Season 8, Episode 30: Weekly Buddy Reading + Organizing Our Bookshelves

The Currently Reading Podcast

Meredith Schwartz

Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

Bookish Moments: A new bookish metaphor and book moms in the wild
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately
Deep Dive: Organizing Our Bookshelves
Before We Go: our new segment featuring bookish friend posts and a sleeper hit you should read.

Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site).

1:18 - Ad For Ourselves

2:03 - Currently Reading Patreon

2:55 - Bookish Moments of the Week

3:19 - A Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

7:44 - @meg.al.reads on Instagram

9:19 - Current Reads

9:26 - Agnes Aubert's Magical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (Mary)

9:54 - Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

13:34 - Mate by Ali Hazelwood (Kaytee)

13:38 - Bride by Ali Hazelwood

MARYS NEXT BOOK BEGINS AT 17:43 IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR MATE'S SETUP

16:31 - romance.io

17:48 - Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen (Mary)

19:50 - The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen

19:52 - CR Season 4: Episode 38 w/Mary's setup of The Arc

21:07 - One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Kaytee)

23:39 - American War by Omar El Akkad

26:02 - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Mary)

28:19 - This Is How You Win the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

29:57 - Honey by Imani Thompson (pre-order, releases May 5, 2026) (Kaytee)

32:10 - They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

34:36 - Organizing Our Bookshelves

36:51 - Ikea Kallax Bookshelf

37:47 - Ikea Billy Bookcase

42:40 - Cinder by Marissa Meyer

48:50 - The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

49:47 - Currently Reading Substack

53:51 - Before We Go

Kaytee highlights a bookish friend post

54:38 - Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

54:40 - The Wife, The Mistress and the Maid by Ariel Lawhon

54:42 - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

54:44 - The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

54:47 - The Antidote by Karen Russell

54:52 - The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kawali

Mary brings a sleeper hit, with a twist:

57:02 - Looking At Picture Books w/Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen

58:51 - Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Support Us:

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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. March's IPL is brought by our lovely friends at An Unlikely Story in Plainville, MA.
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 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, 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 already know we don't shy away
0:21.4	from having strong opinions so get ready we are light on the chit-chat heavy on the book
0:25.8	talk and our descriptions will always be spoiler-free today we'll discuss our current
0:30.8	reads a readerly deep dive and a little something bookish before we go I'm Katie Cobb
0:35.9	a homeschooling mama four living in Arizona, and I've got an
0:39.7	adorable new upgrade to my reading experience. And I'm Mary Heim, a therapist in mom living in
0:45.4	Wisconsin, and I'm about to get a little book bossy, Katie, so get ready. This is episode 30 of
0:51.1	season eight, and we are so glad you're here. Ooh, book bossiness is a little risky sometimes, Mary, as you know, so we'll see how this goes.
0:59.8	I think this one will pass. Pass muster. We'll see. Okay, we'll see what happens. Before we get
1:06.1	started with that, though, I will let everybody know that our deep dive today is about new bookshelves, how to
1:11.4	organize a newly expanded collection. I'm very excited to talk to you about this, Mary, and we also
1:18.0	have a little mischief to manage today. So if you look over at your calendar, you'll note that
1:24.3	today is the first Monday of March. And if you haven't been here for very long,
1:28.3	or maybe you've forgotten, that means it's the one time a month that we do an ad on
1:32.9	Currently Reading podcast. But it's super special because it's an ad for ourselves. We don't have
1:38.2	any outside advertisers here at Currently Reading. That means whenever you tune into the show,
1:43.6	we are not interrupting your listening experience with anything that could whenever you tune into the show, we are not interrupting
1:45.0	your listening experience with anything that could take you out of the feeling of bookishness
1:49.1	and community that we are trying to build here. So, as you know, that's one of our favorite
1:53.9	things about the show for ourselves. And it's also one of our patrons' favorite things. For a lot of
1:58.3	people, that is the reason that they join the Currently Reading podcast, Bookish Friends, over on Patreon. It's only $5 a month, and it helps
2:05.5	make sure that we're never going to have ads on this show. We're commercial free, always.
	...

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