Meredith Schwartz Has Your Next Perfect Read
Forever35
The episode features hosts Dori Shafrir and Elise Hu welcoming Meredith Schwartz, host of The Currently Reading Podcast, to explore reading as a self-care practice and discuss her Reader Know Thyself framework for
Key takeaways
- Meredith Schwartz developed the Reader Know Thyself framework after nine seasons of hosting The Currently Reading Podcast, which was recently named one of the New York Times' seven podcasts for bookworms.
- Elise Hu attended a San Francisco memorial for tech blogger Om Malik on what would have been his 60th birthday, featuring custom bookmarks, framed photography exhibits, and a Desi dance party.
Main topics
- Reading as self-care
- Reader Know Thyself framework
Notable quotes
I ended up trying 273 different fragrances. And I couldn't just choose one signature scent. I ended up choosing 10.
Conclusion
The episode offers practical strategies for cultivating sustainable readin
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:10) Welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Dori Shafrir. And I'm Elise Hu, and Speaker 2 (0:17) we're Speaker 1 (0:17) just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums. And today we have Meredith Schwartz on the pod. So we're going to be talking a lot about books. Yeah, she's the host of the Currently Reading podcast. So we had a lot of questions for her about how to choose something to read, and like what kind of reader you are. And I don't know, it's an interesting conversation. Speaker 2 (0:40) Well, I just love talking about books with anybody else who likes talking about books, too. So there's that. You're going to come out of this conversation with a lot more books that you maybe haven't heard of or books to add to your TBR, your to-be-read list. So that's always super fun. And I want to shout out, I went to an indie bookstore in San Francisco in the Castro yesterday that I absolutely loved. It's called Fabuloso Books. Ooh. Speaker 2 (1:09) I generally make it a make a point to buy a book from an indie bookstore in the staff recommendations sections because I like all of the care and the love and attention that goes into, you know, the staffers recommending books. And like I was very touched anytime a reader would send me my Speaker 1 (1:30) book out in the Speaker 2 (1:31) wild with a little staff recommendation. But I also I don't know, I find them I find myself compelled by these. little recommendation cards. And so I bought one from that section. I got a used copy of Charlotte's Web because I was reminded that that's basically a perfect book. And Luna hasn't read it yet. And so I got her Charlotte's Web. And then two other novels. One, oh my gosh. Is it behind me? Oh, it's called Ghosts. I got Ghosts by Dolly Alderton. Oh, cool. That was getting a lot of buzz. within the last couple of years and it's in paperback. And we left the store. My friend Reeve and I were hanging out and I called my high school friend who lives in San Francisco and loves that store. And he's like, oh my gosh, did you buy my favorite book in Fabuloso? And I didn't know what he was talking about. And it's called Gay Men Draw Vaginas. And it's a book that's like a collection of drawings of illustrations that gay men like drawing what they expect vaginas to look like or they think vaginas look like. And it's supposedly hilarious. Like, you know, some are just like full on floral like flowers. Some are just quite abstract. And so I didn't get to go back to Fabuloso to buy a copy from that store. But now I want to get a bunch of copies and have them as gifts because I think that's so great. Speaker 1 (3:02) That's so Speaker 2 (3:02) funny. Speaker 1 (3:03) Wow. Well, do you want to talk about why you were in San Francisco? Oh, yeah, of Speaker 2 (3:07) course. I would love to. I was in San Francisco because it was it would have been the 60th birthday of my dear friend and friend to many, Om Malik, who was. a pretty prominent tech blogger back in early blogging days. He wrote for Red Herring, which was a tech magazine that fashioned itself like an economist, but for tech. And so they didn't have bylines. And then he also wrote for Business 2.0. And then he went on his own and started a site called GigaOM, which was one of like the early independent tech blogs out there. And he was really had, he could see around corners and see what's next and had a lot of. Broad curiosity about the future and great taste. And it would have been his 60th birthday last Tuesday, but he sadly passed way too soon in June. And so hundreds of us gathered in San Francisco, which is where he lived. He lived in the Bay and loved the Bay. Dedicated a bench to him in South Park, which is a place where he would often sit and drink coffee and meet with friends. But then there was a 12-hour celebration of his life. in that there were flash talks about the various topics and interests that he had. There were framed, there were exhibits, you know, there were framed photos that he had taken because he was really into photography. There were his favorite objects on display. He had a giant fountain pen collection. There were his favorite fabrics on display, like his clothing. He really loved indigo, so all his indigo clothes. There was this giant board where, you know, you could attach a string. to a car. It was all roads lead to Ohm and Ohm's name was in the center. And then there were different categories. Like you knew him from New York or you knew him from investing or you knew him from journalism, which was me. You knew him from tech and philosophy. You knew him from pens or his love of books or his, you know, and all these different sections of his life. And you filled out a card that said how you knew Ohm, like who connected you and then what Ohm connected you to, like either it's other people or ideas and things. His favorite foods were served all day. His tea purveyor was there. His coffee shops were there and set up their own stations to serve coffee. There was a giant Desi party. He's South Asian, so there's a giant Desi dance party at night with a DJ. And then for the 60 years of his life, there were little quotes of his that were hidden all over the venue. So you could discover OM quotes everywhere. was so prolific as a blogger. So there were all sorts of quotes. And so I came away with it deeply moved. I think the organizers really outdid themselves in terms of attention to detail for him. But anytime you lose a friend or a loved one, it's a reminder that their celebration of life is a reminder of kind of all of the values that they lived with and what you kind of loved about them and a reminder to us to try and live a little bit more like Ohm. And I think With Om, he was such a connector and he showed you so much attention. He made everybody he was with feel like they were the only person in the world. And I'm really going to miss him. He connected me to Joanna, Rob's sister. So he indirectly introduced me to Rob. And so in a lot of ways, he has influenced the trajectory of my life. And even without having done that, he had. So anyway, we miss you, Om. Thank you, Om. Speaker 2 (6:30) Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to just talk a little bit about how we celebrated him. Speaker 1 (6:34) Yeah. I went to a really cool memorial over the weekend as well for someone who I didn't know. It was for my good friend Isabel's mom. And she, Isabel and her brother put together this really amazing pop-up museum memorial just for one afternoon. It's like a gallery exhibit of their mom's... collection of salt and pepper shakers. Oh. It was really cool. And they called it the mothership. And they had family photos on display and some, you know, some signage about who she was. And it was really moving to see like all of these salt and pepper shakers from, you know, decades of her life. And it was, it was just, it was really nice. It was a really like thoughtful way of celebrating. for life. And yeah, it was really nice. So I love, I love like a, like a creative memorial. For sure. For sure. There were so many ideas Speaker 2 (7:37) from it. I texted you. I was like, I'm starting a Google doc because they did this thing where they were giving away, there were, there were stacks of his books from his collection where everybody could take a book and they had little bookmarks custom made with his quotes on it. So you could take an actual book from his collection. He also had a lot of collections of Speaker 3 (7:53) notebooks, Speaker 2 (7:54) like blank notebooks. So you could Speaker 3 (7:55) take Speaker 2 (7:55) notebooks. That's Speaker 3 (7:57) awesome. Speaker 2 (7:57) Yeah, it was just very cool. That's really cool. It's just, you know, obviously it's hard to lose a friend. Everybody was grieving in different ways. And, but we did get to toast him and do a collective OM, which was really nice because his family, you Speaker 3 (8:12) know, Speaker 2 (8:12) talked about what OM means, of course, and so what his name means. And so like we all did a collective OM in the hall. Now as I'm getting older and we're losing our friends, I think, gosh, if I... If I can be there, I always want to be at the funeral. You know, I always want to be at the memorial to pay respects one last time. It just kind of sucks that it's even happening. You know, like I have a hard time wrapping my head around losing people Speaker 3 (8:38) and Speaker 2 (8:38) losing people younger than I want them to be gone. But Om would have loved it. You know, wherever he was, if he got to see it or experience it. in whatever shape or form, I think Speaker 3 (8:55) he would have appreciated it. So anyway, Speaker 2 (8:58) he was, this is actually a great episode to be talking about this because he was such a man of words and loved writing and loved reading. And this is one of those episodes I would have sent him. So I'm excited that it all kind of is of a piece. Speaker 1 (9:12) Yes. Well, just a reminder before we get to our guest that you can call or text us at 781-591-0390. You can email us at forever35podcast at gmail.com. You can also visit our website, forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. Follow us on Instagram at forever35podcast. And please run our Patreon at patreon.com slash forever35. Really helps keep the show going. And it's also super fun. I promise. There's a lot of really great bonus content. We do a weekly casual chat, which we do on video. So if you want to see us, you can do that. We do live casual chats every few months. We have a monthly pop culture episode. We have a community chat going on the Patreon app. And then at $10 a month, you get ad-free episodes. And we give you a thank you shout out on the podcast each and every month. please head over to patreon.com slash forever35 and join us over there. And I'm just going to introduce Meredith. She is the co-host of the Currently Reading podcast, which was recently named one of the New York Times' seven podcasts for bookworms. And she spent eight years developing a framework called Reader Know Thyself that helps people understand their reading identity. Not what should I read next, but who am I as a reader? And what does that tell me about what will actually work for me? You can trust her to know. She reads over 120 books a year. Her favorite thing to do when she's not reading is talk about books. She's a married mom of four living in Austin, Texas, and she's also a full-time CEO of the wedding website, Here Comes the Guide. So we will be right back. Speaker 1 (11:01) Meredith, welcome to Forever 35. We're really excited to have you on the show. I Speaker 3 (11:06) am so glad to be here with you guys. I've been looking forward to it. Speaker 1 (11:09) Oh, yay. So, you know, we usually start off by asking our guests about a self-care practice that they have. And I mean, I think kind of the big theme of our conversation today is going to