transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Hi readers, welcome to Currently Reading Podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you already know, we don't shy away from having strong opinions, so get ready.

Speaker 2:
[00:22] We're light on the chit chat, heavy on the book talk, and our conversations will always be spoiler free. Today, we'll discuss our current meets, a readerly deep dive, and then a little something bookish before we go.

Speaker 1:
[00:34] I'm Kaytee Cobb, a homeschooling mama for, living in Arizona, and I love reading, To The Moon And Back.

Speaker 2:
[00:41] I'm Roxanna Casamcara, a mom, a marketer, and a mood reader from Toronto, Canada, and there's nothing that I hate more than whiny man, Kaytee.

Speaker 1:
[00:50] Same girl.

Speaker 2:
[00:52] This is episode number 37 of season 8, and we're so glad you're here.

Speaker 1:
[00:57] So glad to be here. So glad to be here with you, Roxanna. It's been quite some time since we got to record together.

Speaker 2:
[01:02] It's been so long and I'm so excited to be here. I have some great books for you and for all our listeners. And yeah, it feels like it's been a really long time. Now at least the springtime sunshine is coming in. We're feeling it even here in Toronto. And I just have all this light and hope and optimism to bring to the show today.

Speaker 1:
[01:19] That is what we are doing in my life right now is seeking joy. We are seeking joy because it's like a deep breath in and a deep breath out. I am going to let everybody know right here at the top of the show that our deep dive today is about the three star books we read that ended up sticking with us. So it's a little bit of a look back. I'm excited to get into this. Great idea, Roxanna. But before we get started the way we always do, we have a little mischief to manage. Not our regular mischief. I'm so excited. Roxanna, this mischief is not for us. It is for Indie Bookstore Day. If you are listening in real time on the Monday of this week, April 20th, we are so excited to remind you that independent bookstore day is this coming Saturday. This is a holiday of sorts in the United States, certainly for us readers. Do they do this in Canada, Roxanna?

Speaker 2:
[02:09] I think they do. Yeah. I think it's caught on now. They get started in the US and it's caught on here because we all love our indie bookstores, let's be honest.

Speaker 1:
[02:18] We really do. We have a bookish friend named Courtney and she is part of the American Booksellers Association. She sent us an email to make sure we have all the best details for you. We're going to get into it a little bit. This is the 13th year of Independent Bookstore Day. It started in California as California Independent Bookstore Day, but now it's a national and apparently international party that takes place all across the country. My favorite part is that every store celebrates with its own unique flavor of celebration. Some places have author events, some have swag, stickers, scavenger hunts, cookouts, bring your dog to the bookstore day, whatever it is that works exactly perfectly for that bookstore and that community. And that's why we love indie bookstores, right? Because they all have their own unique fun flavor to them. This year, there are over 1800 bookstores participating all across the USA. And we are at Currently Reading, of course, encouraging you to go to your favorite local indie or plan a crawl. Get your bookish besties together. Bookstore crawl to all the ones that you can hit in the day on April 25th, 2026. If you go, please be sure to share your photos and tag us and them along with at American Booksellers on Instagram or Indie Bound on Facebook. They want to see your Indie Bookstore Day posts and hauls and fun. So do we. We love independent bookstores here at Currently Reading, and we definitely are encouraging you to spend out on April 25th.

Speaker 2:
[03:44] I love that. It's what a great idea. And I love that every bookstore does it its own way and makes it special in its own, you know, brings its own personality to life. That's going to be so exciting.

Speaker 1:
[03:55] It is. It's so good. I love independent bookstore day. I will not be participating this year or if I am, it will be from across the pond because I have some big travels coming up that I'm very excited about and I will report back when I come home.

Speaker 2:
[04:08] That's so exciting, Kaytee.

Speaker 1:
[04:10] It is exciting, Roxanna. Actually, I'm wondering if there's a way that I can incorporate you somehow into this, but I don't think it's going to work actually because we're not going to Toronto. So that's okay. We're going to get back to our regular business because our mischief has now been managed. Roxanna, let's start with our bookish moments. What do you have for us this week?

Speaker 2:
[04:28] Okay. So as I hinted at in my bite-size intro, I am sick of whiny men and that does not mean my husband, fortunately. It means whiny men in books. So I have been reading books recently with hapless male characters and it's driving me a little bit bananas, Kaytee. So I recently read Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt for our book club, which I know you love and many people love. And I actually quite liked too. I loved the Cremationally Woman. I loved Marcellus, but that there was a big plot line. Yes, with Cameron.

Speaker 1:
[05:05] Oh, Cameron's the worst.

Speaker 2:
[05:07] And I understand he had some challenges, but he was raised by a loving aunt. He was given a lot of opportunities and he just doesn't follow through. And it just made me realize that that's a real, like it's a trigger for me for some reason, not characters that are going through hardships and actually like have gone through trauma or have gone through something where they like literally can't pull themselves together. That I understand. But he got into a school, like a university, but didn't go even though he had a scholarship or something because he couldn't be bothered to do the paperwork that took 20 minutes. And I remember reading that and I wanted to fling the book against the wall. So things like that, you know, The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett. Also, that was a DNF for me because again, my ex-husband who lives on his ex-wife's property and she makes him breakfast every day. Still, like I could not read that book.

Speaker 1:
[05:58] I haven't read that one yet.

Speaker 2:
[05:59] Oh, I mean, people love it and I understand. And actually the reason I brought this up is for the bigger point. That both those books I mentioned are great books that have amazing reviews. They're well written and I wouldn't rate them low because I realizing, you know, the problem I have with them is a me issue. It's not a book issue. So I think understanding the tropes that don't work for you is important because then you can separate that. Like I'm not going to go and rate them too because they have a character. It's like saying, well, I don't like old dogs in books. So these books with old dogs don't get more like full points. You know, it doesn't make any sense. But I do know that if I read that in a description moving forward, that book is not for me. So now I know, you know, what tropes don't work. And it just made me think of, you know, the Read or Know Thyself newsletter that you and Meredith have been putting together and how important it is to know the things that work for you and the things that don't. So you can stay away from those things that don't.

Speaker 1:
[06:50] Yes, we need to identify our absolutely nots.

Speaker 2:
[06:54] That's an, whiny men in real life or in fiction is an absolute no for me.

Speaker 1:
[07:00] Perfect. I love that. My bookish moment this week is a little bit about seeking joy like I talked about right at the beginning here. So this week, I'm going to talk about a picture book that we've loved forever and a half in our family, but it ties in to current events. We sat down like so many others did and watched the Orion Capsule and Integrity Team splash down in the Pacific Ocean this week after a record breaking, record setting trip for four astronauts to travel farther into space than anyone has ever been. And I cried. I cried a lot. But that night I read Guess How Much I Love You by Sam Bratney, allowed to my kids for I think the 100 billionth time. It could be 150 billionth. I'm not sure. It ends, of course, I guess this is a spoiler, but y'all it's a picture book. It ends with the line, I love you to the moon and back. And I was crying all over again. It made me so joyful and hopeful to be able to say that this time and know that people had just done that. They had gone to the moon and back. And I just was overcome. It's a beautiful team, a celebration of humanity and ingenuity. And I'm a little bit on the fence. I'm on the team of people who thinks we could spend money differently here at home in a wiser way to provide some really great social services and support. But I'm also proud and overwhelmed with joy. And I love the photos and I love the astronauts and everything they have to tell us. Christina Cook, one of the astronauts, came home and told us that all of us are crew for planet Earth. They are crew, these four amazing humans. And she turned around and said, all of you are crew. You are working together to push our planet forward in the water of the universe, right? To make us exactly who we can be. And I wept again. So I am holding those things in tension. This like, yes, let's reach for the stars and go to the moon and back. And also, where's our money going? And is it the right place? And it's okay to be stuck in the middle there. But I just wanted to celebrate this moment and let all of us know, but especially my kids, that I love them to the moon and back.

Speaker 2:
[09:12] Oh, I just love that. I love how you tie that in, Kaytee, and I love how you read that to them. When there are big moments like this week, that's obviously a treasured one in our house too, but I haven't read it to the kids in a long time. I love that that's the way you celebrated the trip to the moon this time. That's so beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[09:29] So good. It's so good. I love it. Actually, I was having a hard time coming up with a bookish moment this week. And sometimes I'm doing my prep at the kitchen table and I'll say, kids, what was my bookish moment? Because they have their own things that they're thinking about, right? But Noah, my nine-year-old was like, mommy, don't you think it was the time that you read us, Guess How Much I Love You, right after the Orion Capsule smashed down? I was like, yeah, buddy. It definitely was. It was that. So it was very sweet. I loved it. All right. Let's get into some current reads though, because I have not only been reading picture books. What is your first book you want to tell us about this week, Roxanna?

Speaker 2:
[10:05] Okay. Well, for my first book, I'm bringing Good People by Patmeena Sabit.

Speaker 1:
[10:12] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[10:13] Yeah, this is a popular one and I don't usually bring popular front-list books to the show, but I have a different perspective on this one and I wanted to share. So this is a 2026 debut by Afghan-American author Patmeena Sabit, as I said. It's been praised by Khaled Hosseini and Patchett, Paul Hawkins. It was just named to the New Yorkers Best Books of 2026 so far. So it's big already. Now, here's the setup. This book is written in an oral history style. So it's a true crime documentary format. It follows an Afghan refugee family, the Sharaf family, who come to the US with basically nothing. And they really strive and achieve the American dream. And then tragedy strikes. So I'm just going to say now, listeners, don't read the blurb, don't read the back copy. It tells you what that tragedy is. And to me, because it happens kind of midway through the book, it's too much of a spoiler. So don't read it, just go in blind. But when that tragedy strikes, you know that it has to do obviously with some sort of crime. That's how it opens up. And you get sort of these rotating testimonies from neighbors, friends, lawyers, but never from the family. And it's a real compelling page turner, right? It keeps you guessing as to what happened, why it happened, and who's behind it. Just like a good kind of true crime story would. And I thought it was really well written. I thought the structure was compelling. And I can see, like, you know, it fulfills its execution. It's not just gimmicky. It's hard to tell a story like this without ever sharing the perspectives of the actual people in the story. And they were able to do that with, you know, the author was able to do that, which I think is incredible. But my concerns are more around representation in publishing and how that fits into the story. So minority authors don't always get the luxury of many facets of their story being explored in mainstream publishing. So if you think about sort of, you know, traditional North American stories, you have rom-coms, you have adventures, you have, you know, quests, you have all these sorts of things. But when I look at, say, Afghan literature in the West, I see The Kite Runner, which is a lot of misery. And now this one, which reads a sensationalist true crime over something that could read as maybe stereotypical or something associated with Afghan culture. And you don't get a full spectrum of Afghan people's stories or Muslim stories, right? At least not widely available or talked about. You don't get a spectrum of like Afghan joy and rom-coms and quests and these sorts of things, right? And so because of that, it's not that this story is wrong or it just it portrays one side. Have you read this, Kaytee?

Speaker 1:
[12:56] I have.

Speaker 2:
[12:56] OK, yeah, I can tell you have. OK, and I'm sorry. I know I'm being super vague readers. I'm doing it on purpose because I don't want to give away the spoiler. But basically, the crime it talks about is a very small percentage of Afghan experience. It's like, you know, when Indian Lit first came out and it was all about arranged marriage and like, you know, 14 year olds being married to 36 year olds. And that was kind of the only story you got. And so this one felt sort of dogmatic and anti-feminist to me, just given I know a lot of Afghan Muslims, right? I'm Ismaili Muslim myself. A lot of Afghanis are Ismaili. And so I this just does not reflect my experience of that community. And so I know Sabit is Afghan-American, and she's writing the story that is in her and that she's writing. But I'm afraid that Western readers, maybe with a lack of other perspectives, might draw on it overly much and be like, well, I read The Kite Runner and then I read Good People, and this is what I know about Afghan culture, right? And so I don't think it's a fault of the authors, but I do wish there had been maybe like an author's note at the end, contextualizing her perspective, saying, listen, I wrote this because this is a story that's been in the media headlines. I wanted to provide kind of what might be behind it, but just know that this is not the spectrum of Afghan experience or of Muslim experience. Here's some other books you can read, especially in kind of our current of Islamophobia. And so I just felt like I wish that had been in there because I read this, other few of my Muslim friends read it and we all felt a bit like, it just felt a bit sensationalist to us and maybe like people might take away from it more than just a single story. But otherwise, I like the story. I did find that it was about 50 to 100 pages long, right in that near the end, that second, third, it kind of, there was no new information and they kept kind of going over it. And the ending, it didn't end cleanly, but I understand why. But it was more my kind of concern about how it's been, how it might be received and the lack of other experiences. Anyway, that's Good People by Patmeena Sabit.

Speaker 1:
[14:58] I think that's such a valuable way to talk about this book, Roxanna, right? Because A, we know that there are a number of readers who, let's say they do a Read the World challenge, right? And they say, okay, now I've checked off this one book from this one country or this one identity, right? Now I have a fuller grasp of whatever that identity is, right? And what you're saying here is that that's not true for any culture of any kind. Right? You can't say, now I understand Afghan culture, now I understand Muslim culture, if you've read one story, if you've taken in this one view, because just like we know from our own personal experiences that my life is only my own, and we say stuff like nobody understands a marriage except the two people in it, it is also true that nobody understands any type of cultural experience or life experience until they've experienced it in a broad spectrum, rather than saying, well, good people, that's my Afghan book, I've read it, I'm good now, right?

Speaker 2:
[16:00] Exactly. I give our readers and other readers much more credit than that. I know you would think it wasn't the full experience, but given the crime that happens in this story, it is such a, like you have to read it, but it's just such a heinous crime and it's probably less than a percent of a percent representative, right? But if you read that, like I read, I'm not Afghani, but I read The Kite Runner and I was like, oh my God, like the Taliban and Afghanistan. Now, yes, I know the Taliban is still in Afghanistan, but their experience is richer than that. They are much more than a people that have just gone through trauma. It's like when we talk about Black joy or indigenous joy.

Speaker 1:
[16:41] Of course.

Speaker 2:
[16:43] I get worried sometimes and I get that publishing, these are the stories that sell, so these are the stories they're going to talk about. But I just wish it may be, yeah, even if there had been authors' note, if here are some other, because I do think readers would be like, yeah, no, I'd be happy to read more. I just don't get, we don't get maybe a ton of Afghani authors, but show me more if there had been like a little author's note or, and maybe she's doing it on Instagram, I haven't followed her, so maybe I'll look for some resources to share, but it would just be great. Even when I read so many other authors and sometimes I think about how many times do I do that with other stories, and could I be reading more of a spectrum versus exactly like, okay, reading around the world or book bingo or whatever it is.

Speaker 1:
[17:26] Yeah. Thank you. I'm really glad that you brought that and brought that nuanced take on it.

Speaker 2:
[17:31] How did you find it? You read it too?

Speaker 1:
[17:33] I did read it. I took it in on audio. Did you read it in paper?

Speaker 2:
[17:36] I read it in paper. Was it confusing in audio?

Speaker 1:
[17:39] On audio, it was actually exceptional, and I talked to Meredith about it when she brought it to the show as well. It's a full cast recording, but sometimes that means five narrators or like eight narrators. I have never seen so many narrators listed on a full cast audio book before. I would say upwards of 20 people contributed their voices to this audio book, and it really put meat on the bones in a different way that I don't know if I would have taken it in the same way on paper. I think both reading experiences are equally lovely and valid. But for me, it was really delightful in a different way to pull from that audio and that multi-sensory experience of hearing. Because it is documentary style, so it feels like you could be watching this on TV, but instead it's just the words. It's more like a true crime podcast, I guess, is what it feels like. But every time at the beginning of the chapter, it announces who's going to be talking to you, and then you just go in their voice with what they want to tell you about what happened in these events for this family. So it was really interesting on audio.

Speaker 2:
[18:47] Okay, I had heard that it was good, and I wasn't sure if it would get confusing. Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. What's your first book, Kaytee?

Speaker 1:
[18:53] All right, my first book is a much lighter pick. I am going to talk about Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid.

Speaker 2:
[19:00] Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1:
[19:02] Because we brought our Canadian back, and we're going to talk about hockey. Y'all, this is a book that I cannot get out of my head. I did read this one for Love and Chili Peppers in February, after Rebekah and I decided that we should discuss the series because it's so zeitgeisty right now. It's having a big cultural moment. I figured that just like with the Indie Press List, which is where I first heard about Good People by Patmeena Sabit, I would at least dip in and get a feel for the writing, and then I would dip into the show and watch a little bit of the show and get a feel for that. Well, well, well. Not only did I finish the book in less than a day, I also binged the entire show in less than a week, which for a single mom who has rare moments to herself to watch something steamy on a screen is its own accomplishment. Let's talk about the book though. Here's the setup. Shane and Ilya are hockey rivals. Shane Hollander is the new captain of the Montreal Voyagers, and he cannot let anything distract him from winning on the ice. He is already breaking down barriers as an Asian-Canadian captain of a pro hockey team, and he needs to keep his head in the game. He's especially wary of Ilya, who has been his rival since their rookie year. Ilya Rosanov is a Russian sex symbol. He's cocky on the ice and he's insufferable off the ice. Publicly, they hate each other. Their teams are constantly at each other's throats, which in hockey of course means actually physically punching each other and fighting on the ice. They're battling for the Stanley Cup as well, but privately, they cannot keep their hands off one another. However, we should know that as a sport, especially for the last, let's say, 100 years, hockey is notoriously homophobic as a sport and Russia is as a country. Their private activities, bedroom activities need to stay private. It has to be secret for the sake of their teams and reputations, both at home and abroad. This book and the show, of course, are slow burn, but not in a tortured way. I thought it was really interesting how Rachel Reid pulled this off. It's more like the writer, Rachel Reid, who was heavily involved in the HBO Max adaptation, makes us very aware of the passing of time. It doesn't move slowly, but it takes a long time calendar wise to get from one step to the next. What is the brushing of fingers against one another as one year progresses? It quite slowly turns in to something more. This is not one night stand romance. This is not wham-bam, thank you, sir. It is slow and burning passion developed over the course of years. These two men and their heated rivalry and heated romance join together to build this we cannot do this, but we cannot avoid this tension between the two of them. The banter is snarky, but it's also cutting. It's not cutesy flirting. It's rivals tormenting each other on and off the ice. You suck at this, right? You're terrible at this. It's not like, oh, well, if I went to the bar later, maybe you would be there, right? It's not banter in that way. It's like incessant poking at one another. I found it absolutely unput downable though, both the book and the show. While I have not become a fan girl of The Nth Degree, which many people have, I've not watched the show multiple times, I've not binged the other books in the series, but I understand the compulsion to do so. I love the way that this has rippled out into the wider world, into culture, as readers and sports intertwine in the world at large. We see fourth-wing night at baseball games, and we see heated rivalry night at hockey games. We have had the first queer players come out now nationally because of the way that this book and the show is changing the narrative. I think that's so special and so cool. I love it. It's delightful. If you need something icy cold to chill you off while we're getting warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, then I do highly recommend Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid.

Speaker 2:
[22:59] I love that. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list for poolside reading this summer, so I'm so glad you brought it.

Speaker 1:
[23:05] It is perfect for the pool. You probably know this, Roxanna, but now they call hockey games the boy aquarium.

Speaker 2:
[23:11] Yes, I love that, but I have seen some Instagram posts of it. I went to hockey and nobody was making out, what is happening in this boy aquarium? It's not what they said.

Speaker 1:
[23:21] Well, they do these stretches on the ice. The hockey side of Instagram is a place to hang out, y'all. I have learned some things there, but yes, delightful. I do recommend it. It is pretty steamy. We are talking at least three and a half to four chili peppers, and depending on where you draw your line, you might think it's a five chili pepper book, but it's decently steamy with quite a few scenes that have character development in them, so you cannot skip them. That's my last thing I need to say about that. What is your second book this week?

Speaker 2:
[23:56] My second book is lighter, but again, abrupt left turn from your book. It's called One Woman Show by Christine Coulson. Have you heard of this book, Kaytee?

Speaker 1:
[24:05] No, and I don't know who Christine Coulson is either.

Speaker 2:
[24:07] Okay, so this is a really ingenious short little book, and what I love about it is the structure and the execution. So Christine Coulson, the author, spent 25 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art writing museum labels. Isn't that the best job? She just wrote labels for exhibits. That was her whole job.

Speaker 1:
[24:27] I'm glad that that person's job exists. That is important to me.

Speaker 2:
[24:31] Yes. Her final project was writing wall labels for the new British galleries. During that time, she thought, well, what if I tried to tell a fictionalized story of one woman's life, but entirely through these museum labels? That's what One Woman Show is. It's the story of Kitty Whittaker, who is a socialite and we follow her from her gilded childhood in the 1910s all the way to her death in 1999. It really is like walking through the exhibition of one woman's life. You get all these museum labels, but nothing else. You don't get any art pieces. You literally get just the labels. It's an incredibly constricted medium she's given herself, but she really pulls it off. It's super short, as you can imagine, but it's been called A Modern Masterwork by NPR. I picked up this book because I just thought it was just such a fascinating concept and I wanted to see, well, could she make this work? And she really can, so Coulson is really smart. She's witty, she's wry, she's just the kind of person you would expect working at a museum. She uses all sort of the museum words, but this book is not pretentious or inaccessible. It's actually, she works a lot of asides into those labels. And so you do get a feeling of kitty as you're reading it. It's a quick read, but she fits a lot into them. So she talks, you get these labels about, you know, she's six and she's standing in a beam of sunlight. And it's like a painting and she's gilded by the sunlight and her parents are looking at her adoringly. And you get a lot about her and the people surrounding her and women's roles at the time. And what happens as you get older and lose your value in that upper class world? Because kitty goes through a lot of trials and a lot of different challenges. And the way that that set up and what that means to her position in high society is super interesting. I really love this book. When I looked at the Goodreaders reviews, I think it was medium, like 3.8 or something. Because a lot of reviews said they wish there was more of Kitty's story. That maybe there was a second half where the author expanded on her life a bit more and let it breathe. But I really feel like that would have defeated the point. There's a quote at the end that she includes about Picasso who talks about cubism. And he talks about getting the hole through slices and how your imagination has to fill in the rest. And how it's not the whole story, but it fills in what it doesn't have. And you know, so much of museum work is like that. Like you have shards of a pottery piece, or you have pieces of a dinosaur, and you kind of have to imagine the rest. And you have to imagine life around what that would be. And she's trusting the reader to fill in the rest with their imagination, right? So I feel like if she gave us the rest, that would be spoon feeding us. This is actually much more like a museum exhibition. And it also makes you think about life, right? Like think about Instagram, when you get those shards of people's lives, and then you imagine out the rest. But you can't see the camera two inches to the left, where there's baby food spilled on the floor, right? You just see the perfect little place. So how do you know someone through fragments? And you might think you know so much of a person, but you can never really know a person that way. It just really has you think, but she never, it's still a light story. It's a quick read. She doesn't hit you over the head with that. Like you can think about it if you want, or you can spend an afternoon reading it at the pool, smile and kind of take it in and then let it go. It's just a really interesting, unconventional story that I thought was really smart. And that's One Woman Show by Christine Coulson.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] I am very interested in this.

Speaker 2:
[28:08] You know what? It's a good one to pick up because it's so quick. I heard about it on Sarah's Bookshelves Live and I thought it was a while ago and I thought it sounded so interesting. And it was on my list but I didn't manage to pick it up. And then I saw it at the library and I'm actually really glad I did. It was a lot better. Not, it just surpassed my expectations, I think, of what I thought it might be gimmicky or something. No, it was excellent. Cool. What's our next book, Kaytee?

Speaker 1:
[28:33] All right. My next one is called Meet The Neighbors by Brandon Keim. This is nonfiction that fits right into my Kaytee loves learning about animals bookshelf. I read it with my writing partner, Kaytee, and it was an overview of the ways that human lives and animal lives intersect. The subtitle is Animal Minds and Life in a More Than Human World. That's what we're going with here. Published in 2024, when we started this book, Kaytee and I, we felt like Brandon Keim was embodying the two of us as readers of nonfiction about all kinds of animals. That first chapter felt like he was us. Over the years, we have learned quite a few facts and read many narrative nonfiction pieces about specific species and creatures, right? So everyone smile, I will just bust out an animal fact in conversation. I'm really fun at parties, y'all. I promise. Brandon, like Kaytee and I, uses that first chapter to walk through his physical neighborhood and discuss the neighbors he finds there within the animal kingdom. Not the people that live in the houses next to him, but he cites facts that he's learned about birds and squirrels and dogs. He mentions foxes and raccoons and beavers, right? He's just walking around talking about the animals that live by him, but it's a little bit like I am at parties where I'm like, but did you know that beavers can change the watershed of many acres surrounding the stream they live in? And it's like, people are like, yeah, but we're here to drink wine. Like, what are you talking about? Right? It's a little weird. For me, the closest comparison I have to this behavior is when I stroll through a bookstore with somebody and we don't pick up books, we just point out books we've already read and share little bits about them. Like revisiting old friends, right? We've all done it. Everybody's guilty. The subsequent chapters get a bit deeper into various ecosystems and animals and oftentimes discuss the ways that humans have failed in our quest to control, animal control, animals or treat them as neighbors. We are usually guilty of treating the world like it's only ours. And then our animal companions face the consequences. This book is real and a bit gritty. It lays out stories about specific animals and animal families that feel almost exhausting as you keep moving forward through the text. And that's because humans are not great neighbors to animals. We hurt species and we mess up relationships. And really we do it with each other as well, right? This is not a surprise. Brandon shares those stories pretty frequently though. Kaytee and I found ourselves warning each other at the beginning of each chapter. Hey, just a heads up that today's chapter includes this type of animal death or abuse or torture or whatever it is. It's hard to read. This book is hard to read. And that's not to say that I won't or cannot read about the ways we have not been kind to animals. Usually when diving deep into a specific species, we might find a whole chapter or multiple chapters about the ways that human beings have messed with so-and-so over the decades and the centuries. But that book, whatever species specific book that is, is a celebration of all we've learned from octopuses, turtles, beavers, birds, sharks, foxes. I've read a lot of books about animals, right? The species specific books drill into how amazing a specific subset of our planet is and why we should celebrate it and want to protect it. If you're wanting a book of that kind, y'all, I have so many recommendations for you. But if you want this broader overview that allows space for you to find your next animal obsession, I will recommend two of them. First is An Immense World by Ed Yong. It has been a favorite of mine for years and it dives into the ways that animals sense and perceive the world, which is so different from our own senses and perceptions. I was continually amazed and delighted by this one. For a funnier option, you could pick up Fuzz When Nature Breaks The Law by Mary Roach. Roach is always irreverent in her science writing. In this one, we look at the ways that animals and humans interact and what we've done, and how we failed to try to make those lives intersect in safer and better ways for everyone. It's funny and readable and great and full of ridiculous facts that you could bust out at any party. But this one, Meet the Neighbors. While I did give it four stars and enjoy it more or less, it didn't shine in the ways that I had hoped for, because I love animal books and the ways that I've come to love in other stories. It suffers from an embarrassment of riches in the area of animal-based narrative science books and because I've dabbled in many of them, it just didn't hit the mark for me. This was Meet the Neighbors by Brandon Keim.

Speaker 2:
[32:57] Well, I'm glad we got a true treatment of that from an animal behavior connoisseur. Now, of these sorts of books because you know you've read so many that you know what the good ones are now.

Speaker 1:
[33:08] I am an amateur expert in this area, right? Amateur meaning for the love of, that's where that root comes from and I love animals and I love learning about animals and I don't study them and I don't know that much scientifically, but I've read a lot of this type of book and so I'm glad to be able to weigh in on it.

Speaker 2:
[33:27] Well thank you, friend, and I'm actually going to bring on nonfiction for my third book too.

Speaker 1:
[33:31] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[33:32] So my third book is called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. So Annie Duke was pursuing a PhD in cognitive psychology, but she decided to abandon that and went pro in poker. She won the World Series and raked in $2 million at the Tournament of Champions. So this book is about her applying everything she learned at the poker table to everyday decision making. The core idea is simple. Every decision you make is a bet on an uncertain future, and there's a range of outcomes that can happen. So basically, you're placing a bet on one of those outcomes based on the facts you have, and they may turn out to be true or they may not. And here's the thing. A good decision can lead to a bad outcome and a bad decision can lead to a good outcome. So Duke kind of walks you through how poker players think about this and how you can use kind of the same thinking tools around decision making in your own life. So I was super interested in this. First of all, a poker player that is a woman that also has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology signed me up. I love interesting women, right? I know nothing about poker, like less than nothing. So it was just interesting to me because I wanted to learn more about her life and how she got into this. But also, to be honest, I really struggle with making decisions. And I think as I've gotten older, I've really kind of started looking back on past decisions and overanalyzing them. And so I just wanted to kind of get a view from an expert decision maker on what she could teach me. So it was actually a really interesting book. Duke does talk a lot about her kind of poker career and how she decided to leave her PhD and she decided to support herself. Like literally at these card games, like in the South, she was playing with No Fingers Malone. And she had these crazy, very colorful poker buddies. And her stories are really interesting. And I really love that part because here she is like a 25-year-old UPenn grad student in this room. But it was just, it's very, you could tell that she kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. So hearing those stories was really interesting. But also I thought her core advice was really good. She talks about resulting, which is about equating good decisions with good outcomes and bad decisions with bad outcomes. So saying like, I did this and it led to this. So it must mean that what I did was good, or I put my house in the market and then the interest rates fell and I got a low price. So I put my house in the market for the good reasons, but then I sold it at a loss. So it was a bad decision when it might not have been a bad decision, right? Like she calls that resulting and that's a poker player term of not necessarily equating the hand you have to the outcome that was that came out of it. So what she says is, you know, you can make the right call and still lose the hand or vice versa. And so what you have to do is go back after every hand to analyze. What can I learn? What better decisions could I have made? So you separate the analysis from the outcome. This was really helpful for me because I put a lot of stock in decisions and I felt like I think they reflected my personal value. And she kind of, you know, as poker players, you can't do that. You're playing too many hands, often hundreds a night. So you can't put all your stock in one and you can't also, you know, make arbitrary decisions or believe in arbitrary beliefs. You don't not question those beliefs because they're just going to lead to worse and worse outcomes over time. So you really have to distance yourself from your decisions and really pick them apart in an analytical way. So I thought it was super interesting. It's not like I read in reviews that it was a lot like Thinking Fast and Slow, which is an excellent book, but it's a thousand pages and has eight point font and I'm never going to read it. And so listen to a female poker player talk about her, you know, colorful characters and go through the stuff was a lot easier for me. It was more entertaining and I learned a ton from it. I wrote so many notes in my Commonplace book. I'm going to buy this book and it's probably going to be one of my best of the year. So that's Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

Speaker 1:
[37:28] I love that pivot on how to make decisions by asking somebody that obviously makes a lot of decisions, but that's not where I would have gone for that advice. So I think of it in a totally different way.

Speaker 2:
[37:39] Me too. I thought that's what was so interesting because she says, look, you make a hundred of these decisions, but if you don't go back and analyze, you can really fall into traps that whenever they show these cards, it's going to mean this. And then that may make you make a false choice. So I hadn't honestly ever thought of poker that way. But once she explained it, I thought, oh yeah, this makes sense why she would know so much about decision making. She's actually founded a nonprofit to help children, I think, make better decisions and analyze their decisions just for critical thinking skills as they grow older, which I thought was super smart. It's what a great way.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] Yes, I love that. All right, my third one this week is Fierce Fairytales, Poems And Stories To Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill. It is well established, of course, in currently reading land that we love a fairy tale retelling. If you make it a feminist twist on a classic full of gender stereotypes and body prejudices and cliches, all the more so, more gold stars for you. That is exactly what Nikita Gill delivers in this poetry and stories collection. It's tiny but mighty, with nods to all the fairy tales you know and probably a few that you are not familiar with. This collection is also sprinkled with her own illustrations to really build up the text. So, Roxanna, lucky you, I brought my copy along to show Roxanna the pages. So if you've got us on YouTube, you'll see them here as well. These are her illustrations. Let's see if I can get it to focus correctly. And they're all through the book. Almost, I would say every other poem has something illustrated on it.

Speaker 2:
[39:08] The pen and ink, they're beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[39:10] They're beautiful. They're really well done. Everything about the feel and design of this book worked for me. It's got French flaps. We love a French flap and great page feel. You know how sometimes you touch a book and you're like, yes, this is the right tactile experience for me. Everything about the words inside spoke to me on a soul level. In Why Tinkerbell Quit Anger Management, which got dog-eared when I read it, we see the force and fury of feminine rage. In Baba Yaga, Gill reaches toward the erasure and villainization of age and how women are turned into witches when they get older within fairy tales, right? And in How A Hero Becomes A Villain, we see the ways that trauma informs our own journeys into darkness, right? You might be a hero to start your story, but if you go through something hard, maybe that's what turns you into a villain. It is artfully done. It's beautifully written. This one sat on my shelves for a long time because I don't prioritize poetry as often as I should, or fairy tales for that matter, but I'm so glad to have finally read it and I loved it. It reminds me in some ways of Alex Haro's Fractured Fairy Tales series of novellas. And it also gave me vibes of The Princess Saves Herself in This One, which is a best-selling poetry collection by Amanda Lovelace. And finally, for a short story collection of retellings, I also loved Love and Color by Bolu Babalola. All exceptional, but this one is going right alongside each of those on my shelves because I just like, look at that cover. Everything about it is beautiful. I'm so happy that this was not just a hit for me, but a keeper. This is Fierce Fairy Tales, Poems And Stories To Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill. I loved it.

Speaker 2:
[40:51] I love that. It's beautiful. And what a great way into poetry for somebody that might not be like me, readily drawn to poetry if I know I'm going to get a little fairy tale out of it. I'm going to pick that one up.

Speaker 1:
[41:01] It's really accessible, especially when you recognize the bones of a story to be able to say, okay, I get where she's going with this. I think it's fun to do a little twist there. All right, friends, those were our six current reads. We love doing those every week, but now we're going to get into something a little bit different. For our deep dive this week, this was Roxanna's idea and I think it was brilliant. We're going to talk about the three star books that stuck with us even after we finished them. And I'm excited to chat about this, but Roxanna, why don't you tell me a little bit about why you wanted to talk about this?

Speaker 2:
[41:32] Thanks, Kaytee. I'm so glad that you were excited about this idea too. I was thinking about this because there's a few three, 3.5 star books that I have read that I've just been thinking about that stuck with me. And I remember Meredith on The Big Show a couple of shows ago also ended up sort of pivoting in real time and bringing a book that she didn't quite love, but one felt like she needed to share. And when I was going through my reading for this year, I noticed a lot of four star books that I loved in the moment, but honestly couldn't remember very much about right now at all. And then these three star books, some of them I read a couple of years ago and they still stick with me. So it made me think, what is it about some of these books that even in the moment, though, they weren't maybe the best reading experience, that they keep sticking with us? And does that teach us anything about our reading? So I just thought it'd be really interesting to hear from you what those books are and to share some of mine in case they spark readers to pick those books up.

Speaker 1:
[42:26] Yes, and that's a great hint that y'all, as we're talking about this, we want you to be thinking about this in your own reading lives, whether that means going through your past reading logs or your Goodreads or StoryGraph history to find some of those books that you didn't love way back when that you still think about today. So let's get into those a little bit. Roxanna, why don't you start us out? We do both have three books to talk about today, so we're going to pivot back and forth between the two of us. I can't wait to hear what is still sticking with you.

Speaker 2:
[42:54] Okay, my first one is really different. It's called Wine Witch On Fire by Natalie MacLean.

Speaker 1:
[43:00] Wine Witch?

Speaker 2:
[43:01] Wine Witch On Fire.

Speaker 1:
[43:03] Like the beverage?

Speaker 2:
[43:04] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[43:05] Okay, all right.

Speaker 2:
[43:06] And the full title of this book is Wine Witch On Fire, Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. Okay, now.

Speaker 1:
[43:15] I got big eyes.

Speaker 2:
[43:16] Yeah, this is why I had to bring it, because I've thought about this book for two years, Kaytee. So, this is a book from Natalie MacLean, who you will not have heard of, but people in Canada probably know her. She's a well-known wine writer, okay? She's actually one of the best-known wine writers. So she had a blog. She was named the world's best wine writer at the World Food Media Awards. She has several James Beard awards. Like, she is a very well-known woman here in Canada. I knew about her only. I don't honestly, I don't know too much about wine. I'm like tea. So I go to here in Canada, well, in Ontario, our liquor is controlled by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. It's government-controlled. We call it the LCBO. I go in the store, whatever had a tag that Natalie MacLean had put 95 on. I'd be like, great, perfect. Natalie says this is a great bottle.

Speaker 1:
[44:08] Good enough for me.

Speaker 2:
[44:09] Going to pick it up. That's really all I knew about her. Then I saw this book and the title, just seemed so interesting that I thought, okay, I need to pick this up. This is a book about Natalie and a big scandal that went through her life, that honestly I knew nothing about, about 10 years ago. Basically, she, as I said, very well-known wine writer in Canada and very well respected. She had a website, Natalie MacLean, where she rated all these wines. She had content on her site from the LCBO, which is the Liquor Control Board, which I talked about. That was clearly labeled. It was like a rotten tomatoes, like here are other reviews of this wine. I think she was given some emails, sent some emails saying, hey, it's copyright infringement that you have this up. She wrote it off thinking, well, but it's labeled, it's clear it comes from them. She just wrote it off. I think for some reason it was escalated and escalated, and then it turned out that she was sued for copyright infringement on this. Because I never realized this, but as a woman, she was at the top of her game, and everybody else in that very small wine writers' community were older white men, and they did not love having a woman at the top who was the one who was getting her ratings in the LCBO, and that was kind of the authority. So they really circled their wagons to take her down, okay? They wrote vicious columns about her. They piled on each other. They wrote sexist things about her body, okay? It really went, and these are high brow, supposedly, male wine writers, okay? But they really went after her, and she does say, look, I made a mistake. It was a true mistake. It's not that she's saying she didn't make it. But the way they went after her, because she's a woman, because she wore red lipstick, because she was curvaceous, I don't know why, they really went after her. She lost magazine columns, speaking engagements, she had real financial and reputational consequences. So this is the story of that. Now, why I gave this 3.5 stars? Because it sounds excellent. The writing wasn't stellar, okay? The story could have been tighter. This is clearly, we talk about this in memoirs, she clearly wrote this while this was raw for her. And so part of this feels like a revenge book. She's settling scores, she goes into a lot of detail because I think she wants to say exactly what people said to her and why they said it and why that was wrong. And it just sounds like somebody who's just with a cigarette and a wine glass in the middle of the night being like, and another thing, you know? And so she really pounds it out. But I haven't stopped thinking about it because I've been thinking a lot about the mistakes we make as humans and how we own up to them. And I think this was the first book that introduced me to that, that hey, sometimes they do make mistakes and sometimes they're big mistakes. And sometimes you do have to just say, yeah, it's not like I was blameless here, I did make that mistake. But how do you deal with that? And how do you overcome it? Especially when it's like a, like when you're exoriated and raked over the coals, you know? I just think that's a really unique experience to write about, that kind of public shaming. In the end, there's a scene where she goes to a white wine writers convention, and she's terrified. She's going to see, it's a very small wine writing community, and she's going to see all these like, you know, wine writers, these respected men from these big publications. And she goes and she sits at the bar, and they sit next to her because they're all in a tasting, and not one of them says anything to her face. And she says, like, look at that. They attacked me online for two years. And now they see me, and they don't even have the balls to say anything to my face. And it just stuck with me. I still think about that book and how we all go through things in life, and some are more public than others. But you know what? You get it back on your feet, and you have to face some of those people that really treated you badly, and that's what shows your character. So anyway, that's Wine Witch On Fire by Natalie MacLean. And if you do want to read something about a woman who survived a public shaming like that, it's a good one to pick up.

Speaker 1:
[48:03] All right. It does sound interesting, but my eyes did get very big when you first mentioned the title and the subtitle.

Speaker 2:
[48:09] Well, you can see why I picked it up for the library. I was like, what is this about?

Speaker 1:
[48:13] Of course. Of course. I can picture a scandalous cover too. All right. That ties a little bit into my first one, which is also nonfiction from the food world, because the first one that popped immediately to my head was Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain. I read this one in 2018, and at the time I gave it only three stars, and I had picked it up at that time because Anthony Bourdain had just passed away. First of all, I think I read it at the wrong time. I wanted a look at this man's life that had clearly impacted the food world in a big way. People were bereft when he died and there were a lot of rumors swirling around it. But I guess it was voyeurism. I wanted a look at who he was and why he was so impactful. But it didn't hit for me the way that I thought it should. And so I went back and read my review at the time. And I said, Bourdain's chapter on the best local foods he's ever eaten had me absolutely salivating and craving pho from Vietnam. But otherwise, I found this book to be mostly geared toward people who are true foodies, who know the Natalie MacLeans of the wine world, right? Who know the who's who of the food world. For those of us that don't rub elbows with Michelin-starred chefs, it's more of a meander through a world that we don't recognize. And that made me uncomfortable, right? At the time, the reader I was at the time, I wanted to tell all. I wanted to peek behind the curtain. I wanted to know what made him tick as a food writer, as a connoisseur of some of the world's best foods. And instead, it felt like, check me out. I'm so fancy, right? Look at all these people, I know. But it has stuck with me and I really think that I can trace my love of The Peak Inside The Kitchen to this book from Anthony Bourdain. It is part of the reason I loved The Bear on FX. It's part of the reason I love Save Me The Plums by Ruth Reichl and Blood Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Zevin and so many more wonderful books. I'm pretty sure Gabrielle Zevin is not her name. It's Gabrielle something.

Speaker 2:
[50:19] I was going to say, probably not Gabrielle Zevin.

Speaker 1:
[50:22] She wrote other books that we love, like Young Jane Young, and AJ. Fickrey. It's Gabrielle something and I don't have it in my head right now. However, I have read a lot of really great food memoirs since then, and every single time, I find myself thinking of Anthony Bourdain and the way that he introduced me to the food world through his book, Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain. There's also like there's Kitchen Confidential, right? There's plenty of other books by him, but this was the one that started that journey for me. And so I'm constantly thinking about it, even though I didn't love it.

Speaker 2:
[50:55] So that's interesting, right? Like the book I mentioned first was one that had a really strong premise. The writing wasn't as strong, but the story was so strong and the themes really kind of hit me in a certain place that it stuck with me. The second one was the first food, like story you read in that style. And even though that didn't strike with you, the subject matter and the way it was told really did stick with you, right? So even though that book itself wasn't the perfect place, it kind of started you on a journey. I'm just trying to kind of find themes in what are, what the 3.5 is like, or the three is why they've ended up on our list. And my next one is even different than that. It's about a book where I had expectations that it would go one way and it went another. And so because of that, I rated it lower. But then once I actually thought about what it was trying to do and not what I wanted it to do, I actually thought it was a really good book. So that's To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers. Now, this is a 2019 science fiction novella. Becky Chambers, as we know, queen of science fiction. She's written a ton. I read this after the Monk and Robot series. And I think I was expecting kind of warm, fuzzy, found family, you know, the kind of stuff she is known for. And this is very different. Okay, so this is a story of four astronauts that are on a decades long mission to explore planets that are 15 light years away from Earth. So they can hibernate longer than their natural lifespans. So they go on this huge, long journey. And when they return, they know, everybody they know is gonna be dead. Okay, so that's kind of the setup. So I go into this thinking, okay, well, it's gonna be about found family, these astronauts and how they are with each other and the quest that they go on. But actually, mid mission, they lose contact with Earth. And then they receive a message that a natural disaster has crippled Earth's technological capability, and they may be the last astronauts. And so this story ends up being about sort of the philosophical questions about what happens. Do you continue on your mission when you don't know if Earth exists anymore? What's the purpose of your mission? It goes into sort of those Becky Chambers asks philosophical questions, as well as what is home? And she kind of very much details what each of their stops on each of these planets looks like. So as I was reading it, the 2019 year, whenever I read this, was like, well, what's the point of this? Is there a planet they're getting to? Is this a quest? And then it ends and all the family gets together, the found family. And it's like, I wanted it, expected it to follow a pattern. But that's not what this is about, right? It's a philosophical exploration. And it's also these astronauts and their experience of home. So I think if I had gone in, orienting myself to it as more of that, and not expecting, where's this narrative going to go? I probably would have rated it five stars. It really did stick with me because I thought about that a lot. But because I had expected it to be sort of this quest found family story, I rated it 3.5 stars. So I think sometimes I, you know, if I let go of what I expect something to be and lean into what it is, then I really like it. Like I went back and thought, I must have rated that book 5 stars and was like, oh no, 3. Really? And I had to read my review where I was like, what is this? It's not what I expected it to be. But then it kind of warmed its way into my brain.

Speaker 1:
[54:10] Gosh, we are so interesting as readers throughout our lives, right? That we're allowed to change our minds. What a cool thing to be a human that's allowed to change her mind and let something stick with her even though she doesn't think it's great at the time. Gosh, amazing. My second book that I want to talk about is a romcom. It's Waiting For Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey. I gave this book three and a half stars when I read it, but I think about it regularly and I recommend it all the time. Why? Why is that true? It's a strange thing to reconcile the fact that I didn't really like it at the time, or at least I didn't rate it well at the time. Looking back at that and realizing the same thing, I thought that this was a book that I had given four and a half, maybe five stars to because of the way I think about it now in my head. Maybe I did like it and I didn't realize it at the time, which is okay. Sometimes we write a review and we're not in the right space to read that book. Or maybe at the time, I thought that I didn't like anything without Spice because this is definitely low on the Spice spectrum. And Kaytee in the past oftentimes would have said, why even read romance if it doesn't have some good spicy scenes in it? That's what I go to that genre for. Of course, anybody can meet any genre where they're at. I'm not saying nobody should read romance without Spice, but for this reader, that's what I was looking for when I was picking up romance books. But I went and looked at my review and I basically called it Trite. I said it went overboard referencing other rom-coms. It played on every little bit of reader nostalgia that I have. Maybe I just didn't want to be known that well, which is another thing that happens. You can have your expectations flouted by a book where you thought something was going to happen and it doesn't go the way you thought it would, or you can have the opposite happen where it meets your expectations so much that you feel like, am I even a reader? This was so within the tropiness of romance tropes that maybe I'm not even a real reader anymore. If I like this, maybe I'm not even a good reader. It could be, and I think this is actually the most likely, that I was judging myself for liking something that felt trite because I did like it, because I do watch for Kerry Winfrey's new releases. I think about it and I recommend it regularly. I just reviewed a week or two ago, How To Kill A Guy In Ten Dates, which has callbacks to horror and rom-coms from the 90s and 2000s, and I loved it. Maybe I've learned more about myself since then, but it turns out that maybe Waiting For Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey did not deserve three stars from me. It's okay to be a reader that likes books that lean into tropes, and that doesn't make me any less than the other readers that I am.

Speaker 2:
[57:06] I love that. I think it's such an important lesson. It's why I didn't read The Hunger Games for so many years. I'm too good for YA or ACOTAR. Then I read them and was like, wait, these are good books. I really like these books. For me, they're excellent. I will always stand up and say, I actually think Sarah J. Maas is a great writer. But at the time, I was an English major and just maybe had different conceptions of myself and would have missed out on really good books had I not realized the kind of stuff I like. So I'm glad you brought that one.

Speaker 1:
[57:37] Good. Love it. All right. What's your third book, Roxanna?

Speaker 2:
[57:41] My last book is Dawn by Octavia Butler. This book by Octavia Butler is from 1987. I read Kindred on your and Meredith's recommendation a few season ago and loved it. It was hard, but it was a rewarding, super propulsive. Honestly, people, if you haven't read that, read Kindred. It is so good. I think I expected the same here, and this book is not the same. Okay, so here's the set up. Lilith Iapo is a woman who wakes up in the possession of aliens called the Owen Kali. She doesn't know where she is or what's happened, and basically what she finds out is that humans nearly destroyed earth through nuclear war, and the Owen Kali have saved the remaining humanity. Okay, they want Lilith to be the human emissary to lead people back to earth. It goes further than that. There's a ton more plot. But basically it's, Lilith has a choice to go back to earth, but if they go back to earth, they have to like propagate with this alien species so they'll never be humans again. They're like this human Owen Kali hybrid, or let humans die out. It's a super fascinating premise, but it is not fast paced. It is tedious. It is like one of those books that Meredith said grows and grows and grows, you know? And I think it's supposed to feel that way because they put her to sleep, they wake her up, they say, will you do it? She says, no. They zap her back to sleep. Then they wake her up. And like, it's like these flashes and like, she doesn't know, has it been five seconds? Has it been 200 years? She has no idea. It's just a very, it's not like a science fiction book I've ever read before. Like you've got to give it to Octavia Butler. That woman's mind was astounding. Okay. So I rated this 3.5 stars because as I said, it felt tedious while reading it. It felt uncomfortable and slow. It wasn't full of adventure. My sci-fi is kind of like on light sci-fi slash fantasy, kind of space opera kind of things, and this is not that. But the more I sat with it, the more I thought about it. It's so different from anything I've read. Butler raises huge philosophical questions about what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a different species? This species is not like an aggressive violent species. There's never the control through quiet persistence. There's no mind control. They just wait her out until she has to comply. And if she doesn't comply, they put her back to sleep for another 100 years. And then they just wake up. Like it's just such an interesting construct that I keep thinking about it. Right. She has so much like she's so strong, Lilith. But what does free will actually mean? And in the end, can she actually resist? So this is a book, again, I didn't love it while I was reading. I felt uncomfortable, but I thought and thought and thought about it. And it made me think, I don't always want to read books that I like while I'm reading them. You know, one of my big discoveries from last year, sometimes the books I like the most are the books I didn't like. You know, as weird as that sounds, because they stick with me. There was a couple of books I read last year that were super sad, but the writing was so beautiful. They took me to a place I wouldn't have necessarily gone and I've learned so much from them. And this is another one. So if it's a 3.5, like if I'm reading it and I'm like, this is a 3.5 because it's boring, it hasn't really got my interest, it's meh, then maybe I'll put it down. But if it's a 3.5 by a really well-known author or somebody that's doing something interesting or something they just feel uncomfortable with, then I might push through because it might be one of those books that I don't like but end up loving at the end of the year.

Speaker 1:
[61:15] Such a good point. Yes. All right, my third one I will be brief with, but I am slating as number three for this Deep Dive, You by Caroline Kepnes. This one's a thriller. I did try to go with three very different types of book. I did read this one a couple of years back as well, and my review of it made it clear that I was uncomfortable with this book. I was uncomfortable with the storyline. I was uncomfortable being in the head of somebody who is doing very bad things throughout this book. Joe is not a good guy. It's a thriller with a super unlikable central plot line. I do think I'm a different reader now. I can lean into, I don't like this person. I don't like what they're doing, but I'm interested enough in this plot line that I can keep going with it. But it's also possible that the distance from it is what's made it easier to reconsider. That when you're sitting in there, in that uncomfortableness, it's easier to say, okay, I've got the itch, right? Like I can viscerally feel this on my body and I don't like that feeling. Ergo, I don't like this book. But I don't think that's true. I think what happened is I was inflating those two feelings of not liking a feeling that I was having, and not liking the story, the characters, the plot, which are really well done. Now, am I now thinking that I want to reread this? No, I'm not. I also still have the show on my TBW list, my To Be Watched list. I don't think I'll be watching that either. It still is okay that I'm uncomfortable with a lot about this book, but I also still think about it. I still think about this character, and I think about how much this writer was able to impact me with the sick and twistedness of the story inside this book. And that's the part that has stuck with me. So, I don't know, right? Like, it's interesting, the ways that we change as readers, the ways that our reviews don't necessarily reflect the thought, it can reflect the feeling, the ways that a book can come, like, resurrect itself over and over again throughout the years when we've looked at it one way for so long and then we realized, yeah, but all these other things I owe to that book, right? So, maybe it was more impactful than I thought it would be. Anyway, this was a super interesting exercise for me. Did you like doing this, Roxanna?

Speaker 2:
[63:39] I really did. Like, I think we stay away from 3.5 or 3 star books on the show because we don't want to bore readers, right? Which I think is fair. Nobody wants to hear a book where you're like, eh, I was okay. But sometimes 3.5 star books are not just okay. They just, as you said, bring up all these conflicting feelings. So when you go with the zero and the five, it kind of melds to the medium of 3.5. But there's actually really interesting stuff to pull out. And as I said, I'm going to really think about how do I actually get more books like this? Because I think sometimes when I love a book, it's because I'm comfortable with it. But the books that push me sometimes are those big books, like you talked about, like when I think about Yellow Faces and other what falls into this, you know, like didn't love that book, but you know, it was an interesting book to read, an interesting perspective to come by. So what are, I'd love to hear from readers. I would love to hear, what are your 3.5 star books that you can't stop thinking about? Why is that? And are you trying to read more 3.5 star books? Or like, okay books? Or do you rate them differently? Do you say, I didn't like this book, but it really made me think so it's a five star. Like I wonder, is it a book issue or is it a rating issue? I just feel like there could be a lot of interesting conversation from our listeners around us.

Speaker 1:
[64:50] Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to hear how this landed for you and what y'all think about this one. But now, before we go, we have a couple more things to discuss. First, I want to highlight our bookish friend of the week. Short and sweet, but not the content, bookish friend Sherry has been leading a fabulous big books buddy reads server over on our Discord for over on Discord, but she's a bookish friend so it's like our Discord for years now. She is so great about getting the books picked, making a schedule, and encouraging discussion. Her post this past week cross-posted to our other group on Discord and on Facebook was to remind people that there is a buddy read of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry starting on April 19th and going through June 13th. They have the entire rest of the year planned out to read those chonkers that you've been thinking about for years, but with the big books buddy reads, you get to do so with a community of buddy readers. And Sherry has been like faithful servant to this Discord server for so long now. I love giving her a gold star. Great job Sherry, you are our bookish friend of the week.

Speaker 2:
[65:58] I love that, congrats Sherry, thank you for all you do.

Speaker 1:
[66:02] Yes, perfect. What did you choose from our menu this week, Roxanna?

Speaker 2:
[66:06] Well, I am going to recommend A Sleeper Hit.

Speaker 1:
[66:09] Alright.

Speaker 2:
[66:09] So, you know, spring always makes me think of fresh produce and hope and optimism and creativity makes me want to cook. And so I wanted to bring a cookbook. But this is not a new cookbook. It's an old cookbook and it's a very old cookbook. It's called Food That Really Schmecks and it's by Edna Stabler and it was originally published in 1968, okay? So when I grew up, my dad worked in publishing and he would bring home all sorts of books. And this was one that was published by his company, McGraw-Hill Ryerson. And I found it on the bookshelf. It was already very old by the time I discovered it and I just fell in love with it. So Edna Stabler was actually an award-winning journalist. She was like a really intrepid woman, like a contributor to Maclean's and these great news magazines, born in 1906. And she traveled to an old order Mennonite family in Waterloo, Ontario, and absorbed all their oral history and learned about Mennonite culture and cooking and wrote this book about it. And it's been described as like folklore literature and one of the best loved, quirkiest cookbooks ever published in Canada. So I didn't know that when I picked it up in my grubby eight-year-old hands, but I just remember reading these recipes like shu fly pie and crusty chicken pot pie and schnippled bean salad and they all come with this headnote like Bertha showed me how to make cookies out of leftover meals. And we went over to Sally's and she makes this amazing loaf. And it was just so warm and cozy. This community felt so tight and warm. It felt like Little House on the Prairie come to life. And I just still like I still read this book and I just think about how simple this life was and how delicious this food was. And whether you make these recipes or not, it's not really the point. Just it brings to mind community, safety, warmth. And I think it's just a safe haven right now that we all need. I did check on Amazon. You can still order a reprint of this. It's food that really smacks by Edna Stabler.

Speaker 1:
[68:14] Cute, I love that we haven't had a cookbook in a while.

Speaker 2:
[68:17] Well, that's a great one to get people started.

Speaker 1:
[68:20] For sure. All right, y'all, that is it for this week. As a reminder, here's where you can connect with us. You can find me, I'm Kaytee, at Notes on Bookmarks on Instagram. Meredith is at Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram.

Speaker 2:
[68:33] You can find me, Roxanna, at Roxanna the Reader on Instagram.

Speaker 1:
[68:36] Our show is produced and edited every week by Megan Phouthavong Evans. 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 so you can zoom right to where we talked about it, can be found in our show notes and on our website. currentlyreadingpodcast.com.

Speaker 2:
[68:53] You can also follow the show at Currently Reading Podcast on Instagram or email us at hello at currentlyreadingpodcast.com.

Speaker 1:
[69:00] That's our new email. You can also find us on Substack and YouTube or sign up for our Reader Know Thyself newsletter. If you really want to help us, you can become a bookish friend. You'll find lots of great content, amazing community, and you'll keep the show commercial free. Please feel free to leave us any five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or shout us out on social media. Makes a huge difference in our finding our perfect audience.

Speaker 2:
[69:26] Bookish friends are the best friends. Thank you for helping us grow and get closer to our goals.

Speaker 1:
[69:31] Until next week, may your coffee be hot, and your book be unput downable. Happy reading, Roxanna.

Speaker 2:
[69:37] Happy reading, Kaytee.