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Currently Reading

Season 8, Episode 14: Reading Merit Badges + Books We Recently Set Aside

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.71.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

  • Bookish Moments: audiobook samples and author shoutouts

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

  • Deep Dive: books we've recently set aside and why

  • 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).

1:26 - Ad For Ourselves

4:27 - Currently Reading Patreon

4:40 - Our Bookish Moments of the Week

6:09 - The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

9:50 - Our Current Reads

10:22 - Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins (Meredith)

13:50 - Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

13:54 - 17 Years Later by J.P. Pomare

14:36 - Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy (Kaytee)

14:45 - Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

14:51 - Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

18:04 - What the Deep Water Knows by Miranda Cowley Heller  (Meredith)

18:54 - The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

23:07 - Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle (Kaytee)

23:26 - Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

26:15 - Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle

26:54 - The Girl Who Reads on the Metro by Christine Feret-Fleury (Meredith, amazon link)

30:37 - The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

31:52 - Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Kaytee)

32:13 - Waterstones

32:14 - Blackwell's

34:16 - The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell

38:20 - Books We Recently DNF'd

40:47 - Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (Meredith NRN)

43:30 - All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman (Kaytee DNF)

45:16 - Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Meredith DNF with prejudice)

47:47 - Babel by R.F. Kuang

48:11 - Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

49:50 - We Are the Light by Matthew Quick (Kaytee DNF with prejudice)

51:58 - The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

52:30 - The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow (Meredith - not sure!)

53:42 - The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

53:49 - A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

55:01 - Fire by John Boyne (Kaytee DNF)

55:14 - Water by John Boyne

55:15 - Earth by John Boyne

55:16 - Air by John Boyne

55:18 - The Elements by John Boyne (all 4 novellas combined)

55:27 - Blackwell's

56:45 - The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

57:46 -  Sarah's Bookshelves Live - The Elements by John Boyne discussion (only for patreon subscribers)

58:34 - Meet Us At The Fountain

59:14 - I wish for author Cameos. (Meredith)

59:17 - Cameo

1:01:17 - I wish for a reading merit badge. (Kaytee)

 

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Bookish Friends Receive:

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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. 

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

Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans

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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

0:21.7

from having strong opinions. So get ready. We are light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk,

0:27.5

and our conversations will always be spoiler-free. Today we'll discuss our current reads,

0:32.1

a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit The Fountain. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm a mom

0:36.7

and a Mimi and a full-time

0:38.2

CEO living in Austin, Texas. And sometimes I let the algorithm help me choose my next book.

0:45.5

Sounds dangerous. I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama for living in Arizona. And I think readers

0:50.8

make the best fan girls. This is episode number 14 of season 8, and we are so glad you're here.

0:57.1

Readers are big fan girls.

0:58.9

We love to fangirl over authors, over fictional characters who are hot, over each other.

1:05.5

Pretty copies of books.

1:07.1

Over our favorite podcasters.

1:09.6

It could be anyone.

1:10.6

Yep.

1:12.9

All right, y'all, we are going to let you know at the top here that our deep dive today is going to be about three recent DNFs for both of us. You have

1:18.9

asked us to do this, and sometimes it's a little hard for some of us to DNF. So we're going to talk

1:24.6

about it anyway. But first, we have some mischief to manage. Meredith,

1:29.1

it is the first Monday of the month. It's November 3rd. And that means it's time for our one ad for

1:34.5

ourselves each month. And this month, we're doing something a little different. Right. We are welcoming

1:39.6

a bunch of new listeners, which we're always so happy about. So we will remind our new listeners that we do

1:45.3

this once a month, as Katie just said, because for the whole rest of the month, you are going to get

1:50.1

all of our episodes, which are usually an hour-ish and length of book talk without any interruption

...

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