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

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

a bookish deep dive, and then we'll visit the fountain. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm a mom and a Mimi and a full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And morning reading is some of my best reading. And I'm Katie Kopp, a homeschooling mom for living in Arizona. And I am embracing a game I'm calling Reader Rulette. This is episode number two of season eight, and we are so glad you're here. Oh, that sounds exciting. Is it? Is it? It's a little bit not Katie-esque, but we're going to check it out. Some roulette is really fun, and some Rulet, like Russian roulette, is deadly. Yes. Thankfully, my reading life has no deadly consequences to date.

Let's keep it that way, Katie.

That's the plan.

Y'all, today for our deep dive, we will be circling back on those summer reads that we assigned to each other at the end of season seven.

We will bring them as current reads and then we'll kind of chat through what that process

was like and let you know our thoughts on each of those books.

But first, we will get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. Meredith, what is yours?

I have talked ad nauseum on this podcast about my morning reading, right? Like how I read in the morning.

And I've talked a lot about the fact that I think it's really important kind of read

or know thyself thing to know what part of the day should you do different kinds of reading

based on your own energy flows.

I was thinking about this because recently, through some circumstances in my life, I have

had the opportunity to kind of rework my morning routine. And I wanted to be

super intentional about how I did that. Right. So I was like, okay, I could definitely use that time for work

in one of my two jobs, right? I could, but is that going to serve me holistically in the very

best way? So what I decided to do, and this felt very naughty to me, because normally when I have

any extra time in my life that I don't have to give to my family. I work. That's what I do. That's how I'm

programmed. I enjoy my work. In this case, I said, no, I am going to double down on a routine that

is already really working for me, which is doing my morning reading, which includes journaling,

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