. Yes. You just can't,
2:04.1	you just can't get into it. I had a Kindle full of options. So it's not like I was stuck on vacation
	...

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