Season 8, Episode 36: Spring Fever + The Oldest Books On Our TBR

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 you should know we won't shy away from having strong opinions so get ready. We are light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today we'll discuss our current reads, a readerly deep dive and a little something bookish before we go. I'm Meredith Mande Schwartz, I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas and I am leaning into my reading season. And I'm Katie Komp, a homeschooling momma for living in Arizona and my outgoing books are doing the work this week. This is episode number 36 of season eight and we are so glad you're here. Oh no that sounds interesting Katie, I don't know what that means, I love trying to guess. I like doing a little hint and then having to explore it a little more later. Y'all today for our deep dive we will be exploring a different thing, we're going to be talking about the oldest books on our TBRs and doing a little bit of investigating around those titles but first we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish moments of the week. Meredith what is yours? All right well we've mentioned the fact that it is spring in Texas, spring fever as our friend Elizabeth Barnhill talks about is what we've got and it is beautiful. Texas will always show up and show out for spring, we are getting some gorgeous rain but then we're also getting some gorgeous sunny mild temperatures so it's really the best of all worlds but I am feeling the need to be outside a little bit more in the sun or near the sun with my reading so this weekend my husband and I have been spending quite a bit of time getting our backyard ready for spring and summer and what that looks like for me from a reading perspective is brand new cushions because we have a family of squirrels that has gone in to three quarters of our cushions like our chase lounges, our benches, they've left our sofa area alone, our outdoor kind of pergola sofa area but they've gone and just dug holes like foot in diameter oh my gosh and they've taken all the stuffing out now hopefully they have some really bougie nests that they've made with this stuff I hope but I needed brand new cushions so we've gotten brand new cushions, we've cleaned an inch of pollen off of everything because everything is yellow here in Texas at this time of year, we've vacuumed our outdoor rug, we've done all of the things I've got new pool noodles because you know my favorite way to read is to listen and swim back and forth slowly and I use the word swim with air quotes because it's really just kicking my feet with my pool noodle and my air my air pods and my ears and that is my favorite summer way to read I can't wait to do it so this this has been about leaning into my season at the end of the show we're going to talk about another way that I'm leaning into my reading season that's different but this is the physical season so I thought we'd start here okay I like it I love that we don't really do spring cleaning in Arizona because spring is but a breath here but I did just clean all my windows to see my backyard in basically a new light because they've been gross and dusty for so long that I was like look at yeah look at my backyard it's so pretty out there look at all that yes I had to replant all of my plants because you know we we we freeze like two times and then half my plants are gone so we had to replant everything, remulch everything just an overall freshening is what needed to happen but it makes me feel so good it makes me want to be back there oh I love it I love it so fun I feel like I need to come visit but that's not what my out my bookish moment is about this week like I said my outgoing books are doing the work this week so I had two incidences this week where I had to peruse my outgoing bookshelf y'all who've been listening for a long time you know that when I finish a book if I have a physical copy of it I have to kind of triage it right I have to say is this a forever keeper does it go in this section of the shelves or this one or does it go on my outgoing bookshelf which is right by my front door and the goal there is that when people leave my house they also take some books with them right we are givers in this family so twice this week it served its purpose it lived into its ideal self first on Tuesday I had a friend that I hadn't seen in years come into town to visit during her kid's spring break and we did the obligatory stand and look at the bookshelves thing right we talked about my favorites we talked about stuff on my tbr things that matched up with her or that would different then I also brought her to the giveaway shelf to make some decisions about which books would travel home with her in her car to New Mexico we had a great time we chose six books of various genres plus a few more for her kiddos to read so I think 10 books left my house I felt very good about that the next day I got a text from my friend Gina who was putting together a giveaway basket for a raffle she said she had gathered a number of reading adjacent items a mug a notepad a journal for this giveaway basket but was hoping that I could supply the books for the haul of course the answer was yes right so I perused the shelves again and brought a great miss mix of backlist gems of all different genres I set them aside to give them to her the next time we got together I love it when my red and loved books come together and like serve the world for good made me so happy and you're making room on yourself for more so that's just a virtuous circle all the way around yeah and it's still way too full so if anybody wants to come visit I've got books for you we can make it happen that is so fun let's talk about some of those books that we've read and loved or maybe not though what is first on your current reads this week Meredith all right I have a really really good mix of books today because I have a brand new police procedural series the first one of which I absolutely loved I have a memoir which you know I don't bring those very often at all that had me absolutely laughing hysterically and shedding a few tears and then I have a brand new release work of literary fiction that I have a very spicy take about oh I'm excited I'm excited to talk about this but sort of not too because man I know I'm gonna get I'm gonna get comments but let's start with for my mystery lovers a brand new to me police procedural series that I absolutely loved this first book is called a question of guilt and it's by jorn lear hoarse here's a setup of this first book in the series our book opens with a veteran norwegian detective William vistig receiving a puzzling anonymous letter during a much needed holiday break just a single case file number that points to a 20 year old murder of 17 year old Tony vauterland killed on her way home from work in 1999 back then because he really was desperate for a conviction the police sent her spurned boyfriend Danny momrack to prison for the crime but the mysterious letter suggests that they got the wrong man and that the real killer is still out there vistig is a principled chief inspector in the coastal town of larvick who's been solving crimes since 1984 and he is known for his meticulous methodical approach and his unwavering commitment to justice my favorite kind of police detective and he is unwavering in his commitment even when it means questioning old convictions he is not a guy who's going to shy away from maybe he got it wrong he's going to try to get it right well more cryptic letters arrive linking this cold case to other more recent investigations and vistig finds himself in a terror terrifying race against time to figure out what these messages mean and identify the sender and make sure that the true killer is behind bars all right three things that we have to know about a question of guilt before we dive in first this is nordic noir that's actually noir like emotionally noir procedurally noir atmospherically noir dark we're talking norwegian coastal towns in winter and if that doesn't immediately make you want to grab a blanket and settle in this is not going to be your vibe now i like cold in summer i like to read about cold places in summer in texas that makes me feel good second if you're expecting thriller pacing like dangling off of cliffs or a ticking time bomb counting down this is not for you this is methodical police work the kind where you're checking alibis and cross referencing old case files and you're doing that actual detective stuff it takes time third and this is the kicker yarn lear horse was an actual police officer before he started writing crime and it shows in every single page of this book that feels really authentic in a way that a lot of crime fiction doesn't so i stumbled onto this book which is again the beginning of a series i've already read two in the series when i was wandering through daunt books in london you guys know that is one of my two favorite books there i went to the scandinavian section remember daunt books organized as part of the store by country i spotted this one and actually this is the this is a series i'd never ever heard of before not all of them are available in the us so i grabbed a few while i was traveling through the uk william visting immediately of course puts me in mind of arman gommash from the three pine series he's got that principled approach that methodical way of thinking through problems and that commitment to justice that i just find so endearing but what really grabbed me is that horse doesn't just give us the cases he as with the three pine series he gives us wisting's whole life the personal stuff bleeding into the professional like he's trying to solve this 20 year old case but he's also on vacation that balance between watching him solve these interconnected mysteries while also dealing with his own personal stuff i really really love that that's a sweet spot for me the structure is brilliant these are short chapters that make this incredibly easy to fly through i ended up staying up until 2 a.m one of the nights it's in this book is engineered for that and there's this one particular strategy that they use for checking their lead suspects alibi that i had never encountered before i'm not going to spoil it because it involves some genuinely clever police work but it had me thinking why doesn't this get used in mysteries more often so if you love like a viristan hope if you love the anklife series if you love inspector morse older ruth rindell all of those things this series is going to be your jam not to mention three pines this book is called a question of guilt by jorn learhorst interesting i know i love some nordic noir as well but you are the queen of the two of us indeed i love it especially in norway i haven't read as much in norway as i want to and this is just such a good so norwegian in every like it just it just puts you there yes love it all right my first one is for the somewhat murderful but definitely romance readers among us i'm going to talk about how to kill a guy in 10 dates by shaley thompson we owe this book to the novel neighbor for their romance focused list that they gave us in february of 2026 was so fun that month to have that list focused entirely on romance but still includes something for all different types of readers we had y a we had this one which is murderful this one was like i said for the scary lovers it's definitely laced with horror and plays on the scary movies of the 90s and the early 2000s our main character is jamie prescott no that's in arizona it's called prescott her last name is prescott which is how the rest of you all say it and her bestie lori they head to a speed dating event as part of their promise to each other that jamie will occasionally get out of the house she has been working full tilt on her dissertation about the similarities between the horror movie classics of her childhood so not like classics but those 90s 2000s classics and the romantic comedies that shaped her it was a high time for both of those in the late 90s and the early 2000s so when she agrees to go out she certainly does expect a whole room full of meh he was fine men and then ice cream with her best girl afterwards which sounds like a perfect date what she doesn't expect is that the lights will go out and when they turn back on her current speed date will have his throat slit open across the table in front of so begins a single night of horrors and terrors as jamie attempts to use everything she has learned about serial killers to survive because after a second blackout where the bartenders and employees end up dead as well it's clear that serial killer is what they're dealing with here but a love triangle among the current survivors leads to jamie questioning her number one rule which is that you definitely shouldn't be doing the adult tango while being hunted by a serial killer guys it's rule number one that and going off alone are the surest ways to end up dead it'll take alliances makeshift weapons and making good choices to get to the other side of this speed dating event gone wrong i thought this was so fun it's definitely gory it's definitely bloody we've got intestines we've got brain matter it's gory y'all don't let me sell you short on this it's not for a cozy romcom reader however it is romcom also it is bantery it is quick-witted it is a little bit silly it's a little bit spicy as well but it's just a short scene and mostly the other scenes are fantasizing about what could happen after this date from hell is over i loved jamie and the way that she uses her knowledge to get through this situation including telling the other speed daters about her rules how are you gonna stay safe she and lori have these rules posted in their shared bathroom at the apartment that they share so they both know them backward and forward it's what they read when they're sitting on the toilet right but i just i thought it was so fun and witty it is definitely a bit bantery and romcom i don't remember exactly meredith but i feel like that is what turned you away from this one even though overall this is a pretty good mash-up of our two favorite things to read right i would definitely say this book does exactly what it sets out to do 100% and i think if i mean yes this is not this book is not for me for a couple of reasons i it's very romcom-y and bantery but again for a lot of people that's exactly what they want yes so read or know thyself also i am just really realizing that for me i do not love my mysteries and thrillers to also be sexy or romantic like i don't that combination just doesn't work for me but for a lot of people it takes the murder mystery and like ramps it up enough so right right exactly so it this book does exactly what it sets out to do it knows exactly what it is and it doesn't shy away from that and i and i really appreciated it for that and it also is unlike anything i'd read before yeah definitely so it's it's fun it's also if you have nostalgia around that area of the blockbuster store from when you were junior high high school young adult it's going to hit those notes for you if you have seen all of those movies i know what you did last summer nightmare on elm street a thousand times you're going to find some of these plot points really predictable and that's the point right with both mysteries and thrillers and romance we have some plot arcs that we expect to see over and over again and that's what she's playing with here so right knowing that it could be a good fit for you but you have to know i'm going to find some of this predictable and i might be able to see what's coming before it shows up on the page and that has to be okay with you as a reader i really loved it i thought it was very fun and gory and gross this is how to kill a guy in 10 dates by shaley thompson i'm actually glad that you brought that one because i do think for a lot of people it's a great like tuck it in your pool bag kind of read yes definitely yeah okay my next one is the aforementioned memoir and i really really loved i really really love this one this one is called this american woman a one in a billion memoir by zarna garg kitty do you know who zarna garg is i do not okay she is a comedian that i have followed for a really really long time on tiktok okay look her up you've probably you you may have seen her but she's so funny and when i saw that she also had a memoir out and heard from a couple of readers that it was really really really good i jumped on it so this is the story of zarna garg she is widely credited as being one of america's first indian immigrant mom comedians if not the first one of those but as with every good com comedian memoir this is more than that right it's the story of zarna who grew up in a very affluent family in mumbai she was labeled two american in her entire childhood she had opinions she's like to talk back she's you know she's kind of a little inneagram eight if i had to guess don't put her in a box right and at 14 she was given some really really difficult choices and she opted to be homeless on the streets in mumbai over an arranged marriage that her father had planned for her she eventually makes her way to akron ohio and begins the long very winding road to figuring out who she really is okay i went into this as i said already a fan i followed her on tiktok for a long time and i've seen her netflix special i think it was on netflix her comedy special and so i wanted to i wanted to read this when i as soon as i saw it i wanted it to be funny obviously because zarna is really really funny but i wanted there to be something more i wanted insight into a kind of childhood and a kind of life that i absolutely absolutely no frame of reference for not unlike when you read trevor noa's born a crime right we're getting a lot of information about a kind of culture that i didn't grow up in so you're learning a lot and this book delivers on both of those counts the funny element is there from page one no question but what i what i didn't expect was just how incomprehensible zarna's early life would feel to me again she's from this wealthy family she refuses to comply with some really really big like not rules but like like societal expectations she's being forced to yeah like and and she just is like no and she knew what that was going to cost her even at 14 she knew what that was going to look like she wasn't wearing rose colored glasses and yet she absolutely she does what she needs to do and as she's telling the story she doesn't pull a single punch not about her family not about the cultural norms of upper class india not about how hard it is to start over in america as an immigrant with nothing but honestly the sheer force of will she goes there she does not pull punches and she does every single bit of it with tremendous candor and with this trademark humor which is either a gift that she was born with or something that she forged in the fire of surviving what she survived and honestly i'm not quite sure it was probably both by the time i got to the middle of this book i was completely absorbed and fascinated by zarna as a person she is so much herself at every single stage of her life she makes choices that always go against the grain and baffle the people around her but she just keeps going and that makes for an incredibly interesting kind of female main character in a memoir you're not watching someone figure out who they are you're watching someone fight to be allowed to be who she is that's a totally different thing the section that i found most fascinating though is the deep dive into her comedy career i've always thought that stand-up comedies seemed like one of the hardest jobs in the world like one of the bravest things that anyone could possibly do and in this book she gets into the weeds of what it actually involves she talks about the craft of creating material from scratch the reality that is having to market your own shows business decisions that you have to think about when you're essentially a one-person operation and you're building something but then you go big really fast so like you're building the plane while you're flying it this section was really really really interesting and then the ending by the time i got to the last page it's because you're finding out about her marriage and her becoming a mom and all of these things of course by the end i knew the whole story i understood the resilience and the grit that took her to get where she was and then it's really really great because you get to see how much you know success that she's had but then the thing that i didn't see coming was the bonus material at the end which i i did this on audio so i can't be positive that it's not just on the audio but at the end her kid i'm gonna cry just thinking about it her kids who are now old i think her youngest one is like 15 so like she has college college kids and and there's three of them and then her husband they each contribute their own essay in their own voice because she reads the Xarna reads her own memoir and then her husband and her kids contribute their own essay about what it was like to watch her become who she's become and as a mom there's something so particular when you hear your grown children or your partner talk about what they think of watching you claw for the life that you really really wanted and it was really really wonderful it was it was really really wonderful it was an amazing ending to a really great book a format note this is one i would highly recommend that you listen to on audio if you can as i said she narrates it and i just don't think there's another way to do it her timing her delivery the moments where she lets things land before moving on and the moments where raw emotion comes in and they produced it in a way where they really really let that happen without it feeling it all overdone or put on this was really really unexpectedly a huge favorite for me this is this american woman a one in a billion memoir by zarna garg and then you have to follow her on tiktok because she just slays me well i'll be looking for her comedy special for sure i did look her up while you were talking and i don't know if i've seen her before but i'm still not on tiktok so that's oh my gosh well she does this thing she her latest thing is she does the series where she acts as if she's a therapist and then she has like her sister on the couch or her kids on the couch or and then but she's giving them like very traditional like indian mom advice instead of therapy advice you know it's just i'm sorry i'm not making it sound very funny she absolutely slays me just thinking about her makes me laugh i love it i love it that sounds great okay my next one is also nonfiction it's not funny but i will talk about the tears of things by richard roar so richard roar is a longtime favor of mine and meredith's for that matter ever since reading the enneagram a christian perspective which i went back and looked i read it in 2021 but i know meredith read it well before that because she was well ahead of me on the enneagram journey when i was invited to an in-person buddy read of this book the tears of things his newest one at my church i jumped at the chance to get back into his work with this newest book the tears of things is subtitled prophetic wisdom for an age of outrage father richard roar is a franciscan priest who has really built a following especially through his books and his center for action and contemplation in albuquerque new mexico even though i lived in albuquerque and new mexico in general for 11 years i never went to the center that was not true of many of the readers in my cohort of buddy readers who are regular attendees and readers of his work and they go to conferences and retreats these are super fans i felt like a brand newbie when i was in this room in this book which i also about buddy read with my reading partner katie roar asks how we can live with compassion and grace in this world that we're living in right now which feels a little impossible it's a world that feels like it only sews division and discord and leads many of us to anger and despair when we read the news but he's saying there's something on the other side of that roar turns back to the jewish prophets of the bible and the Torah and pairs them with the prophets of the modern age people like martin luther king junior and pope francis he gives us the words and the tools to examine biblical prophets in ways that reveal their full humanity that these were not just people who like came down from a mountaintop and said the words and then walked out they were full human beings right he invites us to be in community with people who believe differently or think differently than us and asks us to reach toward grace rather than division all of that is really hard for me this was a book that challenged me in a lot of big ways we're we're not supposed to or according to roar we're not supposed to just sit in anger which i do a lot nowadays i have a hard time being a full version of myself but move through that anger to the tears of things which is where the title comes from the tears of things acknowledge those tears acknowledge the grief in the ways that the world has disappointed us the tears of things say that we can look around like the pop the prophets of biblical times did and be fully human in our response to injustice we don't have to just come down with fire and brimstone and be like this sucks and then walk away the tears of things allows for heartfelt resistance and roars signature pastoral warmth to shine through i enjoyed this a lot but it was hard for me it challenged me in ways that i didn't expect i like reading about the enneagram and that also challenges me in ways i didn't expect so maybe this was my own and i have a tie and ignorance because richard war is good at that he's good at kind of opening you up into thinking about something hard in a different way reading it in community discussing each chapter with katie is what really brought this one to life for me and made it something impactful rather than something that i just wanted to build walls against i am a crier i'm a person who leans into like oh i saw this beautiful thing and it brought me to tears or even watching meredith try to get her emotions back in check talking about a memoir by a comedian that gets me choked up i'm not afraid of tears but letting anger turn into genuine grief over a situation that i don't feel like i have control over is hard for me i would rather sit in anger because it feels powerful and this book convinced me that it's worth it to try and make that transition from the one to the other so i'm glad i read it even though it was hard i do recommend it of course you can tell from this description that it is very christian theology focused although i i do think that anybody in the jewish faith would get a lot from it as well i really loved it it is something that i currently read which is why i'm bringing it to the show this is the tears of things prophetic wisdom for the age of outrage by richard war how great is it though when books really really really challenge us in a way that like we don't love it at all but man we need to hear like every time i read something by pima children where i'm just like oh yes it's like getting a deep exfoliation treatment we're like hmm i needed to rub off those calluses but i do not like this at all in the moment my masseuse will say to me okay you have a choice i can give you a massage that feels good now and does nothing for you later or i can give you a massage that feels bad now and does something for you later your choice lady like which one do you want but you might have both choose violence okay my third book is my recent work of literary it's a recent work of literary fiction that i have a spicy take about this is vigil by george saunders did you read have you read it no i've read other george saunders but not this one okay this is yeah just come it came out a little bit ago here's the setup vigil takes place over the course of a single evening in a grand dalas mansion where kj boon a powerful oil company ceo is spending his final hours on earth into his bedroom comes jill doll blaine she's a spirit not unlike in christmas carol she has made this trip to someone's bedside who is dying 343 times before her job there is straightforward to comfort the dying person and help guide them into what comes next the problem is that kj boon our oil company ceo does not want comforting as far as he's concerned he's lived a big bold texan successful life and he has absolutely nothing to answer for it shouldn't actually say texan because i actually do not want to conflate kj boon with people who are texan those are not the same things the key tension of this book is that jill is warm and capable and genuinely committed to this work that she's doing this spirit work but kj boon is a man of i mean he has a very very high opinion of himself and he refuses to reckon with the damage that his life has left behind as the night wears on visitors begin arriving alive and dead worldly and otherwise all with their own claims on this man and on this moment these last moments of his unearth and what unfolds is a kind of pre-death awareness that boon never asked for and that we are not at all sure that he will use properly all right kati i almost didn't read this book i love lincoln in the barto and once i found the right format for it i really really love lincoln in the barto i love love loved swim the pond in the rain it's one of my favorite reading experiences in recent memory so i thought that reading his new novel would be a no-brainer slam dunk immediate add to cart but then i got so i got it put it on my shelf yeah as it came out i kept hearing over and over again from readers that i respect like many many many that they didn't just dislike this book they didn't dnf this book they hated this book like want to throw it across the room and they said they hated everything about it the way it was written the cadence the sit-in slavl pros they didn't understand it it didn't flow together i just the headspace i was in i couldn't take it on so every once in a while though it would like call it like sometimes a book will do this to me i'll like really be called to it almost like magnetically i physically went to my bookshelf three or four different times picked up the print copy and either got ready to like pick it up and open it or a few times i was like you know what i'm just i've heard so much bad about it i'm just gonna remove it because i'm never ever going to want to read it but every single time i did that something stopped me this little niggle that i owed it to myself to at least give it a shot i'm glad i listened to it because i sat down one afternoon for only about an hour and a half this book is like a little shorty short and i had a genuinely excellent reading experience let me just say that first and foremost i did not find this book difficult i didn't find it hard to understand i found it funny i found it self-aware in a good way not an annoying way the lack of quotation marks didn't bother me at all that never bothers me in a book but your mileage of course could vary on that one this just didn't trip me up now i also went in thinking from everything i'd heard about this book that it was primarily a book about the dying oil company ceo right kj boon which fine not exactly my most anticipated premise what i didn't fully register until it was actually in it is that kj boon is not the the main character jill doll blaine is she's as i said the spirit that's assigned to comfort him she's genuinely a kj boon is he is everything that right now sitting here listening to me talk you think he is that's like end of story he had big life he did a bunch of things made a bunch of money he's proud of it jill is interesting she has her own backstory that gets revealed as the book goes on she's someone you can root for she hasn't she has an understanding of who she was in her actual life and what led her to this particular job in the afterlife and all of that adds a dimension that i wasn't expecting but was really delightful to find a lot of readers came away from this book feeling like it pounded them over the head with a message about climate change or corporate greed but i completely disagree with that read kj boon is a complete ass hat that's not in dispute it's never it was not in dispute on the back cover i don't think that's at all what saunders is asking us to debate here the question the book is actually asking i think is much deeper and older and i think a lot more interesting than that saunders is i knew going into this a tibetan buddhist and what this book is genuinely crap grappling with is a very buddhist inquiry which is what do we deserve at the end of a human life does every person no matter what they've done deserve compassion what does justice look like from an afterlife perspective is there a like a line of badness that gets you someplace truly terrible and if so who decides that i found myself sitting with these questions long after i finished and for me that's a sign of a book doing something right a lot of readers also have issues with the ending i thought it was perfect it made complete sense to me and i actually think it makes sense the most sense if you come in understanding that jill is the main character if you're reading this as if it's boon's story i could see the ending landing badly if you're reading it as if it's jill's story lands exactly where it's supposed to hear me say that i'm not trying to convince you to read this book i'm not trying to convince you to like this book but the reader know theyself takeaway here i think is useful no matter what the book world at large is saying about a title if you are pulled toward it try it for yourself that goes both ways everyone loves a book and you try it you don't like it listen to that but if everyone was turned off by a book but for some reason it's calling to you trust your niggle that's a t-shirt that i want this is vigil by george saunders would never wear that t-shirt trust your niggle no i say it so much in my work that like my staff would think it was funny okay you can get here comes the guide shirt looks like that yeah i mean that genuinely sounds so compelling to me but the first piece of it where if if you do think it's a book about an oil tycoon and his life and his passing to death is not appealing to me at all so yeah i think it's really useful to hear why it works or why it doesn't for certain readers and know what type of reader you are where you might land on that list i also don't hate the idea of of a little bit shorter piece of fiction from our friend mr saunders so that's the thing if it had been 400 pages of this i i think my my takeaway would be completely different but i just felt like it was perfectly paced for what it was and i have thought about it every single day since i read it excellent i also just really i really like george saunders i really i i know that a book has really like gotten under my skin when i go and listen to the author talk about the book after i've read it like well i really want to get a sense of him and i wanted to see if i was totally right or wrong based on like what does he say the take home should be of the book or the main characters of the book and i couldn't actually find him underscoring what i think about it but his buddhist perspectives definitely color a lot of the book and i've been doing a lot of study around that too yeah that's the part that interests me too okay my third book is actually another indie press list book which i just realized now as i'm about to talk about it but it's from a different month i'm going to talk about the quiet librarian by alan eskins this is historical fiction add in some thrills so not just another indie press list book another genre mashup we'll say alan eskins is a favorite of elizabeth barnhill on all things murderful and at fabled bookshop in wego texas she has regularly chatted with us about the life we bury by him this one was brought to the indie press list in november of 2025 by content bookstore in minnesota and that is important partially because alan eskins is a local author to them this becomes more and more obvious as we realize that the location for content bookstore in northfield minnesota is heavily featured in this book alongside the twin cities of the whole which really made it a great reading experience for me here's the setup hannah babich is our main character she is a quiet librarian in minnesota she just wants to live her life leave her in peace please and thank you but at the start of the story a detective shows up at her front door with terrible news her best friend amina has been murdered in her apartment this is terrible news of course because she is hannah's best friend and really her only friend they were both immigrants from bosnia and any shared past has remained as secret as possible that's because before hannah became a middle-aged quiet librarian she lived in bosnia under the name of nurah divjak while just a teenager she watched a group of syrbian soldiers show up and slaughter her entire family mom dad and little brother nurah escaped with only her life and it changed the course of that life forever she was thrust into both orphanhood and war at the same time already a compelling story right this is told in a dual timeline in the present hannah is dealing with the fallout of the death of her friend in the past nurah has become a deadly force known throughout the entire region a legend in her own right until she fled the country to the safety of the twin cities which is where the timelines intersect now currently in the new timeline amina's grandson is in hannah's care he's only eight years old he's traumatized and she has to care for him but she's also out for revenge yes please and thank you i loved this book bring on a badass woman who is quietly spending her life in a library and wearing cardigans and glasses she is just happy right bring on the fact that she is absolutely ripped but looks like your standard middle-aged lady bring on her secret skills and her ruthless nature which has to be balanced with taking care of a child for the first time i'm obsessed i loved this i loved the historical fiction element here because as we know even though i don't read it as often as i would like to i found out about events that i only had a passing knowledge of in my own history classes and in things that happened during my own lifetime i loved our female protagonist of course and the way she upends everything we expect when we see even her her back women's backs on the back of on the front of historical fiction y'all it's a woman's back on the front of this book i'm sorry to tell you she's upending everything you expect from that picture though i liked the writing itself it was propulsive and very readable while also feeling developed and worth chewing on and worth my time i have a soft spot for minnesota in general because it's where i spent all my summers growing up so the setting really worked well for me overall this was a hit out of the park for me i gave it five stars and it's sitting comfortably over four stars on both goodreads and story graph as well so this is a big winner for this author i am so glad that content put it on the indie press list pushed it to the top of my tbr i don't know if i would have read it otherwise but i loved it this is the quiet librarian by alan eskens i really like this one too the honey as soon as you said her name like i read this several months ago but as soon as you said her name automatically i was taken back into all the details of the book and i was so glad to finally read alan eskens yes because elizabeth has been singing his praises forever and for some reason like the life we bury is on my shelf and it's one of those ones that i had just i just need to move to the top of my tbr i think audio is going to be the way to go for that for me because i loved this one on audio so much i will say that reading the setup of the life we bury again today as i was preparing for this book i think it's because the pre-hotagonist of the quiet librarian is a woman that it was so much more likely to capture me and and that's my own reader we hang up right but the life we bury has a young man interviewing a vietnam vet and definitely a complicated backstory there as far as i can tell from the publisher blurb and and i'm just not as drawn to that story so yeah it is what it is right we all have to know what's gonna work for us quiet librarian reader catnip on a lot of levels for me and i will say it sounded like i gave you guys a lot but that is just like like the first chapter of the present timeline and the first chapter of the past timeline is kind of all i pulled from here there's a lot in this book and it's so interesting yeah all right so let's get into our deep dive those were our six current reads this was marith's idea and i'm excited to talk about it we are going to discuss the oldest books on our tbr and whether or not they deserve to stay what should we do about them why have they languished do they need a new attention brought to them so marith why did you want to talk about this all right well this was my topic for the latest reader know thyself newsletter right which goes out both on sub stack and you can also get it via our our subscription from our website it's free but every two weeks we do a new topic that helps you asks you one question that helps you know yourself as a reader so this was uh dispatch number five which was what are you know let's look at the oldest things on your tbr and what can we so let's identify them and then let's also take a look at them and say like okay why is it that they've languished so i chose a couple for the reader know thyself newsletter which i won't talk about so i went to my i'd already dealt with those there so i choose i chose the three like three that came next and and i think it's a really good example of why this is a useful exercise okay can i ask more nuts and bolts about where your tbr is and how you keep it do you have a good reads tbr it's that way you're sorting what's going on with that yeah so for this exercise for me i mean we're all gonna do different things with our tbr depending on how you keep your tbr for me because i read primarily on my e-reader i read on a kindle i decided to use my kindle library as my tbr because that's really how i use my kindle library right like i when i'm super interested in something i tend to squirrel it away in my kindle library like i'll immediately grab it and like buy it or use a credit for whatever and put it into my library the net effect is i had 679 books in my kindle library and so a lot of those i had already read so i took this as an opportunity because i can never resist a good spring cleaning like any this is one of the things my kids my kids laugh at me because anytime something happens like in the kitchen or you know wherever we're like there's a mess or a leak or whatever i'll be like you know what this is a great opportunity to clean a place where we wouldn't have cleaned before yes let's look for the upside this was that for me so i went through i didn't go through all of them but i went through i told myself like i'm gonna give myself 30 minutes i'm gonna figure out what three books i'm gonna talk about on the show and then i'm gonna do some cleaning out of books that i'd already read that i knew i didn't want to reread and just kind of get myself down to at least under 600 books and i was able to do that okay that's pretty good right so everyone you know look depending on how you keep your tbr reverse sort it and go to your oldest one for this exercise yeah for me i ended up going to my story graph tbr which i imported from Goodreads when i switched over from one to the other and then i sorted by earliest added the quirky thing about that is i couldn't figure out on story graph how to find the date added so i would go back to Goodreads and find those books and and there i was able to find what date i actually added them to my tbr because i wasn't sure i also am really good about calling it so it's not horribly long it's not as long as you might think it could be excellent okay it wasn't 679 books it wasn't 679 it was 175 my paper books in my house don't necessarily match that though like my paper tbr doesn't necessarily match what's on my story graph tbr so it's definitely more than 175 right the books i want to read right for sure yes definitely that's just to me there's like five different like i could have also done my audiobooks right i could have gone into my Libre FM library and reverse sorted it there like that would actually also be a really useful thing to you know what i mean so just like pick like the thing is and we're not always going to go over the reader know thyself topics on the show i just actually was curious katie about your what your three books would be but for this exercise you know don't overthink it don't try to be a completist just like pick one place where you have a big old pile of books and try to find your oldest ones right like let's not let perfect get in the way of good exactly okay so let's go back and forth with our picks so which one do you want to start with marita okay my first one was easy and it was a nicholas sparks novel called the lucky one i do not know what i was thinking because i don't remember a time no again if nicholas sparks is your jam that is fantastic because i have my authors that i absolutely love that other people are like really nicholas sparks is not my jam i'm not a roman a sweeping romantic i'm not a book that's going to make me cry type person so i don't know how anything by nicholas sparks got onto my tbr but it was easy because i know that the reader that i am today this isn't the kind of book that i'm looking for so this was a quick easy nope this isn't one that's going to rise to the top of my tbr so i'm going to let it go all right i like it the first one was also an elimination for me so the oldest book on my tbr is one i bought on kindle in march of 2017 it's 12 years a slave by salomon northrop i'm still interested in reading this book but i know i haven't because it's going to be rough and i've seen the movie in the years since i added it to my kindle so it no longer feels like this unknown that i have to tackle i also know that books that only exist on my kindle may as well not exist at all they don't have any like mental brain space for me so if i want to read this book i need to get it in paper so i can see it in my house and it can call to me visually for now it is off my tbr knowing that if i need to read it it will find me again someday but for now i feel good about saying you know i know this story if for nine years it has not risen to the top so this is not the time and i can happily remove it perfect good okay all righty what's your next one my next one was also fairly easy but it was i think really really important for me to walk through the why of it and this next one is raven black by ann cleaves now this is one that i read a really long time ago but was there as a placeholder because i was trying to decide if i was going to go further in the series okay so sometimes that's why a book will be in my kindle library and what i've realized about ann cleaves there's a lot about her books of course she wrote the the vera novels and this one is the first of i guess now there are eight in the shetland series novels and i have realized that i really like ann cleaves stories on tv but i they're too slow for me in the book form so everything that i love about both shetland and vera really comes through in there the shows that are made from them and i am a completist i've watched the entire vera series twice in fact i love that series but when i have tried to read the vera novels and when i read this first one in the shetland series it's just really slow for me so that's just one that i've had to say you know what she is best for me in this and taking it in taking her stories in in this way that's what i'm going to do so i was able to let this one go okay didn't need the placeholder anymore no more placeholder got it next book for me is a book called how we learn the surprising truth about when where and why it happens by benedict carry i very clearly remember when i added this to my tbr i was at a family reunion my aunt it was in education as a teacher and administrator now she's retired and she said she was reading this book at the time that we were hanging out together so i remember her talking about it and deciding right then to add it to my tbr it has not risen to the top yet since 2018 because i don't own it in any format and i only read teaching related books at very specific times a year at the start of the calendar year before the school year or before the school year starts in the summertime so it's like either it's getting read in january or it's getting read in july and otherwise i'm never going to see it because i just don't make space for that in my reading life the entire rest of the year what i have decided to do with this one is slate it for this summer and if it doesn't rise to the top of my list at that point then it's done i will be removed altogether i have read a lot of teaching books since 2018 and i feel good about saying you know if this one doesn't like catch my eye at that time it's okay to say no thank you ma'am moving along to something different i absolutely love it i think that's a very very good set of if then statements and you'll know exactly how to proceed with it that's perfect indeed all right my third one is one that i am so glad that was on this list because it is aunt demity and the family tree by nancy atherton now you guys know i have a long and storied literally history with cozy mystery read it solely for 10 years a long time ago and now these days i don't read cozy a ton but every now and then it's exactly what i need like it just fits perfectly this book is the 16th in a 25 book series you've got to love cozy mysteries for this you know long long long series i love the aunt demity books they're set in the cotswolds they are the reason they are the beginning of my love of the cotswolds and i'm so glad that i finally have gotten to visit it the cotswolds are as beautiful and idyllic as you think they are from these books and the idea of inheriting inheriting your dead aunt's cotswold cottage and then going there and living there and finding the love of your life and having kids with him and so the aunt demity series follows this whole thing that happens and this is i'm so glad that i had kept it there because again it was there to remind me you want to read more in the series but i but i needed some space i haven't read an aunt demity in a long time now i don't even know if i've read one since we started the podcast so it's been a long time and as soon as i saw it i was like i need to read an aunt demity so i immediately borrowed it from the library which is a way that i can remind myself yes this i need to bring up in my queue really really easily are really soon and so in not very long i will be reading aunt demity and the family tree and i'm i just cannot wait to revisit this series i love it so much the way you lit up yes when you started talking about that one made me so happy i'm actually going into our archive i see that in season five episode 18 was when you talked about aunt demity's death so i think that's the first one well aunt demity was pressed in 10 18 39 of season one like that's the one you were talking about season one and two so it feels like aunt demity's death is the first one okay well then it was just logged twice in two different ways yeah or maybe i talk maybe i brought it up again or maybe i brought it as a let's revisit this because i really because i do really love that first one poor lori she's a whole different person back there in the very beginning and remind me is aunt demity's ghost around is that right so the shtick of the series is that and you have to read them in order you have to read these in order yeah you have to because that she's gonna meet her husband and it's really it's really really good and she inherits the most beautiful country cottage in that first book aunt demity's death and in the cottage is a treasure trove of letters and there's also a like a journal and when lori opens up a journal it's blank but when she opens it up all of a sudden writing starts to appear and it's aunt demity who is dead but that's how she communicates with lori so she is a character who's very much a character in the books but she's only like it's only lori who interacts with her and like lori will get into like spats with her because aunt demity will tell lori to do something that lori does not want to do because lori is like very introverted especially at first and you know but aunt demity's like you need to get out there and you know she's like 40 when all of this starts she's like you need to get out there and whatever and anyway she ends up meeting her husband it's very romantic and there's you know the dead people are always bad and you're glad that they're dead anyway it's very cozy they're very formulaic which is why i needed there to be a long time you can't i mean i did binge i'm back in my cozy reading days i think i probably read eight in a row but then at some point you're like okay lori i need a little bit of a brick from you but i am ready for my next one in the series and i'm so happy that i have like nine more that i haven't even read yet although sometimes lori can be she can be a little she's a little type b to be fair and type b is not always easy for me sometimes i want a smacker there's also a little pink stuffed bunny that features in this it's a very cozy series it's my it's my favorite cozy series though there's a lot of food a lot of scones i love a scon i think that's great i love that that brought that back up to you to the top for you my third book i'll be quick about on my tbr is the hunger by elma katsu this is a mariteth made me do it read which i added to my tbr after mariteth brought it to the podcast about halfway through season one y'all it's time it's been a long time a really good one that's a really really good one it sounds great i still remember you talking about it obvious now it's been well long enough for me to pick it up and not be like mariteth just talked about this one but i just read it and i can't wait to tell you what i thought so i am putting it after my current audiobook i'm just gonna dive in okay so it's you know it's a horror horror you know retelling of the donner party donner party so right which i grew up going to donner lake and so that was all that figured very prominently in my childhood but also obviously it is a lot of the horror surrounds the fact that it's set in winter so like just to say that if you like me love to read winter when it's getting warm outside it'll be perfect but it is a very wintery book but it's also oh it's so good yes yes i can't wait i'm definitely getting into it that was our tube jive so kati i think this is an endlessly interesting topic about like what has been on there forever it feels like kind of like reaching into a like a time capsule yeah right i so that's interesting i really really want to hear and we have like people have been responding to the emails and that from the newsletter they just hit reply and they've been telling us like hey here are the books it's endlessly fascinating there was one person kati today did you see this email that came in she said the what i went and looked and the oldest one on my tbr is gone girl shut up she's like i have never read gone girl and she's like maybe it's time and i'm like oh girl it is time like put away your computer and get out your reader immediately why are you replying to this email go read that book if you have not read gone girl has she not had it spoiled for her in the intervening years because wow but even if you even if you have a general sense that is just one of those books that is as good as advertised so i just love that people are finding these things where they're like oh yeah i'm meant to read this particular one so it's fun we will put something on social this week and i really can't wait to hear what the oldest books are for you yes we are excited about that all right before we go we have a few more things to chat about here first i will tell you all about our bookish friend of the week bookish friend nina had an observation about her reading life that i think it's useful for all of us to do a little bit of reflecting on too she says i noticed recently that my go-to genre changed and i was wondering what genre you all tend to pick up when you're in a slump or just need an in-between book in the past nina used to pick up a mystery or crime novel that felt fast-paced now she says i lean toward nonfiction and shorter character-driven books would love to hear your thoughts that's a big pivot right the comments here range from another nonfiction lover whose husband calls her in-between books her facti books and a reader who says novellas that would be classified as monster smut are her in-between books and others enjoy mysteries and horror but these are the books that kind of keep your reading mojo going when you finished something and you aren't sure what to start next i love this idea nina of knowing what works for you as a reset this is another great example of reader knowing yourself nina knowing herself and what works for her reading life right now which will continue to change and that's the other part of it is not figuring out this is who i am as a reader she has found this little pivot in her life that my reading life in general is still working right but my in-between book had to change and i thought that was such a great example of knowing yourself as a reader thanks nina i love it it's so smart that is one of the things that i was thinking about too when i was going through my kindle library is that there are a lot of monsters there's a lot of monster smut novels there there's a lot of that's where it belongs is on a kindle exactly victorian like bodysripper romance those are though and then some cozy those are my in-between books that just keep that do help to keep the momentum going and clincher palette i think it's really useful to have those always ready for action i am also doing a little bit of getting curious or getting thoughtful here for mine because to circle back to the idea of reading seasonally right like where i talked to the beginning about getting ready for reading in the warm weather but also one of the things that i'm realizing is that i have fully entered into another season of my life and we talk a lot about this which is really like i just i have young kids and my reading is broken no you're just in a really you're in a really particular season and i feel like this is one of those things that should have been really obvious to me but it took a while for me to get here and this is really what i want what i've been thoughtful about is i am fully in and i don't have little kids who need me in any sort of way regularly part of my life now now this is a big thing for me because i have actively parented for 31 years right my young my my my youngest is 14 i've been actively parenting little ones or young ones for a really long time so for that reason i think it had solidified in me this idea that you know you wake up in the morning in the first thing get up and get out of bed and get to work or get the kids to school you know like all of those kinds of things but i'm not in that season anymore where i need to do that and so all of a sudden i was talking with my therapist and i was like i realized that i could kind of rearrange my schedule so that my mornings look different now but i'm for some reason i'm like having some feeling around that or i'm you know something's keeping me from doing that so we talked a lot about like how this really pings on issues of identity and it really pings on issues of habits and long-standing ideas of ourselves and so i just was like you know what yes i she said let's not let the feeling about the thing take up as much space as the thing and i was like well that would be groundbreaking for me because i have a lot of feelings about things and thoughts and that oftentimes is like that takes up a lot of space she's like what if we just remove what if we just said it's okay to be in a different season what would then if you didn't have to worry about what that meant in some bigger existential way what would it actually look like and i was like well it would look like me staying in bed a little bit later even though it's a monday morning because that's when i like to read and reading is something that i want to prioritize doing more but that feels like a weird time she's like no now you're getting into feelings she's like this week let's just practice doing that because like you can because i'm working till a lot later in the evening right so i can my point is sometimes we have to stop and really consider what season are we in and are we actually leaning into that season so yes it can look like hey i'm not parenting littles anymore what can that look like but it also could look like hey i used to be able to read all the time and now i'm parenting littles so i need to lean into the season that i'm in right now which doesn't look like leisure leisurely reading on a saturday morning but maybe it looks like reading in the afternoon when baby's playing on the mat and doing some tummy time let's lean into the season that we're in right now and not let our feelings about that season take up a lot of space i have a feeling that somebody else out there might be kind of dealing with the same sort of thing even though i feel like i've a little bit talked myself into a circle well you've definitely had a lot of feelings i do i have a lot of you just had another feeling i have a lot of thoughts and feelings i do feel like this leans into i apparently have feelings also this leans into that that mantra that we have about giving yourself grace as a reader right you can't hold too tightly to what you're reading like used to look like because that's the only way you ever got any reading in whether it is that your season has changed into a busier one or one that's more demanding of your hands at any given time or your driving abilities at any given time versus the season that you're in now you're still allowed to give yourself grace even if this season feels easier than the other one right it still requires a change of you see i'm really good at rising to the occasion when things get hard i have a i'm very bad at the opposite which sounds like i'm humble bragging i'm not because this is actually a really obnoxious thing about me that makes people around me not happy or comfortable like this is not a fun thing about me so like i'm really trying to figure myself out on that realm of like but is it okay if i can do something i want to do does that mean i'm failing in some other way maybe not this is why i go to therapy every week katie we love therapy cosine i need help help is a good thing that's what therapist exactly it's so useful i'm so grateful for it all right katie we've used our friends full hour of therapy bookish therapy today we better wrap this up we've put him through it that is it for this week my friends as a reminder here's where you can connect with us you can find me i'm meredith at meredith monday schwarz on instagram and you can find me katie at notes on bookmarks on instagram our show is produced and edited every week by megan puttavong evans and you can find her on instagram at most of megan's reads full show notes with the title of every book we mentioned in the episode and timestamps 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 at substack on youtube on instagram and by subscribing to our newsletter you'll find all of those at currently reading podcast you can also email us at hello at currentlyreadingpodcast.com yeah people have said that they're on blue watch and they watch us on youtube and the first thing they do is try to figure out is blue in the blues right there so he's always that's the reason to tune in sometimes he does funny things i'm always on blue watch also you all right good all right if you want more of this kind of content and really why wouldn't you it's riveting join us on patreon because it's only five dollars a month and you get hundreds and hundreds of hours more content you get a fantastic bookish community and you keep this show commercial free you can also of course rate and review us on apple podcasts we would really really appreciate any and all five star reviews that you want to give us and you can shout us out on social media all of those things help us to find our perfect audience yes bookish friends are the best friends 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 merited