Season 8, Episode 3: Let There Be Light + Avoiding Book Amnesia

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ ? minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Bookish Moments: bookstore romance day + let there be a reading light
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
Deep Dive: advice on avoiding bookish amnesia
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)

01:55 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

04:56 - The Currently Reading Library Tote (CR Merch)

05:42 - May Your Coffee Be Hot Mug (CR Merch)

09:14 - Our Current Reads

09:27 - Louder Than Hunger by John Schu (Kaytee)

13:24 - Deenie by Judy Blume

15:31 - Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume

15:34 - Forever by Judy Blume

17:20 - Culpability by Bruce Holsinger (Meredith)

18:57 - The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger

19:07 - The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

21:56 - In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

22:22 - Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory (Kaytee)

25:44 - The Six Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni (Meredith)

31:30 - Weyward by Emilia Hart (Kaytee)

34:31 - The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (Meredith)

36:36 - One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

38:26 - The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

39:15 - Quicksilver by Callie Hart

40:22 - Deep Dive: Answering a listener question and giving advice on avoiding bookish amnesia

49:15 - Meet Us At The Fountain

49:22 - I wish more readers would pick up Go As a River by Shelley Read (Kaytee)

50:00 - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

51:21 - I wish you would consider experimenting with a new pen: like this “cheater” fountain pen, Pilot Varsity Disposable Fountain (Meredith)

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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. August’s IPL comes to us from our founding Indie Press List store: Fabled Bookshop in Waco, TX!
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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Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans

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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
0:21.6	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, a bookish deep
0:31.9	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 I have some good ideas, but sometimes I need a literal light bulb over my head. And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama for living in Arizona, and I am obsessed with indie bookstores. This is episode number three of season eight, and we are so glad you're here.
0:57.8	Well, this obsession does not seem out of the blue, Katie.
1:01.1	Right.
1:01.8	This is one of the best things about us having a joint obsession, right?
1:06.3	It truly is.
1:07.4	I mean, I could say I'm obsessed with reading, and that would be the most boring bite-sized intro I've ever had.
1:12.9	But that's fine. Here we go. I'm Katie Cobb, and I love to read. And reading is my favorite.
1:19.6	To be fair, we've had to come up with an awful lot of bite-sized intros.
1:22.6	Oh, gosh. More than 350. I mean, that's a lot.
1:26.1	That's a lot.
1:30.1	And we've only repeated them very occasionally.
1:30.9	Right.
1:31.5	Right.
1:32.6	Or forgotten them.
1:33.0	Mm-hmm.
1:34.4	All right.
1:39.9	So we are going to do a deep dive today about a listener question.
1:47.7	We had a listener who said, how do you guys go about remembering any of the things about any of the books that you've finished?
1:53.7	So we're going to get into that topic a little bit, which I think will be interesting because I definitely have thoughts about that.
	...

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