Season 7, Episode 46: Witchy Names + All About Morning Reading

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 lighter than 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, a mom of four and full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas.

out some of my best reading is done while sitting in front of the ocean. I'm Katie Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in Arizona, and I am proud of what and who I love. This is episode number 46 of season seven, and we are so glad you're here.

Meredith, ocean reading is probably my favorite reading. It... is some of the best it's that white noise it's the you know when you look up you can you can think deep thoughts when you're looking out i find the atlantic ocean to be especially deep thought worthy okay so Because it's that grayer instead of the blue.

Yep, I can see that. Okay, y'all, we're going to let you know that our deep dive today is about morning reads. Meredith has mentioned these a number of times. When we asked for deep dive ideas, I think we probably got six or seven emails where people are like, I want all the...

details on Morning Reads. So I added it only once to the spreadsheet, but it's a lot of people really wanted to have us talk about this. Yes. So we'll get there. And before that, we will get started with our bookish moments of the week. What is yours, Meredith? All right. Yes. So my bookish

I was off last week because Roxanna and I and our families, this time our complete families, got together and we went to Maine again. And we stayed in a beach house that is my new happy place. Roxanna's new happy place. It is on the ocean. with a private beach. So you had a million different places indoor and outdoor, which is key in Maine. Because unlike in Hawaii, where the reading is all bikinis and warm air and dark blue ocean, in Maine...

You are snuggled up. You are in your Adirondack and you are just braced for cold. For some reason, I feel spicy in Hawaii. In Maine, I just feel... like locked in to my book. So it was so fun getting together with Roxanna, of course, amazing. I got to meet, we got to see Mika again, her son, who's the same age as Jackson. And then this year I got to meet her husband.

and her daughter. And her daughter, of course, we've been looking forward to meeting forever because she is my bookish soulmate. She is so fantastic. This child has a book in her hands literally 24-7, and I'm using the word literally properly. You have to take the book from her to get her to do things like brush your teeth or whatever. She is the dream.

is the goat. If I could have put her and I could have fit her in one of my suitcases easily, it was only, only by my strength of will that I did not take Karen home because she is my heart. I love her so much. Oh, sweet Kieran. Oh, that's so fun. We got to go look at books. We actually went to a library book sale. And so all of a sudden I'm like, oh, Kieran, you'd love this one. You'd love this one. Oh, yes. How satisfying is it?

To load a child up with an armful of books and then to spend the week with them as they read them and you can talk about them. That, that's the dream. Truly. She's the goat. Like this child, I can't even explain to you. So I just, I love her. I love her so much. We like the same books. We're the same child when we were young. It's just, we were just soulmates. Oh, little mini Meredith. We love that.

Oh, yeah. So fun. But yeah, that's the dream to be like, I think you would love these and then to spend the next like four or five days and be like, what are you thinking? How do you like it? Like no pressure, but I hope you totally love this book. Right. Well, exactly. And you can't put any, because she's a little mini Enneagram 8. So you do not, you cannot pressure. Yeah.

But we already booked the house for next year. And lots of people asked me, by the way, here's what I'm going to say. Lots of people asked me for the Airbnb link to the house. I ain't going to give that to you. It's a secret precious treasure. But what I will say is that... If you are interested in a fantastic area of Maine to have this kind of trip and have lots of Airbnbs available for rent, the whole neighborhood is called Drake's Island. It's in Wells.

and highly recommend for any kind of vacation, family vacation, certainly. a reading retreat, just lots of properties available on Airbnb there all year long. And many of them are just for that. So they have, you know, these open calendars and plenty of places. We took so many walks. So it's only about 15 minutes from Kennebunkport, which we go to every time. The kids especially like Kennebunkport. Is that where the new octopus book shop is opening? Isn't it Kennebunkport?

But it wasn't open yet, right? It wasn't open yet. But so Wells is perfect for all the reasons I just described. And Drake's Island is right there. That's the neighborhood. But it is only about 15 minutes, maybe 19 minutes from Kennebunkport. which is the perfect place to spend a day. And it's only about eight minutes from my new favorite city in Maine, which is Ogunquit. It's tiny. It is, it has a bookstore in it that was a great...

brand new bookstore. It's got lots of shops and it has a restaurant called Barnacle Billy's that we went to three times. It was So good. The best lobster roll I've had in Maine to date. So I just can't recommend this part of the state anymore.

It is just, it's my dream. It's where I want to live. I want to live in Vermont and vacation in Maine. And that will be my perfect life. And then you will have to shovel a lot of snow. Maybe you could snowboard. Well, no, I'm keeping my house in Texas. Okay. Yes, for sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I think it's a great plan. I hope that these dreams come true, honestly. Right, exactly. What is your bookish moment of the week?

My bookish moment is, of course, you can see it right here, Meredith. It's all healed up. I am going to chat a little bit about my new tattoo, which features a bookish quote. It looks so good. I love it. It's so tiny and crisp, and I love it so much. We have long...

been readers and admirers of Brene Brown here at Currently Reading, bringing multiple books of hers to the show over the years. In her book, Braving the Wilderness, she draws upon the Buddhist teachings of Roshi Joan Halifax, who introduced the concept of strong back...

and soft fronts. Brene, in her book, Braving the Wilderness, added the phrase wild heart to the end of that. And for myself, it became a bit of a rallying cry, a mantra, right? In April of 2018, I went back and read this. In April of 2018, I read Braving the Wilderness. I wrote in my review, strong back, soft front, wild heart. Might just have to get that one tattooed on my arms. I wrote that in 2018.

I was absolutely tickled to find that in my review when I revisited it to prep for the show today, because here I am seven years later with said tattoo. That's what my new tattoo says. In the meantime, in those seven years, it became a mantra that I shared with my sister, Sylvie, as we both walked some tough roads over those seven years. We would tack it to the end of our texts to each other as a way to remember this kind of core.

motivation, right? A year or two ago, we decided we wanted matching tattoos in our mom's handwriting, and we finally made it happen, much to her chagrin. She is not a tattoo woman, but I was like, can you just write this phrase for me and just pretend that you have no idea why I... would need this. And she's like, listen, I know why you need it. I'm just going to write it down. I don't want to talk about it. Oh, there's so much pressure, though. I know, right?

so up in my head about that she's like I'm just gonna write it in like my normal handwriting not like try and make it as as perfect as possible and I was like that's fine because we want it to look like you signed a card in your regular handwriting right we finally made it happen about a week ago

So while 2018, Katie thought she would tattoo it on her arms, 2025, Katie chose to put it on her left collarbone, mirrored to my sister's right collarbone, and written by my mom. Sometimes we know right away when a book will change us forever. And this one... Certainly did. It's now marked permanently on my body. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.

in my mom's handwriting. I love that. I love the whole story of that. I love that you guys did it. I love that it's your mom's handwriting. It's just so special. It's so special. And it's so front and center. I see it every time I look in the mirror. Even if I have a regular t-shirt on, I can see the... very end of the tattoo because of where it is on my collarbone, which makes it the most visible one to me.

Even though I have a lot of tattoos, like even my octopus, it's much bigger, but it's on the back of my leg. So I don't see it that often. This one's very like in my face or almost on my face, not on my face all the time. It's not on your face. It makes me happy. Yes. No, I love that. That's so, so excellent. And it's really pretty. I think the positioning is really pretty. Yes. And I got told that my collarbones are perfect. So thankfully, I have perfect collarbones to tattoo. Perfect.

Okay, let's get into current reads, though. I don't have any Brene Brown to bring today. But I do want to hear about what you've been reading lately. Okay, I have three books that I found very, very interesting.

I can't wait to talk about all three of these books. They're very different one from the other. All right. The first book is a book called Ascension by Nicholas Binge. Here's the setup. An enormous snow-covered mountain has suddenly appeared in the Pacific Ocean.

No one knows exactly why it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. It's taller than Mount Everest. Like, it's a mountain. It sprung up. Like from the seabed to the top? Yes. It's taller? Okay. No. Uh-uh.

Above the sea. It's taller than Mount Everest. And nobody knows how it got there. And it just appeared. It's the kind of sci-fi that really gets me in my head where I'm like, I don't think so. Geologists would know. Okay. Continue. Okay. But it's a smarter book than that. Okay. Enter.

Harold Tunmore. He's a brilliant, but kind of, I mean, not kind of, he's very quirky physicist who is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate this seemingly impossible geological anomaly. What starts as... scientific expedition quickly becomes something far more unsettling. The story is told through Harold's unsent letters to his teenage niece. That sounds weird. It is not a weird part of the story. That is totally okay.

This epistolary thriller follows the investigation and this team as they climb higher and higher and discover that the mountain defies every law of physics they thought they understood. Harold, who spent years isolating himself from family and emotions in pursuit of pure scientific truth, finds himself confronting not just the mountain's mysteries, but his own devastating personal history. Okay.

This book is a mind beep in the best possible way. Sometimes this is my favorite kind of book. I loved it. But it is one of those books that I'm going to say is not for every reader or even for this reader unless I'm in the right mood. So let's talk about it. I picked this book up because a few bookish friends recently have recommended this author, Nicholas Binge, to me.

In fact, it has happened because he has a new book coming out really soon that I immediately got an ARC for and am really excited about. But this one had been on my physical shelf forever. So I scooted my booty over there and I dove into that. book the same this book ascension on that very day this book is a lot but again in a great way it's sad our lead character harold is sad pretty much at every point we meet him

And as his story unfolds, we become more and more aware of what is behind all of that sadness. And I want to say that maybe my most favorite part of this book is the way it's constructed. The way that this story... Harold's story is revealed to us is so masterful, even in its sadness. So...

I want to be clear, and this is part of the you have to be in the right mood element for me. There's an air of melancholy that follows this book, but there's also a tremendous amount of pure adventure. This is a mountain climbing book. If you loved Into Thin Air, but wanted it to be more introspective and less bro-y. And if you kind of thought, what if it also had monsters? This book will be for you. Because yes, monsters.

murderous ones and people on this investigative team going nuts or are they and some religious debate and lots of scientific debate and and and by the time I finished this my mind was blown. I literally was introduced to a theory in this book that I cannot stop thinking about. I need some other people to read this book because I need to talk about it because it kind of blew open. some aspects of spirituality to me in a way that

locked some pieces in place that have never been locked in place before. I know that's a really big statement but I have to say that about this book. I think if you like Dark Matter or Recursion by Blake Crouch but are okay with something a bit headier, a little more...

literary, then you're going to love this. I know that if you loved The Anomaly by Hervé Tellier, you will love this. Like drop everything. Press pause on the show if you love The Anomaly and get this book.

Above all, read this if you are interested in super well-constructed sci-fi with characters who will break your heart and monsters that will scare the literal titi out of you because they are there waiting on you. the mountain for you monsters of all kinds this is ascension by nicholas bench i mean i can't pause right now but you can't sound like a problem

We, I mean, it's okay if you need to pause for a minute because this is. I'm getting, I'm getting breathless. I'm getting devolution. I'm getting like, there's so many. Cool tie-ins to already what you were talking about, as we all know. I love an epistolary novel. Which I don't. And the idea of telling a thriller. Right. I don't love an epistolary novel at all. That will turn me.

off to books. But today I'm bringing this one and I am bringing another one. And both of these books that I'm going to talk about may very well be on my top 10 of the year and epistolary. Okay, you don't love them always, but you do love them sometimes. Love and Saffron by Kim Faye. That one's a pistol. Yeah.

Yeah. I am very excited about this Ascension by Nicholas Binge. I'm definitely reading this one. All right, good. What's your first book? Okay, my first one is my only new release of this episode. I'm going to, because somebody has to, talk about Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. This is the romance of the summer, right? That's always what Emily Henry writes.

is the romance of the summer. It's my only new release this episode. I wanted to get into it before summer has come and gone. And we're about to hit our crush week and then our break and then we'll be into season eight. So it's time. I had to deal with it. So here's the setup. Alice and Hayden are professional rivals.

Well, kind of. Hayden is a super successful Pulitzer Prize winning writer who is vying for the same job as Alice, a sunshiny optimist who is sure that this next project will be her big break. It doesn't hurt that she has a personal connection to the story at its core.

They meet on Little Crescent Island at the local coffee shop, and that's the only opportunity they have to be nice to each other and fail at before realizing they're both buying for the same professional opportunity, a tell-all biography of Margaret Ives.

The Margaret Ives. The one whose millionaire family thrust her into the spotlight at a young age. The one who married the famous singer. The one whose entire life was wracked by scandal. And the one who disappeared decades ago without a trace. But now she's... in her 80s, living anonymously on Little Crescent Island, and she has made an offer.

to Alice and Hayden to write her tale. But the catch is, only one of them will be picked for the job after a one-month trial period. Alice is pretty sure she can best Hayden despite his credentials because she is personable and kind and she has enough

of like go-get-em gumption to get the job done. And Hayden, for unknown reasons, seems a little intimidated by her. It's probably because she's so cute. As they create a schedule and get to know Margaret separately, they have to do it separately, they both realize that they aren't getting her whole story. But they also signed an ironclad NDA at the start, so they cannot share the pieces they've gleaned with one another.

And the professional rivalry between them is not enough to keep the grumpy and the sunshine away from each other as the tension continues to build. Now. No one is reading this book and not thinking of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid or maybe The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Sutterfield. It's sweeter and funnier than both of those and has a strong sense of place in this tiny...

island community where everyone knows everyone else and the local seafood restaurant is where you hear all the town's hot gossip. I love a multiple timeline story and Margaret's is fantastic so we're getting her story told in interweaving chapters along with this

present tense of these two writers kind of vying for the same thing. Margaret's story is sprinkled with tabloid scandals, family secrets, and luxury hotels. She's portrayed as the kind of princess, the kind of tabloid social princess that everyone knows.

Especially decades ago. Kind of a Kate Middleton of the mid-20th century, but married to Elvis. Her husband, Cosmo, sings the songs that everyone knows. The ones that get played at graduations and weddings and birthdays. The songs that write the story. of life and a love, and many of those songs are about Margaret herself, or Peggy, as Cosmo referred to her.

The internal story of their lives and love is propulsive and on its own, but layer it with the external publishing and journalism, enemies to lovers, grumpy sunshine, small town romance, and we do have a recipe for success. I will not be putting this at the... very top of my Emily Henry's greatest hits list for this reader, but it was still a wonderful story, well told, and she continues to give us fabulous summer releases, and I will continue to look forward to whatever she releases next.

This was Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. I am... So glad that you got that in. I think we all wanted to know what you thought about this year's Emily Henry release. So thank you very much and for reminding me that I need to think in that same way about the... books that I bring to the next couple episodes of the show. Right. We only have, well, we have one regular episode left. Is that it? Yes, Meredith. Oh, no. I need to look at the calendar. It's time to get a move on. All right.

Okay. All right. I got it. What's your next book for this week? We'll see what happens. Yes, and this is one that I definitely wanted to check off my list. This is a book called Hearts Strange and Dreadful by Tim McGregor. This is horror. This is historical horror. Here's our setup. Our story is set in Wickstead, Rhode Island in 18... where piety and paranoia...

go together like fire and brimstone. Our lead character is Hester Stokely, an orphaned young woman with unusual abilities who's been living in essentially, essentially she's like a servant, but she lives with her uncle's household because her parents... died but she basically is like a servant but in this tight-knit puritan community being different is unwelcome and

it turns out, downright dangerous. When a deadly plague comes to town, Hester's healing skills suddenly make her indispensable. But as she watches the townspeople rapidly fall ill, she realizes something far more sinister then just disease has invaded Wickstead. Think consumption meets the occult in a town where the buried dead are exhumed on rumor and superstition, and occult fires burn fiercely in...

Okay, this is a buddy read that I did with Bessie as a part of our read-through of Sadie Hartman's 101 Horror Books to Read Before You Were Murdered. And that, on the whole, that read-through of that...

of the books on that list have been good. This particular book I had high hopes for, it didn't live up to those high hopes though. What I did like about it, it's a work of historical fiction and it definitely takes you to this specific place in time. And it takes you to this very specific location, Rhode Island, 1821. Consumption is ravaging the entire country at that point. And that is at the core of our story. There is lots and lots of people dying.

of consumption here. If that's your jam, you're gonna love it. At the very beginning, I had high hopes that this rather short, I think it's only 250-ish pages novel would go quickly, but it didn't. In fact, it almost became a joke between me and Betsy as we continued to read it because absolutely nothing plot-wise was moving forward. And at some point, we thought something interesting is bound to happen, right?

Because this book has good ratings on Goodreads. Things do start to pick up at the 60% mark. Even with a short novel, the pacing is just all wrong here. There's just not enough to hook me as a reader to keep me... wanting to move forward so it was really at this point really only the buddy read and the jokes that we were like we were really it was kind of funny at this point that's what kept me going

But on a rainy morning, I blasted through the last 40%, which is where all the horror goodness lives here. And there definitely are some... scary, and read-worthy scenes. In fact, a couple of them that I would say are fairly memorable. But the ending was very odd. And the entire book just had me shaking my head and questioning why it would make several, not just Sadie's, best of horror lists.

I know that Tim McGregor is an author that is really beginning to make a name for himself in the horror genre. And I am tempted to read at least one more by him to understand if it was just this book. or if it's his style that doesn't work for me. If you like a slow burn historical horror, though, it may very well work for you because it's very evocative. This one was not a hit for me. This is Hearts Strange and Dreadful.

by Tim McGregor. Okay. Well, sometimes we got to deal with those on our stack as well. Here's what I was wondering while you were talking. Why don't we name little girls Hester anymore? Yeah. Because they're all witches, right? I mean, Hester is so witchy. You cannot name a little girl Hester and not like have black be your favorite color, own at least three cats, live in a cottage in the woods.

Right. Or you're definitely going to be burned at the stake. I mean, like, well, one of those things is happening. Right. So, yeah. Let's bring back Hester. I think we should. Justice for Hester. I would totally. I don't ever want to own another cat because cats are just way more work than benefit to me. But if we ever did... Oh, it would be so good. And then I feel like then that leads to a murderful child's like a like a children's book, a picture book, a cat named Hester.

Hester is black. Her owner is really murderful. Not like killing. There's a lot of like preconceived notions about her. It could be about prejudice. It could have like all these deeper themes. Somebody write that for us, please. Oh, yes. If you could, because I can actually visualize what Hester's owner would be like. Yeah, a little bit Edward Gorey, right? The illustration. Right? Right. Her female owner's like sort of weird, but then she finds another friend who maybe has another.

pet that's named Tabitha oh there's another one like it could be like Lilith yeah something like that but we could figure that piece out but like has another you know like weird weird kind of like look on the world this would be a great children's book. Then they find each other, right? Yes. Yes. Because friendship is when you say, what? You too? I thought I was the only one. Okay. It's a cat called Hester. It's an idea that is available to all of you. Please.

Proceed. And then send it to Bumi because she edits children's books. We've got the whole pipeline for you all already. Guys, it's going to be great. Do you know how much I would love to be mentioned in an author's note, though? I've been mentioned. Oh, my God. That is a dream for me. That is a dream. Truly. That and a blurb on a book.

I would like to write a blurb too, even though half the time I'm side-eyeing blurbs. But if blurbs came from people who, if blurbs didn't come from authors and they came from people like us, blurbs would matter. Justice for blurbs. Make blurbs matter. Make blurbs great again. Maba. Mabaga. Let's do it. That rolls right off the tongue. We are so good at acronyms here. We got Ratatouille. It's great. We've solved it, you guys. Yep. Okay.

I have a book to tell you about. My second book this week. Good. It is nonfiction. It's one I've been reading that I want to get to before the end of the year. I'm going to talk about Stolen Focus by Johan Hari. So along with The Anxious Generation by Jonathan.

height, which I brought to episode 40 of season seven, this is the other book that has strongly influenced the way I interact with and think about my phone, social media, the internet at large, the epidemic of lack of focus that we're seeing in my own brain and everybody else's lately, right? So we're going to chat about it. The subtitle of this nonfiction pick is Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. And it was released in January of 2022.

It's actually one of my favorite kinds of narrative nonfiction, the kind I refer to as stunt journalism. Johan Hari embarks on an investigation of our own ability to focus and the way that we get into a flow state, right? But he does so by way of his own digital detox. At the start of this book, he is planning for a three-month retreat to a tiny Rhode Island community where he will bring only a dumb phone with no internet access and only four pre-programmed contacts.

a laptop with no internet, and he will subscribe to the daily newspaper. That's how he will stay connected with world events. He's going to attempt to disconnect completely from the digital world. He sets an auto-reply on his email that he'll be completely unreachable for the next three months, briefly acknowledges the privilege involved in being able to leave his home and children in the care of his wife, and then pulls the metaphorical and literal plug.

Interspersed with chapters of reflection about that detox period, he also puts in conversations with digital experts. So we are sometimes learning about his detox period, the recapturing of his ability to focus, and the ways he reenters the real world. But then he also explores the data that says teenagers are only able to focus for 65 seconds at a time before they get called away by a notification of some kind.

Adults are only slightly better, with a focus duration of about 3 minutes, which is terrible.

and depressing. He discusses the research around flow states and how we're able to accomplish so much more if we give ourselves dedicated time to get into an activity and let our brains settle into one train of thought. He gives us data on the level of impairment that cell phones and the internet lend our daily lives, which is the equivalent of trying to do any of our daily activities while well above the legal blood alcohol limit.

And more. Perhaps most importantly and revealingly, he spends quite a bit of time doing interviews with various founders and developers who created pieces of technology that call us back over and over again. Like the infinite scroll on social media. or the constant notifications on Gmail. Any of those things where it was like, oh, we used to use these, fine. And then we invented this one tiny little thing that changed every way that we interact with it.

He converses with them about the steps they take in their own lives in order to protect their ability to focus and the mental well-being of their families. And he spends a few brief paragraphs giving us tips and tricks as to how to re-harness the focus in our own lives. Here's the thing, though. I loved this book. It put a name and words to the feeling that we all have when we think to ourselves that we're broken, that we have no more ability to focus.

It helped me understand the forces that work against my tiny human brain to make certain tasks feel absolutely impossible. But it also had a few things that really got my goat. First was jealousy. I want to retreat for three months to see what it does to my brain. I want to see if I can like rehydrate it like one of those sponges that you put in water and it like turns into a unicorn.

I feel like that's what my brain is missing. It just needs to sit and like marinate for three months, right? I want to gather my ability to focus back to my core, but it's just not. feasible or tenable in today's world for probably 95 plus percent of us. It's just not possible. Second, the end of the subtitle of this book is How to Think Deeply Again, and I feel like the steps he gave were just meh. They were not super actionable.

There are simple tricks, the ones we all know, right? We've talked about them on the show before, like taking time to turn off notifications for apps. They don't need to tell you. You'll check it when you're ready, right? Using different ways to brick your phone for periods of time when you need to enter a phone. closed state and more.

But I didn't feel equipped afterwards, like he gave me a toolbox. And that could be because this isn't the first book I've read on this topic. It could be because I've already been down the rabbit hole trying to grab my time back with both hands and recapture the attention of my children. but I wanted more. So while I did love this book and I think about it nearly every day, I knocked a half star off my final rating because I didn't feel like it delivered fully on its promise to give me...

tools for how to think deeply again. This was Stolen Focus by Johan Hari. That is absolutely fascinating. And you're right. What a gift it would be to see what would happen with that three-month experiment. I love, like you said, stunt journalism. Give me any book that's like, I did this for a year. I did this for three months. I tried every this. I love that. Yeah, that's why we love Gretchen Rubin, right? There's another author named A.J. Jacobs.

that does he did like a year of living biblical biblically he did the smartest man in the world where he read through the encyclopedia in a world in the year i love that stuff more more more more Love it. All right, Katie, I am going to talk about a book that is definitely going to be in my top 10 of the year. Could be number one. And it is not. Murderful in any way, shape or form. It is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Here's the setup. Our lead character is Sybil.

than Antwerp. And trust me when I say that she is the kind of character that is going to burrow into your heart and just set up permanent residence. At 73, Sybil is a smart as a whip retired lawyer. a mother, a grandmother, and most importantly for our story, she's a woman who spent her entire life making sense of the world through letters, like actual handwritten letters that require paper and stamps, maybe even a pen with something called

a nib on it, which I just love that idea. Every morning around half past 10, Sybil sits down to write. She corresponds with her brother, her best friend, university presidents who won't let her audit classes, customer service people. literary icons, like I'm not going to tell you who, but they're there. But here's where things get interesting. There's one letter that she's been writing for years that she has never sent.

When something from her past forces her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, Sybil has to confront the demons of her past and crucially decide what kind of life she wants to live moving forward. All right, as I've said.

I heard, I mean, I heard about this. I didn't say this earlier. I had heard about this book many times. It's getting a lot of buzz. It's making a lot of people's best of lists. It didn't appeal to me because it is a true epistolary novel. And then I realized something. I realized that what I don't love is epistolary novels that feature a single track correspondence most of the time, Love and Saffron being an outlier. I don't love letters between just two people. but I do love what I found here.

This novel was just not what I was expecting. I didn't expect it to be as propulsive as it was. Though several people had raised raved about it, I had no idea that I would be racing through his pages, buying it in print immediately. needing it on my Kindle because I had to be able to read it at night, trying to put the pieces together. Not unlike a Janice Hallett novel, honestly. I also didn't really grok how much I was going to love, be affected.

by our lead character Sybil. As I said she's in her 70s but she's so smart and had an illustrious career which I didn't realize was as big a part of the book as it is. And Sybil is so sure of herself and her opinions, and she is forthright as the day is long. I guess you could even possibly describe her as a little bit curmudgeonly, but she is so much more nuanced than just that. She's a whole person doled out, laid out in these pages.

As with Janice Howlett novels, there's this delicious feeling that you are reading something that is incredibly private and somehow you have gotten your hands on it. I don't love the part of me that relishes in this, but here we are. Virginia Evans has created in Sybil one of those fully wrought characters that you feel like you've known forever. And yes, you often want to smack them upside the head as they-

make decisions that you know are not going to play out well. But along those lines, you understand it every step of the way. And you love her for her flaws and for her valiant attempts to make life right. She's always trying to learn to be better, to connect in all of her fallible ways. The striving for it is so courageous to me and there's this small through line of mystery in this novel that I wasn't expecting.

This is, of course, not a mystery novel, but I love it when you get a little side portion of something that makes you say, wait, what? And then that plays out all through the novel, finally being masterfully threaded into the hole. I'm not ashamed to say that when I finished this book I was in Maine. I was laying in bed in front of a fire because that's the new way I need to read in bed. And I was sobbing. The pillow behind me was soaked.

I was absolutely a mess and it was exactly what my reading needed at that moment. Something good and whole and worthy of my time and attention. This is The Correspondent by Virginia. and I loved it with my entire being. See, I know I've seen this book. I mean, it's kind of everywhere right now. But I had not heard it set up. For some reason, the title turns me away. So I was like, okay. I mean, that's good for some readers. Yeah, it's got a very... like the it's got a very it's got a cover.

that I feel appeals to a very specific age range, maybe not too far from the age range of our lead character. I even just as a 50 year old woman, there was just so much in it that just was so... It was a worthy read while also being perfectly paced. And then it left me in a literal puddle of tears.

Like I just, oh, I just, and then I hugged it and then I need to talk about it with my friends who just read it. And it was just so good. I cannot recommend that book highly enough. Maybe I'll put it in like my, my Christmas time reading so that I can put a little.

A little space between you talking about it and me talking about it. Yeah. It sounds dreamy. It sounds like something that would be perfect for me. Something that might land on top 10 lists is what it is. Right. Right. See, that's the other problem. I can't put it in 2025. now because I got to separate things.

Okay, my third also might end up on my top 10 list of the year, which is amazing because it's the third in a series. I am going to talk about Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B.B. Alston. Yes.

This is the third in the Amari Supernatural Investigation series by B.B. Alston, which means I get to challenge myself to talk about this third book without spoiling the other two. We love doing this, don't we, Meredith? It's so fun. It's not hard at all. not hard at all. Here's how I'm gonna set this up. Amari Peters is a young black girl living in the Atlanta area of Georgia in our current world.

Unbeknownst to most of us, and much like when Will Smith joins the Men in Black team in the legit classic film, most of us interact with and are surrounded by magical beings and non-human entities every day. We just can't see them because of the glamours that allow them to blend into our daily lives. But when Amari's brother Quentin taps her to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs in book one of the series, she's given eye drops that give her true sight. They allow her to live in our world.

world, but see everything without its glamour, as it truly is. She joins the Department of Supernatural Investigations, and throughout Books 1 and 2, works to understand this new world she's living in, layered on top of the one she already knows so well.

There are situations of mortal peril, enemies of eternal consequence, and abilities she knew nothing about like her own magical powers, which are illegal in this world. Now, in Book 3, Amari is forced to face a new challenge. Recovering... magical artifacts that give the bearer ultimate power and could

destroy magicians. But the catch is she must do it without some of her most useful tools that she has developed over the first two books in the series. She faces her two worst enemies, who are leading the charge to destroy her and render her powerless, or maybe dead.

When the kids and I finished this, the third book in the series, I sat there with my mouth hanging open. My review of this fantastic middle grade book was, holy S word, is this the best one yet? Because B.B. Alston has risen the bar with this phenomenal... entry into his canon that he's building. While it's possible, especially with middle grade books, to start to feel that they are repetitive or derivative, neither is the case here.

Amari's deep friendships with her fellow classmates and mentors buoy her through some incredibly difficult situations. The peril feels real, the magical powers feel just beyond our current view of the world, and the villains are fully drawn and really... incredible.

I love sharing the short reviews that my kids write with me when we finish a read aloud. So I'm going to truncate this one to avoid spoilers. But here's what they said about it. Amari and the Despicable Wonders, book three in this series by B.B. Alston is a middle grade fantasy novel. Here we rejoin.

Amari on her quest to protect the supernatural world from her fiercest opponents. This time, Amari has to decide whether her identity as a magician or as an agent is more important, as said enemy is leading the League of Magicians against the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs.

Thankfully, Amari is not alone. She's joined by her besties, Elsie, Lara, and Jaden, who are unwavering in their loyalty and pursuit of justice. Working outside the bounds of the Bureau, the four friends are seeking magical artifacts that have the power to destroy supernatural.

natural beings. Peekaboo, a ghost with a sense of humor, adds a comedic element to the story to balance the darkness. In this newest book, B.B. Alston does not shy away from big emotions. The reader will feel various highs and lows while reading this tale.

to the next book in the series which we were thankfully promised in the afterward because we were be concerned for all of us this was our favorite book in the series so far it is building on the world that's already established and shows us the way that our main character deals with completely new

challenges. We loved it. Y'all if I have not convinced you that this series is worth your time let this be your next push to pick it up. It continues to get better. I'm thrilled that a whole new group of bookish friends has just now chosen to pick it up this summer and discuss it. I was like, pick me, pick me. I wanna be part of this chat. I'm so thrilled.

Because this book and this series are phenomenal. This is Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B.B. Alston. Hooray for series that continue to be good and also for very clear notes from the author that there will be another book.

I was just talking to Elizabeth when we recorded All Things Murderful. I'm like, we got another, you know, Louise Penny drops her newsletter on the first day of every month. And I'm always like, historically, she's always talked about being writing and writing a new book. Nothing. Zero. Not even a whisper of it. I wish she would just put us out of our misery. It's so hard to be like, just tell me.

Like you don't have to have it done. I just want to hold that little birdie of hope in my hands. Exactly. So good. Okay. Those were our six current reads. We went a lot of places today. We are now going to explore and dissect and discuss the morning read.

That is a capital M, capital R, because this is a very special place in our reading lives. So Meredith, what is a morning read? How are you using this term in your reading life? Right. So morning reads, and I've done morning reading on and off throughout my adult life. Some seasons of my life have lent itself to it more than others. So morning reading for me consists of two things. It is a book that is definitely going to be nonfiction, almost always.

And it is going to be something that I, it's either going to be nonfiction, so something in the business realm. It's going to be something probably for me in the productivity, maybe self-help. What are we called? We're not calling it self-help anymore. We're calling it- Self-improvement? Self-improvement, something like that. Or lately, it is going to be poetry. It's something that is going to give me about five to 20 minutes of reading that is going to give me something to chew on. Okay.

That's what I'm looking for in this part of this reading. So this is not entertainment. This is not, you know, this, this is, you know, just to give me something to chew on mentally. Then after I do that, I go straight into morning pages. And Morning Pages is basically, it's just called that because of the artist's way. It's called that in the artist's way. This was, I can't remember the name of the author. Julia Cameron wrote the artist's way. And the idea is that in order to be...

creative in your work, you do morning pages, and you basically journal for X amount of time anything that is in your mind to get... out of your brain and create some clear space. Like whatever you're chewing on mentally, maybe you're spiraling a little bit on something, you're worried about something, you're thinking about something, you use that time. And so that one-two punch of my morning read.

and morning pages. Usually I try to wrap it up in about 20 minutes. So it's reading really more like five to 10 minutes than I do five to 15 minutes of morning page, just like getting it all out. I have found that my work day is so infinitely more productive when I started out with that. Now, one of the pitfalls of morning reading is that it is a really easy thing to let life knock off your list.

because it doesn't feel necessary right to skip yeah but it turns out it is necessary for me i find that my work at here comes the guide is so much more creative when i start my day with that so even so what I took to doing one question I'll get often is like how do you make sure that you're doing it I have put it on my calendar every I do it my work days I don't do it on the weekend it's on my calendar as a meeting So nobody else can schedule anything over it.

Also, it appears then on my Structured app. Structured is the app that I'm using right now to take me through my day. And it arranges your day in a timeline. And so automatically, that is on my timeline. and it has a very satisfying like plink sound when you check off each item on your timeline kind of you also it gets into like estimating how much time tasks take and that kind of thing which is really useful but it's on that so it's like

As important to me as any other meeting would be. That has been the thing that has solidified now. I've been doing morning reads almost every day, every work day for a year now. And that's by far my longest streak of this. And it's because I put it on my calendar as a meeting. Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense. What about you? Have you ever gotten into a habit of morning reading? I have.

I have, for sure. Especially when I was doing... like structured slow but studies where it was like I have to read usually I would do 30 pages a day of whatever because if it's a 900 page book that could still take you a full month right so I would say like okay it's exactly this much and here's

what I need to accomplish today. And so I would put it very first thing in the morning so that it wasn't something that I was trying to squeeze in at the end of my day because it was something that really mattered to me. So I put it... priority number one right I would get up in the morning work out and then immediately go into reading with my coffee cup in front of me so that I could check it off my list and even though I've never thought of it like this it does

lend itself into what you're calling morning pages or what I already forgot the name of the author. Julia Cameron. Julia Cameron calls morning pages, which is that I love to finish it and then sit down with a paper notebook in front of me, even though I have so many digital resources for keeping track of my calendar, my to-do list, whatever is going on. I love writing.

it down in front of me with a little bullet point dot at the beginning and then crossing through so I can see exactly how much progress I've made. And doing that immediately afterwards while I still have that warm cup of coffee next to me is... the perfect way to start my day. And it does translate into the entire rest of the day working correctly in a way that it doesn't work like that if I don't do it. I am willing to do fiction in mine, but...

I haven't been doing it as often. Sometimes my read with Katie turns into a morning read where I'm like, okay, well, we usually read about 30 pages a day. also. And so sometimes my buddy read with Katie, whatever we're running along, will be a morning read. But it's my favorite way to start the day. Get up, work out, like boom, boom, boom. Get up, work out, get the coffee.

Start reading, make your to-do list. And then I've got five things checked off immediately. Right, which is super helpful to get your day started. This also really speaks to, I think, the issue of... when we do certain kinds of reading. And I know that at the end of my workday, I am not going to sit down with a business book or a work of, you know, poetry that I really want to...

think deeply about or read in a different way. For me, it's first thing in the morning. And then you're right. My morning pages. And one of the things that Julia Cameron says is absolutely morning pages need to be done by hand because it's so. That gives me a great excuse to buy beautiful custom notebooks and use them. Because that's the problem with pretty notebooks, right? We're like, this one's too pretty. I can't do anything with it. No, you got to use it or it serves no purpose.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, the other thing that I know work, I mean, you know, I guess people are asking about morning reading, like the process, not just necessarily the book part of it. So I'm talking a little bit about the journal part of it. But I think the other thing that has helped me with the streak that I'm on is that for a really long time, I was very hesitant to journal.

on paper because i was like but what if people find it because like you can't be honest if you're also editing and you're also whatever so finally a i just decided if i'm dead and people find who that I don't care. That's now your problem, honestly. And also, I also made a pact with my best friend who lives three doors down from me that the moment you hear I'm dead, I need you to go grab these three things.

Put them in a box and burn them. Yeah, yeah. These three categories of items, one of which is journals. And so then she's on it. Now we're going to get deep type questions about what are the other two categories. Keep it bookish. I'm just saying. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here's my next question about this. So you've said you kind of.

narrow it down to business books I'm assuming that also you're like it's mostly non-fiction but like business parables would probably go into a morning read right my Patrick Lencioni reads right but those often those often skirt outside and I'm like oh I'm just gonna finish it because I can't just keep it to. Yeah. Okay. That was another question I was going to have, but do you have.

let's say, a separate TBR for your morning reads? Do you finish a book of poetry and then always pivot to nonfiction? Do you have any kind of like guiding light as to choosing the next book for your morning read? Yeah, I mean, you're not going to be surprised to find it's completely by my mood. I do tend to go back and forth between, I guess I go back and forth more between challenge and a little bit of ease or whimsy. Like, that's kind of what I try to do.

But sometimes I pick up, I know I want to prioritize a particular business book because we are facing a particular challenge in our business or there's something I want to try in our business. So sometimes it's that, like I recently read Jobs to be Done.

which was a really interesting business book that immediately had me kind of thinking through some things in our business. And then I followed that up with... a book that was similar called Six Types of Working Genius. Those two books kind of worked really well together. And because it got my...

juices flowing as to some things that here comes the guide that i wanted to do a little bit differently it was a good back-to-back so it's really very you know but then like as soon as i finish that i'm going straight into like rilke you know so you just never know

That makes sense. And then do you ever partner with someone? Like I said, sometimes my morning read, whatever it is that I'm trying to knock out first thing in the morning, is the book that I'm reading with Katie. But yours are always solo. Is that correct? Well, the only exception is so none of my I don't I wouldn't partner with any of my normal buddy read partners for for this particular kind of book. But I do. And I think I've talked about we do some.

more formal book clubs at Here Comes the Guide. So we'll be reading a book over the course of a lot with a really small group. And so sometimes, yes, that will be, I will use that for my morning reading because it just... dovetails really well together and then in my morning pages oftentimes then what I will be prompted to be thinking about is like what are the things about this book that I want to bring up with this particular person or I want to you know

That kind of thing. So yes, that's where a buddy read would come into play. That's more like a book club situation than a buddy read situation. Yeah. But it can take that carved out space in your reading day. Yeah, definitely. Okay, and then you kind of touched on this a little bit, but what if you're reading...

Patrick Lencioni, for example, and you're like, this is my morning read. I'm going to read for five to 15 minutes. Everything's great. And then you're like, just kidding. I'm going to finish this book because I just want to read the last hundred pages right now. Is that...

allowed in your morning reading definitely and there have been and it's it's been exclusively with Patrick Lencioni books where I have allowed myself to maybe read for longer appear you know like I don't want to stop at just these two chapters I want to I want to

read longer or just finish the whole thing because I'm just like, this is just too useful to me. I just have to keep, I have to keep reading. So yeah, I try not to put a lot of rules just like with my entire reading life. I try not to put too many rules around it, but that's loose. how I do it and I do have to say that it is part of my reading that feels very much for me even though because I think the other thing is historically I had felt like well whatever I read here

People aren't going to want to hear about it. Right. It turns out a lot of people have said, I really would love to get more of this content. So I just decided also like, yeah, and some of these will make it to my current reads if I feel like I have something, a point of view to share on it.

It'll make it to my current read. So folding that in has also helped. But I feel like that's a part of my reading that feels very because I've gotten so stubborn around it. Like I am going to take this time to do this. Even if like, sometimes my husband will be like, so I know you're working, but man, that doesn't, like, it's really hard for him to, if I'm tucked, my legs tucked up under me reading a book or writing and it doesn't feel like work to him. Right.

But he's just had to realize like, no, sometimes that's what these are the things I need to do to be my best self at my work, which requires me to be very clear headed and creative simultaneously. So it is part of my work. And I've just gotten very okay with that. Like, this is just very much for me. Kind of like, you can go scratch if you don't like it or what I'm reading or whatever. Not you, Katie, but just in general. No, no, I know.

I didn't take that personally. It's okay. All right. I would love to know if other people... do this kind of reading especially like at a specific time of day maybe it's not morning reading but maybe they have you know well I have this afternoon reading because it's nap time or you know whatever but I do it every day I've really protected it and maybe I do a specific kind of reading in that period of time. It's boxed out. I would be very interested to know if people do that.

Yes, we always love that, like peek inside other people's reading lives. So for sure, share that with us. And especially if you have a cute name for it, we want to know. Yes, I would love a cuter name for it. Also, if you have recommendations for books that you've read that are kind of along the lines of what I've talked about that my morning reading is filled with.

DM me or put in the thread your recommendations because I love to hear those from other people. Yes, we do love that. Okay, let's scooch on over to the fountain and make some wishes.

What is your wish this week? This week, I did a reel on Instagram that turned out to be a little bit more controversial than I had planned on it being. Oh, I know what this is about. I did a reel about, I did. This is one of those things where I was like, I'm just doing all this experimenting on Instagram with my own feed. And I'm really, from a business perspective, really interested in like what works, what appeals, what doesn't appeal, what pops off, what doesn't.

And so I did one that kind of started out a little bit more. I didn't mean it to be controversial, but I started it out this way. So that's why it got people, which I said something along the lines of nobody. No one wants to be in your book club is what you said. Yeah. Which, of course, I meant very tongue-in-cheek. But my wish is...

Really, not about that, because it inspired a lot of great conversation around the topic of book clubs and their formats and what works for different people. And of course, we all know. the traditional book club format works for a lot of people. And I got so many messages from people who were like,

I because like my thing was, don't do a traditional book club, maybe consider a currently reading book club, right, where you all just get together, you talk about what you've read recently, that's really worked for you. That was kind of the message that I was giving in that reel.

And of course, so many people saying like, I've been in my traditional book club for 30 years. It's a grounding force in my life. And I love that so much. So like the relationships I've built with these women matter more to me than, oh my gosh, there were so many great comments. Yeah. So I love that so much. I love that we all have all of these different kinds of structures and formats that we can have for reading in community.

I'm a newer convert to the concept of reading in community. For the majority of my life, that wasn't a part of it at all for me. But now between Buddy Reads and... making a ton of bookish friends where we get together regularly to talk about the books that we've read recently, it's added so much to my life. So my wish is that if you are interested in any way, shape, or form,

in adding to your bookish life. Do it in the form of a book club of one sort or another, silent, current, traditional, or any other kind that you can think of. That's my wish. Ping, splash. Yeah, I could piggyback on that in so many big ways that reading in community, whatever format that takes, has added so much to my reading life over the past, I mean, honestly.

15 years probably, but definitely over the past seven as we've done the show and built relationships with people all over the country and the world. There was a period of time when I read... short stories almost exclusively with one group of people. And those people were so important to me for such a long time.

And we just checked in with our one story a day and it mattered to have those conversations. So like find a way to read in community, whether it's your historical fiction with women's backs book club or whatever else you can do with it. Right. Absolutely. I know that back in the day, and I'm sure still Gretchen Rubin, now the second mention of Gretchen Rubin in this episode, she had a middle grade book club because she was like, there's got to be other adults that want to read middle grade.

a book club around it right and so just like whatever but and and please know like hear me say i love that anybody finds a traditional book club where they dig into one book really deeply and have great conversation and that edifies them and feeds them. I love that. I also love it if your book club is supposed to read one book and what you do is you get together and talk about your lives. That brings me just as much joy.

way you can have communities spurred by books, I think is really, really excellent. Yes, that is the core wish here. Definitely. Okay, I think I'm just going to save my wish for next week, actually. I'm just going to piggyback on yours, and we're just going to encourage people to read in community and find out what iteration of that works best for them. So mine will still be applicable next week. I'm not worried about it.

All right. Perfect. Excellent. Okay, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me, I'm Meredith, at Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram. And you can find me, Katie, at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Putavong Evans. You can find her on Instagram at mostofmegansreads.

Full show notes with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps so you can zoom right to where we talked about it can be found in our show notes and on our website at currentlyreadingpodcast.com. You can also follow the show on Instagram at currently reading podcast, or email us especially with your ideas at currently reading podcast at gmail.com. And if you want more of this kind of content, luckily, luckily for you, there is so much more of it.

All you have to do is become a bookish friend. It's $5 a month and you get a ton more content. You get a lot of bookish community and you keep this show commercial free. You can also help us by rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcast and shouting us out on social media. Every one of those things helps us find our perfect audience. Yes, bookish friends are the best friends. Bookish community is the best community. Thank you.

for helping us grow and get closer to our goals. All right. Until next week, may your coffee be hot and your book be unputdownable. Happy reading, Katie. Happy reading, Meredith.