Hey gang, we're back. for the first time, I'm bringing back a, I've got a repeat guest, which is interesting. So I've got my friend Mike here again. And as we said last time, mean, Mike, if you want to just remind folks like what your situation or non-situation is as far as the school library goes, just in case folks missed the last episode, although it was a good one. So you should go back and check it out if you did, but go ahead tell folks about where you're at, what your deal is.
First of all, thank you for having me back. And I think to distill it down, my best qualifications for this podcast are being one of your closest friends for 30 plus years and rediscovering my love of reading and later life. I think those are the two big ones. And I got to say, this episode idea actually came from you and I loved it because we, last time we talked about the importance of school libraries and sort of our experiences with the school library.
And I think there were lots of really interesting things in there, but we also talk about books on a regular, if not a weekly basis, a very regular basis. And you had kind of thrown out the idea of like, huh, maybe we should talk about like where we find out about books from, for, you know, thinking that through a little bit. which I love it, great idea.
Yeah, because, you know, as you and I talk about our books and our reading habits a lot, I am forever just amused about how we always end up in the same place. We always end up, you know, reading the authors we like. We end up going through our TBRs, but we never really approach anything from the same way. It's always something very different. And this is no exception. And I think we'll get into the details, but we started talking about it.
And the way it seemed to me, just on the surface, top level, is I seem to curate. a lot more and research the books that I want to read. And I'm a little more discriminatory with what I put on my TBRs and what I read, where I think you're just kind of a little more experimental. You'll just, I don't know, let me give it a try. Let me see what's the worst that can happen. So I just thought that was two different perspectives to look at.
Yeah, and I think you're, mean, that definitely kind of sums up how I build up my TBR, because I'll hear somebody talk about something, be like, that sounds kind of neat, and throw it on my list. And in sort of, I don't usually do a lot of preparing when I have these conversations, but just because I knew we were going to be specifically talking about this, I did do just a tiny, tiny bit of looking up. And one of the things that I pulled up was my Goodreads TBR list.
I've got a Books I Want to Read list in Goodreads. And this is a little bit painful, but there are 528 books currently on my Want To Read list. So that's a list that I go back to every once in a while. I'm like, okay, am I gonna actually get around to reading this? Because like 528 books, that's several years worth of books if I did nothing but read off of that list. So I know I'm not gonna get to all of them. So I definitely need to go through and do a little bit of reading of that list, but.
As embarrassing as it is, yes, there's 528 books on there. And I know that there's some titles that aren't on that list that I need to add. yeah, so it's even more than that. So you had sort of floated this as something that you wanted to discuss. And I'm kind of curious, like, where do you kind of come up with the things that you're gonna read next door? Like, how do you go looking for new books?
Yeah, and I'll tell you how I do it, I'll tell you I like the way you do it better, but I'll tell you the way I do it and I'm hardwired to do it. Yeah, I mean, I have this tendency to go through sources like YouTube, like Reddit, make sure I find non-spoilery sources, first of all. And then over time, you start to find these sources where people's opinion you trust and you value. I try very hard to make sure I don't adopt those opinions blindly. still try to, you know, have my own opinions.
But I think I always want to make sure that I if I'm taking the time to read something, I want to make sure I'm reading something that's worthwhile. And I think a lot of that may have come from, you know, we've talked about this, I think over the last couple of years, my reading speed is definitely picked up, my comprehension is picked up. And it's a lot less overhead than it used to be.
Mm-hmm. And I think going back a number of years, when it was a lot of overhead to read some of the books I wanted to read, I wanted to make sure that I was reading something that I really enjoyed. So I tended to curate a lot more. And, you know, in some instances, that is a hard habit to break. It's brought me down some really good roads. I have some series that I'm in the middle of reading now that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise, and I'm very thankful for that.
And there's been some others. Well, it's funny how you bring up the idea of having sort of almost a reliable source for what you want to read next, because I love Stephen King. I've been a huge Stephen King fan for, I mean, since I was a teen. And he will once in a while, like drop the name of a book or something that he really likes, or you'll see his name come up in an interview and he'll say like, and I was reading this book by this person.
And I also am a big, huge fan of an author named Spider Robinson, who writes a lot of sci-fi stuff. and he just kind of hits in a sweet spot for me. And so. has. You've been reading his books for as long as I can remember. yeah, decades, decades. And it's funny because both of them like have these things that they are interested in like musically and in terms of authors and books. And I long ago started being like, well, if I like their stuff, then I'm gonna like what they like.
And so I started picking up different recommendations that King had made or that Robinson had made. And I very quickly found that I have very different reading tastes than they do. And at first I felt like I must not be getting something here. Like there must be something I'm missing because these people who write these books that I love really like this stuff. And so I just must not be seeing what they're seeing. And it took me a long time to kind of realize, no, I just don't like it.
Like there's, it's okay to have different perspectives and opinions and different tastes. And my tastes tend to be different than theirs. And there's nothing wrong with that, but. you're, yeah, and you would figure, you know, if you read the stuff they write, why wouldn't you enjoy reading the stuff they read? I mean, it seems to make logical sense, but you're right. It's not always the case. Yeah, yeah.
And so that's why I find it really interesting that when you say that you are looking for, you know, this reliable source that you know you can trust the taste of that person and you are thoughtful and careful about whose tastes you sort of adapt or adopt, I definitely, I think that's a really wise thing to do is sort of be sort of thoughtful about where are we going to start pulling our book suggestions from. because one of my main sources these days is Gizmodo.
It's a blog, it's a science fiction and fantasy blog. And they, like maybe once a month or so, they put out a post that is upcoming science fiction and fantasy books. And they'll give you 30, 40, 50 titles in a post. And they give you a little blurb about here's what the book's about. And it's basically like the author's blurb. You know, it's not necessarily something that they're making up. I love reading Gizmodo.
And so I sort of had that same thing of if I like reading it, I'm going to enjoy the things they recommend. And I learned the hard way that that's not always the case with them either. And so I still do use them as a source. it's good. I like them for a place to go to find out like what's going to be coming because sometimes I'll find out, yeah, this author I like has something coming or this series that I started has a new installment coming. So it's useful in that way.
But again, it's not necessarily gonna be everything that they throw out there as something to look at is something I'm gonna necessarily be interested in. Yeah, I think the way it's been the most useful for me is finding different sources and then comparing them and see if you can see some sort of consensus among them. And then I'll start to value that more if I see it. And I'm also looking for very specific things.
I think one of the things that you and I have also talked about is we just everybody's got like certain deal breakers with books, right? You have certain things, it can be a very well written book, very well acclaimed book, everybody loves it. But there's one thing that you find out about it you're like, I just can't get past that mental hurdle. It's just not for me. And we all have different things.
And for me, because in my older age, I tend to like series more, revisiting worlds and revisiting characters. The two things that I'm always looking out for is one, I don't want to read something where I find out an author just can't finish books anymore. Like if they just get to the point where they've just hit a wall, they're just not prolific, they're not consistent, they're not. they don't have the output, I don't want to be stuck waiting for stuff to come out.
By the same token, I don't want to be reading somebody who just continues to write constantly and the content isn't there anymore. So I'm trying to avoid like those particular pitfalls. And that's usually what I'm looking for when I look at non-spoilery reviews. And that's kind of like where my starting point is from there. Okay, that totally makes sense.
And you know, I love the idea of sort of triangulating and saying, know, this source, this source, this source are all bringing this up and saying these things about it. That certainly gives you, mean, that's actually a great information literacy skill is triangulating your information and kind of saying, are people agreeing on this? So that's, I hadn't really thought about applying that to books, but that's a great idea.
And because I think people are looking for different things because those are the pitfalls that I'm looking for. But those may not be other people's pitfalls. Like just to use examples and again, a lot of my experiences in the fantasy realm. So I'll just stick with that for a minute. like the biggest examples of people in that realm that probably can't finish books are obviously George R.R. Martin, Song of Ice and Fire. Everybody knows about that.
The odds of that series being finished are minimal at best. It is very, very low. And the other one is Patrick Rothfuss with the Kingkiller Chronicles. I've long ago read both first books. I can't get myself to pick up any of the others because I know they'll never be done. But there's a lot of people who I read their opinions online and they're like, look, I don't care. I love George R.R. Martin's world building. It's great. And that's all that matters to me.
I don't care if it's ever been finished. And his world building is great. And some people will read Patrick Rothfuss for his prose. And his prose are great. They're really well done. And for some people, that's enough to carry them through. It doesn't need to be finished. So in that sense, they shouldn't be looking for the same pitfalls that I'm looking for. Yeah, well, I mean, there's so many authors now. It seems like it's almost a more common occurrence these days.
And maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention back in the day, but I feel like you got Scott Lynch with the Gentleman Bastard series. I've been waiting for that next book for years now. And I cannot, I love that series so much, but it's just, when's it gonna happen? Maybe someday. Like I recently heard maybe it's gonna be coming someday soon, but we'll see. And like, Orson Scott Card is my go-to example for this because he's started several series that he never finished.
And some of them are one book and he never continued it. Some of them are several books and the last book never got written. And we're talking 20, 30, 40 years on some of these. you know, it's that, I find that frustrating. In my head, I need things to be finished. I, that's one of my, I don't know if it's part of my, Yes, yes, yes, have. so the author is a self-published, well, he was a self-published author.
He put out... I think it was seven books self-published and they gained a lot of traction online. He managed to, he recently got picked up by, I think it was Ace Publishing and they are now putting out hardcover versions of his books. And I knew that there were seven books. Well, no, that's not true. I read the first book because I forget if we had talked about it or if I'd seen it someplace, but it had come up somewhere and I was like, you know, that kind of sounds like my jam. Like it's a...
And it also has a lot of your sense of humor in it too, I must say. yeah, it's got some kind of wacky out there humor and I love that. So was like, I absolutely am gonna give this a shot. And I read the first book, it was fine. Didn't like knock me over, but it was like, okay, you know, it's pretty good. And then I saw that there were a whole bunch more books and I was like, do I really want to invest in this series? Cause that's like seven books worth of books is a lot.
And I just kind of, it fell by the wayside. kind of forgot about it. And a couple of maybe a month or so ago, you and I had been talking again and Dodger, Crawler, Carl came up once again. And for some reason it got stuck in my head. And I was like, I wonder if the second book is any better than the first. So I went and I got the second book and I read it. I was like, mean, it adds a little bit to the world. Maybe I'll check out the third book.
Before I knew it, I had all seven books on my Kindle. And I ended up just like blasting through them from two to seven, one after the other. And I got to book seven thinking, okay, this is the end of the series. Like I am now, I'm going into the final end game of this. I'm really curious how he's gonna wrap this up because each book, the whole world is set in like a, the character has to keep moving through levels of basically a game for those who aren't familiar with it.
And the first book, basically each book just goes through one level of the game. There's a little bit of skipping here and there, there's a little bit of multiples here and there, but it's basically one level per book. And so... In the book, they talk about there being 18 levels to this game that he's in. And there is a place in one of the books where they skip a level and I was like, okay, so maybe they're gonna skip some levels. Maybe he's not gonna go all the way to the end.
Like I can see how maybe they're gonna spin this into, it's gonna, you know, he's gonna short circuit the game and that's how this is gonna wrap up. But I got to the end of the seventh book and no, he was still like just level by level by level. And I'm like, my God. Not only have I invested seven books worth of books into this, I don't know if he's gonna be done for 11 more books. And there's no way I can do 11 books.
And adding to all of that, when he was self publishing them, he was putting out two or three books a year. I have a feeling, I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that now that he's got a physical publisher, they're gonna slow his releases down.
And whether that's them saying you need to slow down, to give us time to even just print the books or even if it's just him now starting to go around and be part of different author events and going to book signings and stuff, he's probably not gonna have as much time to focus on the writing itself. So how long is it gonna take him to produce whatever the next number of books are for this series? I can't even wrap my mind around it.
I'm so, there's a little tiny splinter in my brain that I am now so frustrated by that like, I've got this much of the story and I'm probably never gonna come back to it because I just won't be able to. I won't be able to do it. You're a better person than me from going through that many of them. That was one of the examples of my online trusted resources kind of failing me, I think. It is that book series is incredibly well received online in general.
think it's safe to say there's a lot of reviews. There's a lot of favorable reviews. People will tell you that it's got a great sense of humor about it. It's really outside the box. It's really different. If you're in a reading slump and you're looking for something that's just from a fresh direction, like this is really what you want. If you have a gaming background, this is really what you want.
And a lot of people said, it's great, you'll go right through it and the quality is consistent and keep going. And I did the first one. I will say this, the one thing I did different than you than the first one, I did do audio for that one. I will say as a side note, the audio performance is fabulous. It's one of the best audio performances I've ever heard of an audio book. In terms of the content, It was good, it was entertaining, but for me it was like, think this is enough for one book.
At no point did I think I need seven plus more of these or however many it is, you know, at this point in time. So I stopped and I didn't go any further. And that was probably the first time that I had sat back and said, okay, you know, maybe, you know, there is something to the fact that you just have to sometimes for yourself figure it out rather than depend on, you know, the curate opinions of other people.
Well, it's I mean, I know we have that sort of a little bit of a difference in how we consume some of our books that you do you tend to do audiobooks fairly regularly I'm not a huge audiobook person But there's times when you say like man the audio for this was so good that really makes me want to dive You know I got to come back around to that at some point and maybe pick up some of these titles as the audio versions and see maybe that's what hooks me in but
You know, and I will tell you, if you're looking to do that, think Dungeon Crawler Call would actually be a good starting point for that. If you're not traumatized enough, go back to the first one and listen to it on audio. If you're not really moved by that audio performance, I don't think you'd be moved by much. But I will say this to you and to anybody else who's like, you know what, maybe I'll give that a try and maybe I'll listen to this on audio. I don't think a lot of people realize this.
The first one, plays out if you listen to it on audio, like an audio drama. And a lot of people think that the listing of all the credits is incomplete because it is one person that does everything. Does all the voices, does all the characters. And if you go online and you see him at events, he will read and it is amazing. He doesn't need time to prep and set up and get into another character voice. He just goes from one to the other to the other. It's very impressive.
And so if anybody's thinking like, you know what, I need to do audio a little more, that might be a really good starting point, because it's just fun and it's well executed. And that would be a good benchmark. If that doesn't really move you, then maybe audio is not your thing. But if it does, that'll open a lot of other doors for a lot of other things. Yeah, no, I think that's great advice.
So I'm curious too, I wanna circle back around again to you had mentioned that you use YouTube as a source for books. How do you use YouTube as a book recommender? Yeah, usually what I would do is if there was series I was interested in, I would just search for those series. And there's a bunch of people that would just have their reviews. And, you know, some of them people are very simple. They don't edit. They're not very long. And it's something they enjoy doing.
But you may not get a lot of it. Get a lot out of it. Some people very lengthy, they put a lot more into it. You just got to find people that you enjoy watching and you think give you good, relevant non-spoilery feedback, not just their opinions on what they liked and didn't like, but who this book is for. I think a lot of the people I really like are the ones that say, I want you to know if this book is for you, or this series is for you, and here's how I'm going to approach it.
But I will say, at the end of the day, you don't know unless you read it yourself. And that's why I was saying before, I think your approach is like the best approach. So I'll give you an example of another one that just for some reason this book series always keeps coming to mind. You may know this just because it's a young adult. I think it's a fantasy, sci-fantasy. Have you ever read or came come across the sci trilogy at all?
I have a copy of it in my library and I keep meaning to read it and tons of people have told me how amazing it is and I just never seem to get around to it, but I know of it. yeah, so this again, mental hurdle, I can't get past. So this guy named Neil Schusterman wrote this book. And again, I've watched a lot of reviews on YouTube from people whose opinions I started to trust, look at non-spoilery stuff on Reddit. Those are my two sources.
And in terms of consistency of those reviews, there's not a lot of deviation. Like there's always going to be exceptions, but the narrative thread of that trilogy, as far as the reviews go, It's pretty consistent. First book comes out, people praise it very highly. Won some awards, people love it. They said, look, it's really a fresh take on like AI and it's just really well done. You've got to read it. And it's young adult on the shorter side, easy read, just dive right in.
Second book comes out, general consensus is maybe the second book is a little bit of a step down. Still some good ideas, but I wouldn't say bad. To say the reviews of book three are polarizing is an understatement. And yes, there are people that like it and they think that it's really inventive and it's really creative, but the majority of the people that reviewed that third book, the word ire comes to mind. They are just not happy that they invested the time in the book.
They didn't like the 90 degree turn that it took and a lot of people feel let down by the author to the point where they feel they may not revisit it. Now again, I may be one of those people that picks up that trilogy and get to the end and I may be one of those small percentage of people that's like, this is actually really creative, this is outside the box, I like this. Am I ever gonna know?
Probably not, because I'm still trying to get past that mental hurdle of being like, it's okay to read this even though that I've gotten that feedback already. So I don't know, it goes both ways. It's funny, because when you had brought up YouTube as a source, I know that there are people who, like, there's a section of YouTube that people call BookTube that they just like, that's where you go to look up where you're going to read, what you're going to read next. And like TikTok has BookTalk.
And I just never, I never felt, I guess, the need or the desire to go and seek out even more. sources of books because I feel like between like talking to friends talk looking online at this websites I usually go to because I look at a lot of Entertainment sort of focused websites. So they tend to have lots of suggestions you had pointed out read it read it has literally dozens of book communities and Any one of the posts like there'll be a single post like hey, what are your favorite?
robot focused fantasies from the past year. And there's like 900 books that people throw out there. So like, you can just pick one post and have more to read than you'll ever get to in your lifetime. So like, there's so many places to get information from that I've never really gone exploring those. But it's interesting like to hear you talk about it a little bit, because while I've heard people talk about these other sources, I've never checked them out.
And I don't really know sort of how they function, I guess. So that's interesting to say that you're sort of looking at Yeah, think that the one thing that I would caution people with in YouTube, and there are some great content providers out there and you can find them based on what you're interested in by just simply searching and like seeing who aligns with your interests the most. I think the thing you just gotta be mindful of is, and sometimes people fall into that trap.
If you don't have a significant other that's as excited about books as you are, or friends you can talk to, sometimes listening to strangers talk about the books that they love in the comfort of their own living room feels oddly like socialization. So you can like, you know, sort of fall into that trap. But the other thing is to keep in mind what the content provider situation is. Sometimes they're just doing it for the love and enjoyment of it, but sometimes these people are sponsored.
And sometimes these people do have relationship with publishers. They have relationships with authors. And you need to keep that in mind when they give you feedback. That's probably the one thing that you have to be mindful of when you're going through this. But that's the case with anything. Just research your sources and understand where they're coming from. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. I always feel a little funny.
Like I've, I've done different projects here and there, and I've got some stuff that exists out in the world. And I always feel weird about mentioning to people cause I'm like, I'm not trying to self promote here, you know, but it's a good point you bring up like, yeah, some people are, you know, in it for the sponsorships or they're in it for the views. So they're going to not necessarily be sharing the most relevant information, but maybe instead the most eyeball grabbing information.
So. Mm-hmm. a good point. I appreciate you bringing that up. I'm also kind of curious. You moved not too long ago. I love my public library. My public library is so great. I walk in there and they've got both a children's section or like a juvenile section that I will wander through because they've got stuff that's really good middle grade level there.
And whoever does their book buying is awesome because I will just literally they'll have them set up on top of the short bookshelves and let's walk around and grab this one and this one and this one and read them and be like, these are awesome. I got to add these to my school collection and their YA and adult sections to both also have really good new books and they've got the new books set off to the side.
So, you know, like, this is the stuff that if you're looking for the latest and greatest, this is where you go and check it out. So I spend tons of my time at the public library. Have you had a chance to sort of explore your new library system? I have, but I need to be there more. I think one of the things that I am grappling with with myself is with doing more digital reading, not just stop, look and research digitally to do more physical research and go out into places.
sometimes I'm better about when we're out shopping, going and looking at bookstores. There's some here, local ones that are pretty well curated that have some great stuff. And I'll go through there and get ideas. But yeah, usually when I go to the library, it's with an intent to look for something. I got to be better about going to the library to browse. And again, I think the thing that's had the biggest impact of that is just digital, having stuff as easily available as it is.
Yeah. Well, and I mean, I absolutely will spend once in a while, I'll just get a wild hair and go on Amazon and say, what's for sale? And like, look, this is only 99 cents. This is only two bucks. And all of a sudden, $40 later, I've got my Kindles full. But yeah. So I think there's I think there's something to be said for both, though, like because as you pointed out previously, having a digital reader is for some people a better choice or a better experience than having the physical media.
And so, you know, I think there's something to be said for looking at what is being chosen as new additions to a library or a bookstore or whatever. But I don't think there's anything wrong with then getting it as a digital version. So, you know, whatever works for people, like you said before, you gotta find your own reading, the things that work for you is your reading list. So. Speaking of lists, there was one other thing that I wanted to throw out there.
I'm kind of curious, how do you sort of curate your to-be-read pile? Because if I haven't bought it, if it's not sitting on my Kindle or sitting on my book table, I have my Goodreads list, but I also keep a separate Google Keep list that's arranged by the section of my public library. I basically, once in a while, I'll go on my Goodreads list or I'll look at... all these suggestions are coming in for books that I might like.
And I'll look them up on the Public Libraries website and say like, they've got this, they've got this. And I'll add them so that when I do go to the library, I'm like, okay, this, this, this, I know they exist in the library. Let's see if I can go find them. So I'm kind of curious, like what's your method for curating your to be reds? Good question. And again, we're very different. So first of all, I don't really use Goodreads, right, to list any of my stuff.
I have a small list that I keep in an Excel spreadsheet. And here's a couple of things that I do to show you. The biggest difference is my list of books on my TBR is probably 10 % of yours. It's much, much smaller. mine's ridiculous. So I don't think that's a bad thing. You said it, didn't. So mine's a lot smaller. I think the way I always look at it is like, my God, what do I, I don't list everything I want to read.
I'm like, look, if I only had a limited number of years left, what are the ones that I would just have to to have to read? And I list those out. And the other thing that I found out that I started doing lately is I will list them and I used to change around the order and re-rank them and like, I'll put this one more to the top. Cause like our tastes are always changing. Our interests are always changing.
We may want to read something so badly right now and three weeks later be like, yeah, I'd moved on. I want to read this now. We're all guilty of it. It all happens. I found the best thing that works for me is I keep the list. I don't shuffle the order anymore. The list is the list. It's in any order. It doesn't matter. And the one thing that I do is that I don't decide what my next book is going to be. until I finish my last book.
So I finish my last book, I put it down, and then I give myself like a day and I'm like, what is the new headspace I'm in? What do I want to read right now? And then I'll go through the list and maybe it's number one, maybe it's a 40, maybe it's 50, and I'll be like, yeah, I think I want that one. And then I'll pick that one. And that's the one that I'll download from, you know, onto my e-reader. And that's the one I'll read.
One of the things that I found out is that I have a tough time if I am in a very different headspace, I can't really force myself to read something if I'm not in the headspace for it. I can kind of force myself to do it, but I just don't think I get the best reading experience out of it. And, you know, and I think that's why I used to buy a lot of books in advance, because I'd be like, I want to have I always want to have everything lined up. And I never want to not be with anything.
But I found out that if I just wait, finish the last one, see where my headspace is, and then do that, go far like Towards the end of last year, everything I bought, I read. Mm-hmm. And that hasn't happened before. And then I'm hoping to continue that this year. And everything I read, I really enjoyed reading and I was in the head space for reading. So very different. Don't use good reads, keep a short list. And I just let my mood dictate what's next.
I tried for a long time to just kind of tier them like, well, this one seems to be more important and this one's more revered and it just doesn't work that way. It's gotta be whatever I'm in the mood for. totally. No, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, there's books that I will start reading and I'll be like, and say, I'm not going to read this. And then I might accidentally come across it again a couple months, years later and read it be like, this is great.
And I just wasn't in the right place for it at the time. So I think you're absolutely right that you're not necessarily going to always have, you know, the, the desire for the thing that's right in front of you. Think about where you're actually at, because I mean, you know, I used to buy books. You and me both. You and me both. Yeah. Yeah. I've got, we've got our library set up and there are books in that library that I have carted through three or four moves now that have still not been read.
Like we're talking 20 years that are probably, they're still sitting on the shelf. Am I going to get to them someday? Maybe. At the time I got them, I needed to have them. Like I was so sure this was going to be the next thing that I read. But like you said, get to the end of one thing, and maybe you're not in that same space anymore.
So I have been making a concerted effort to not add more books to the actual physical or Kindle pile until I, like you said, until I finish something and I'm like, am I actually in the mood for this? Because I literally, here is, I've got three books from the public library that I... brought home right after New Year, because I was planning on this is gonna be my Christmas reading, or actually before the New Year, I got them for Christmas.
And then at school, we're talking about doing a one read where everybody reads the same book. And these are some of the books that are on our one read list. So I just showed Mikey three books from the public library and three books from my school library. And I have all of these sitting right here, like waiting for me to read. Some of them have to be read because they have to be returned soon. So like I'm going through them. I'm enjoying them, but I'm going through them.
And last night I read a post on Reddit and somebody mentioned, my gosh, this book. And they talked about this book. And I can't even think of the title of it at the moment, but it sounded so good. And I looked it up and the public library had it. And I was like, I'm gonna reserve this right now. And I'm like, dude, you literally have six books that you haven't opened yet. Mm-hmm. yeah, that is something that you have dealt with before too. Yeah, absolutely.
It's something that I've definitely dealt with with a long time. It's one of my missions in 2025 is to make sure I want to keep the streak alive that whatever I purchase or pick up or whatever, or get from the library, whatever the circumstances are, when I get it, I read it. Now, granted, my statement still stands. If I get halfway through it or a quarter of the way through it, and it's not for me, I have no problem DNFing it.
Yeah, but by the same token, for the most part, curating and then just seeing what you're in the headspace for has worked pretty good. So I'm going to stick with it until it doesn't work. absolutely. Just FYI, I just read Slow Horses, the first book of the Slow Horses series. I liked it. It was quite good. know what, I liked it a lot. did you did you pick that up on my recommendation or?
Yeah, and that was another one that I just came across on a suggestion from I think YouTube and it's not in my wheelhouse. It's it's spy novels, but man, it's such a fresh take on it. So for for anybody listening, the book series, I think it's Ken Heron that wrote the books. Mccarran, thank you, Mccarran. He wrote this book series that was adopted for a television show that has Gary Oldman in it.
And it's not your typical spy series because it's people that are not working their way up in the ranks. They're not James Bond. They're not Jason Thorn. They're these really talented people that have really messed up and have been relegated to this island of misfit toys. you and they get put in a position where they kind of have to pull their personal stuff together and just figure it out. And it's funny. And it's really good. And I didn't expect it to be that way at all.
And it was something I picked up because it's not in my wheelhouse. And it's nice and refreshing to pick up something like that. That's nice and short, funny. It's really different. It's a palette cleanser. And the whole series is supposed to be good. So I'm to have to read more of them. Yeah, I definitely see myself going back for more of those. Cause like you said, just really entertaining, really enjoyable.
I had heard about the series and I don't think I had realized until you told me that it was a book series before it was an Apple TV or whatever service it's on series. So I'm glad that you pointed it out because same as you, I'm not necessarily a huge spy thriller kind of person, but this was a real good one. So that, yeah. hesitant when I give recommendations because we've talked about this before, taste is so subjective.
You never wanna recommend anything and have somebody come back and be like, eh, I gave it a try. Yeah, I mean, but I feel like you and I have really similar tastes in a lot of the stuff that we like. We don't like all the exact same stuff. And there's stuff sometimes that I'll recommend that you're like, eh, it wasn't for me. And I'll same back to you. But for the most part, I think we're pretty much on the same page. you know, don't ever feel shy about recommending to me.
Cause as you know, my TBR list is plenty long. I have no problem adding more stuff to it. Point taken, point taken. I don't want to be responsible for bringing you over the 600 threshold. Well, the past couple of times we talked, I definitely added some of those, was it Jade City? I think I just added, and what was the other one that you had suggested? I don't know what the other one, but I will say for anybody listening, like Jade City was actually another surprise.
That was something else I got from YouTube. If you haven't heard of it, it's a book series. It's a trilogy. It's written by this woman, Fonda Lee. And it's really different from anything else I've ever read. Technically, it's fantasy. It is a very low fantasy, but it doesn't read like a typical fantasy. So if you're somebody who does enjoy fantasy and you have somebody who doesn't really, and you're trying to get them into it, good starting point. It basically reads more like a Godfather novel.
It reads like a crime underworld story. And if you can imagine competing factions of a crime underworld that are competing for like having the corner of like a narcotics ring, replace the narcotics ring for a magical element that gives magical powers. And that's basically how the story works. It sounds a little ridiculous. But I will tell you, the plotting and the character work are very, very impressive. And it really, really surprised me how good it was.
It's on my short list, on my shorter list. Not quite at the end of my list, but I'm getting there. yeah, I I really appreciate that we have these conversations and I really appreciate how we are able to sort of recognize that, we're maybe not gonna like everything that the other person likes, but there is that common ground and we do have those things that. that are going to appeal to both of us in some element or another.
I don't think I would have gone back to The Expanse if you hadn't suggested, said how much you loved it because I thought, and I think I might've told this story before, but I'll just, as a recap for in case you missed it, I thought I had started reading The Expanse series and did not like it at all. And it turned out it was a completely different series. And you were so enthusiastic about it. was like, well, there's gotta be something here.
Cause I know that you and I have, similar enough tastes that if you're raving about it, like I should at least be able to see why. And I don't remember having that reaction to the book that I actually read. And I remember you even saying like, I'm looking at the description of this, this should be my bread and butter, but it was just a mess. And if I remember correctly, I think you were reading in banks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. even that should have been in my wheelhouse.
And I know people love the E banks, but just for me, it was a big mess. Like it just, didn't do anything for me. But who knows? Cause maybe two years from now I'll pick it up and I'll be like, my gosh, where's this been all my life? So you never know. But. Yeah, I anything else that you wanted to think about share or talk about in terms of where we're getting our books from No, nothing else has popped into... nothing else pops into my mind at this point.
Cool. I'm just making myself a note, because I'm to have to come and do little editing. So thank you once again for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate that as a non-educator and a non-librarian and a non-school librarian, that we are able to have these conversations. And I hope that people enjoy them as much as I do, because being perfectly frank and totally honest, I absolutely loved our last conversation. And I hope that I really enjoyed this one.
I hope people enjoy this one too, because... I feel like there's a lot, sometimes we school librarians, we don't have a lot of connections to other professionals, because like a lot of times we're the only librarian in the school, some places the only librarian in the district. And so we tend to sort of focus on like, what is other library, who are other library people I can talk to, to really get, you know, inside insight ideas. And I really appreciate your.
perspective on things because it really does help to sort of ground some of the thinking I do about what am I going to do with my students? What am I? Why am I doing things with my students the way I'm doing them? Because if I want to think that if you and I had had a school library like the one I'm trying to build our experience of middle school and high school have been very different and hopefully our reading lives would have been greatly enriched.
So Good. I'm glad the conversations are beneficial. I enjoy them just as much as you do. I enjoy these quite a bit and hopefully we'll do it again. Absolutely, hopefully we'll do it again soon. Sounds good.