Accepting The Changes Of Your Reading Life S9E8)

The Currently Reading Podcast

Hosts Meredith and Katie share their recent reading selections across a wide range of genres, including horror, romance, and cozy fantasy. T

Key takeaways

• Meredith has adopted a strategy of selecting audiobooks based solely on the narrator, specifically citing George Guidry.
• Katie discusses 'bookish matchmaking' using her friend Shad's dating app activity to judge potential partners.

Main topics

• Audiobook narration preferences
• Bookish matchmaking

Notable quotes

Sometimes what matters is not what is in your ear, but who is in your ear.

Conclusion

The episode provides a comforting perspective on embracing the ebb and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:10) Hey readers, welcome to the Currently Reading Podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about the books that we've read recently. And as you know, we won't shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready. Speaker 2 (0:25) 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. Speaker 1 (0:35) I'm Meredith Mundy-Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas. And sometimes what matters is not what is in your ear, but who is in your ear. And Speaker 2 (0:47) I'm Katie Cobb, a single homeschooling mom of four in Arizona, and I'm wielding the power of books for love. This is episode number eight of season nine, and we're so glad you're here. Speaker 1 (0:57) Katie, this will be definitely interesting. Speaker 2 (1:01) Sometimes writing my bite-sized intro is my favorite thing. I don't know why. It's fun. It is. It's fun. It's just like this little, little nugget of delight for me. All right, y'all, we'll get into the real deal with that in just a minute. But first, we're going to let you know that our deep dive today is a question from a listener about how do we go about accepting the changes in our reading lives? Because life keeps on keeping on. But first, we'll get started the way we always do with our bookish moments. Meredith, who's in your Speaker 1 (1:32) ears? I'm going to tell you, Katie, very good question. So I, in this last week, I feel like, I kind of feel like for the last like month and a half, two months, I've been slightly off my rocker in a lot, in a lot of ways. Like I kind of, I'm just like cruising right on the edge of keeping it together. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I'm hiding it pretty well, but then there are certain places where you're like, that's weird. That's just, that's weird. And one of those places is that I decided the other day, because I have such a hard time deciding on my audiobooks. For some reason, that's just a continually difficult thing for me to choose. It's an audiobook that's going to stick. And I decided that I was going to choose audiobooks based on just the narrator. And my favorite narrator of the moment is a guy named George Guadal. I don't know if you've ever, you've probably read a book by him. He's been doing this for a long time, but his voice is just, for me, it's perfect audio narration. It's like your dad, if he also happened to be a stage actor of great renown, sitting down and telling you a story. And I do actually want to say he has narrated more than 1300 audiobooks, and he's in the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. He's done everything from Crime and Punishment to the Walt Longmire books. So I am... finishing up my latest book of his. And as soon as I'm done, I'm going to move on to another book of his. And by his, I mean that he's narrated. So it's going to be an interesting way to choose audiobooks for a while. Okay, Speaker 2 (3:07) I like it. And I mean, and I get it. You know, like, sometimes you just need someone's voice in your ears, even if you don't care whose story they're telling, right? Like, I feel that way about Bonnie Turpin, as Speaker 1 (3:20) we know. Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:21) a lot of people feel that way about Julia Whelan, where it's just like, you know, whatever you're saying. I want to listen to it. You know, if Barack Obama read anything other than his own books, I would listen to that. David Sedaris. Sure. I just, I get Speaker 1 (3:35) it. Speaker 2 (3:35) I Speaker 1 (3:36) love it. George Gwadal, he's my man of the moment. He makes me feel safe. I really, I love it. What's your bookish moment of the week? Speaker 2 (3:43) That's sweet. Okay, my bookish moment is nonsense. I recently got Shad, my gay bestie, to join a dating app. And now I have this amazing... portal that does not matter at all in the world to express my opinions about people. Essentially, when he meets a guy and they start chatting, if books come up at all, even mid-date, he will message me right then in the moment. And I get to weigh in on what these people are reading and whether or not I think it's a good choice. Because I know him so well, I'm not talking about whether that book is a good book in the world. I'm talking about whether someone who likes that book is a good fit for my person, Speaker 1 (4:23) right? Speaker 2 (4:24) So it's bookish matchmaking. What do I know about that book and Shad in order to make a call about this person's reading taste and therefore, by extrapolation, judge everything about them? Speaker 1 (4:37) For Speaker 2 (4:37) instance, just the other day, the guy he was chatting with mentioned that he had started the second book in the Amina al-Sarafi series, and I went... gaga over him. I prioritized it on my own TBR because I already have a gorgeous copy of it, but this was one of my favorite books of the year a couple years ago. Within the next hour, they had set up a time to meet up. It's like wielding absolute power using books, and I'm here for it. Speaker 1 (5:02) I like the idea of bookish matchmaking. Like, is there a new platform that could be based solely on that? Because I know if I were ever to date again, which heaven forbid, I would absolutely be using books as kind of like a gatekeeper situation. Speaker 2 (5:20) Yeah, I try to do that. And it doesn't work out that great. So some people will put, I'm interested in reading in their profile. And then they cannot answer a question about, is there a book you've enjoyed in Speaker 1 (5:34) the past? So I think they're Speaker 2 (5:35) just lying. People just lie on the internet. Speaker 1 (5:37) Right. Which is unfortunate. And my idea, though, is that it's a brand new platform just for readers. Right. That would be ideal. Which means that we could take the read or know thyself thing and blow it up big time and make it for matchmaking. Because can you imagine you're like looking at a guy and yes, there are going to be photos of men and women and whoever, but it's going to have to be the photos have to be bookish in some way. And you have to put in a list of like. your top 10 books of the year or that your top 10 books of all time or five books you DNF'd or something like that. Can you imagine how you could really make some quick decisions? I think so too. Yes, especially. Speaker 2 (6:17) I mean, because we all do this, right? Everybody wants to say like, oh, I would never judge a book by its cover. But we do make opinions about people based on what... they like to read or their favorite books. And not that they're bad people or good people, but just, oh, well, you know, we're not gonna have a lot in common, this person and Speaker 1 (6:36) me. Right, right. It's more, and he elucidate the why behind that, you know, a book that he likes or doesn't like. That's really, I think, where the gold would be. Katie, I think this is a multi-billion dollar concept that we've come up with. Speaker 2 (6:50) I mean, if the age of reading is dead, we can bring it back to Speaker 1 (6:55) life. This is the injection. Well, is the age of dating dead? Because then the age of reading dating would really not be a good business. No, the age of dating is rampant and awful. Speaker 2 (7:05) So it's devolving quickly. I have opinions about that too, but this is not a dating podcast. So let's talk about books instead. Look, my cheeks are all pink. We're going to get into our current reads. Meredith, Speaker 1 (7:17) what have you been reading lately? All right. I've been waiting to talk about this book on the show because it has just left. A permanent imprint in my mind. It's a book called Nowhere by Alison Gunn. Here's the setup. Rachel, our lead character, is the brand new police chief in Dalmouth, Virginia, which is a tiny little tucked away Appalachian town that likes its people born and raised and looks sideways at anyone who is not from there. Her husband, Finn, is a former Washington, D.C. journalist, and now he's a stay-at-home dad. And the two of them are barely holding their marriage together in the wake of a loss has been really, really hard. They've got two daughters, teenage Charlie and little Lucy, and they've come to Dalmouth for a fresh start. The town, however, Katie, has other ideas. A hiker's body turns up in the woods and all the small town suspicion lands squarely on the newcomers. But whatever is moving through those trees is older and hungrier. than they could imagine. Something out in that forest has started calling to the children of Dalmouth one by one. And Rachel has to keep her own fractured family whole while she races to understand what's really happening in this town. Outsiders in the town that doesn't want them and darkness in the woods that very much does. All right. I... do this thing in the summer where I take my audio book out to the pool and I float back and forth. Talked about this before. I call it my audio float because it sure as heck is not swimming. You Speaker 2 (8:55) used to call it swimming. It's not swimming. It's floating. It's floating. It's Speaker 1 (8:59) aspirational swimming. It's floating with intention. And it's one of my great joys. And luckily here in Texas, I get to do it for a lot of the year. And there I was out there by myself floating with intention. When this book got so scary that I stopped, got out of the pool and out loud to nobody around, I said, nope, nope, nope, nope. And I quickly went inside. Here's what I always want to say when I tell you that a book scared me, because I think this really matters. What we find scary is really personal. It works the same way I think that romance does. Different things do it for different people. And the thing that freaks me right out might not be a big deal for another reader at all. So just understand that this book really, really scared me. Your mileage might vary. But if this is the kind of stuff that gets under your skin like it does mine, then this is going to be a hidden gem for you. This book, I want to say in all capital letters, is very dark. This is horror. It is really gory, but it is not just gory. This book is really interesting, really pacey, super page turning, but it is brutal. This is nothing to mess with. And the author, Alison Gunn, is not pulling a single punch. So go in knowing that. This landed really well for me. Nowhere it did because it hit two of my catnip tropes. I love a creepy pied piper situation. I love that trope. And I love when a book mixes police procedural with something paranormal. This is one of my favorite combinations. So if that combination is good for you, you know, again, this might really work for you. This is, I kind of thought about comps as to vibe, like where are we from a vibe perspective? And the best I can do is Mare of Easttown, but mix it with Stephen King's The Outsider, and then pour in a heavy amount of the movie Weapons. That's kind of the neighborhood that we're living in here. There's a couple of reader know thyself notes before you dive in. It takes about 10 to 15 % to really get going. And I didn't love some of the characters, some of the main characters at first. Give it a little bit of time to settle. Just give it a little bit of room. There are a lot of points of view in this book. And all those perspectives added to the story and cranked up the horror. But it does have a lot of POVs. So that's another read or know thyself thing. If that drives you crazy, that's not going to work for you here. The thing is, I told you it's dark. I told you it's brutal. It's really, really good. It's tense and terrifying and built from the ground up to freak parents out. If you're a parent, Alison Gunn's goal is to freak you out. She wants to poke at every fear, every insecurity that we carry around about our kids. This was more horror. than I've read in a long time. Like this is put it in the freezer kind of horror. And it has an ending that is so intense, especially on audio. I did this one on audio. It was very good that way, but very visceral, very visceral. If you love horror that frightens you and you like creepy folklore laid into a small town police procedural, if that kind of... Combination sounds really, really good. Strap up and go in brave, but you will be richly rewarded. This is Nowhere by Alison Gunn. I don't think that's a Katie book. Speaker 2 (12:36) Not today. Not right now. I Speaker 1 (12:39) was creeped out just listening. No, but I can think of 10 other people for whom it is a really, really right book, including one who's just been reading it and she was sufficiently freaked out. So I feel like it was a good recommendation. Speaker 2 (12:52) Excellent. I Speaker 1 (12:53) love that. I'm so glad that you did find exactly the right people to recommend that one to. Oh, yeah. It Speaker 2 (12:59) doesn't always have to be the other person. And in fact, I have a book that is not for you. For my first book this week, I'm going to talk about The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey. This is a hockey romance kicking off my game plan today. Tessa Bailey has written a number of books that I've really enjoyed. So I picked up this. age gap romance after we discussed the age gap trope on Love and Chili Peppers this past Speaker 1 (13:21) summer. Our Speaker 2 (13:22) players here, our main characters are Tallulah and Burgess. And yes, I do hate those names, if Speaker 1 (13:29) you're wondering. Speaker 2 (13:30) I loathe them. It's fine. Authors are going to write what they're going to write. I just had to go with it. Tallulah is a college student going for an advanced degree in marine biology. She just moved to Boston to continue her studies. She's 26 years old, broke as a joke, but thankfully she's been offered a position as a full-time live-in nanny for Burgess, the veteran hockey star of the local hockey team, to care for his tween daughter, Lissa. Just as she arrives to take the job, she's at like a juice bar. I'm picturing Jamba Juice, but it's not smoothies. I don't know. She's reading her phone, checking the news right before she goes in, and a story pops up on her phone screen showcasing Sir Savage, Burgess's moniker, on the ice at last night's game. He's a veteran player. He has a temper that has made headlines over and over again. And the timing is just perfectly wrong for Tessa, who's holding on to some domestic violence, trauma-based difficulty from her past. She declines the job right