Season 8, Episode 7: Small-Town Escapes + Reading - Why So Serious?

Currently Reading

Meredith Schwartz

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

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

Bookish Moments: a budding book collector + a favorite book wins the Hugo Award
Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we’ve been reading lately
Deep Dive: reading — why so serious?
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).

1:12 - Still Life by Louise Penny (20th Anniversary Edition) [releases September 30]

2:13 - Our Bookish Moments Of The Week

2:25 - Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

3:34 - The Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi by Shannon Chakraborty

4:19 - The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper [releases September 16]

4:53 - The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean

5:04 - The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

6:19 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

7:54 - Our Current Reads

8:03 - Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca (Kaytee)

11:35 - Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca

13:30 - Rites of Extinction by Matt Serafini (Meredith)

18:39 - The Unveiling by Quan Berry [releases October 14]

19:17 - The Need by Helen Phillips

20:02 - Let Them Stare by Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy (Kaytee)

22:19 - Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

23:59 - Jobs to Be Done by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber (Meredith)

28:36 - Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller (Kaytee)

28:45 - The Change by Kirsten Miller

28:50 - Schuler Books in Michigan

31:45 - Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea (Meredith)

35:01 - Guess Again by Charlie Donlea

36:36 - Reading — Why So Serious?

43:40 - Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

51:03 - Meet Us At The Fountain

51:24 - I wish there was a show about readers, in the spirit of The Great British Bake Off. (Kaytee)

54:46 - An update on last week’s wish: I wish my iPhone would make automated actions easier for handling my screenshots. (Meredith)

56:40 - Step-by-Step: Build a “Send Screenshot” Shortcut on iPhone PDF

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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. September’s IPL comes to us from: Words Matter in Pitman, NJ.
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

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

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
0:21.7	strong opinions. So get ready. We are light on the chit-chat, heavy on the book talk, and our
0:27.5	conversations will always be spoiler-free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive,
0:32.9	and then we'll visit the fountain. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full-time
0:38.6	CEO living in Austin, Texas. And I love it when my favorite books get the honors they deserve.
0:45.0	And I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mama for living in Arizona. And I think beautiful books deserve
0:50.8	to be admired. This is episode number seven of season eight, and we are so glad you're
0:55.7	here. Oh, yeah, they do, Katie. And there are more beautiful versions of books I feel like coming out
1:01.3	and accessible than ever before. Indeed. And it makes my reader heart so happy. My like
1:07.1	aesthetically pleased reader heart, very happy. Yeah, you know that there's a brand new 20th edition version of still life, Louise Penny's first book in her series coming out, which I am really excited about. Oh my gosh. Speaking of, this is not my bookish moment of the week, but I did find out that a local bookstore to me is doing a watercoloring page edges class in the upcoming weeks. So you like clamp your book
1:30.8	together and you make a four edge design on it. Oh. So you can make your books. I was like,
1:38.1	A, this should be a monthly class because I need to do it to so many books. Yes. And B,
1:44.0	I need to learn this. How fun. That is very
1:46.7	interesting. That's very interesting. All right. Well, we will let you know that we are going to do a deep
1:52.9	dive today that I like to call reading. Why so serious? There's lots of ways we get in our own
1:59.5	heads or we let other people get into our heads about our reading.
2:02.3	So we're going to kind of talk about that, maybe unearth some blind spots, and make sure that our reading is just a source of enjoyment for us.
2:11.5	As fun as it should be.
2:13.6	Exactly.
2:14.2	All right.
2:14.5	But before we do that, let's start out the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. Katie, what have you got?
2:20.0	All right, Meredith. This week, just like everybody else in the world, I got my beautiful copy of Catabasis by RF Long in the mail. I started it immediately, so it's constantly on my kitchen counter. I just, it's so pretty. I want to touch it. The four edges on
	...

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