Currently Reading Made Me Read It + Utilizing The Library Well (S8E47)

The Currently Reading Podcast - Meredith Monday Schwartz and Kaytee Cobb

Meredith and Kaytee discuss their current reads, library serendipity, and share heartfelt moments from real-life bookish meetups. They highlight magical realism, immersive narration, and the power of community in reading

Key takeaways

• First lines set the tone and can pull readers into a story instantly.

Transcript preview

We are light on the chit-chat, and our it reads, a readerly deep dive, and a little something bookish before we go. I'm Meredith Monday Schwartz, I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas, and I've realized there's one part of a book that I always read out loud. And I'm Katie Kopp, a homeschooling mom of four, living in Arizona, and my bookish friendships overfloweth. This is episode number 47 of season eight, and we are so glad you're here. All right. Yes, yes, you have a lot of good bookish, good bookish friends, and I love it when they go from online to in real life, which I'm excited to talk about today. That is the absolute best. Okay. All right, so we are going to get into that and we are going to get into all of our current reads, but first we are going to tell you that our deep dive today is going to be some things about working with your library and how can you get that bookish serendipity that we talk a lot about on the show. How can you get it going at your library? We're going to get into the weeds on that a little bit later. But first, our bookish moments of the week. Katie, what have you got? All right, Meredith, when I recorded with Mary, I hinted at this last week in our episode. But this week, I got to go to Changing Hands Bookstory in Phoenix and meet up one of our longest-running bookish friends, Sidra. You've heard about her on the show before. She's sent in great presses for all things, murderful behind the paywall. She's a great reader. It was very fun. It was very fun to finally, ourselves for at least an hour, filled up my arms and hers with bookish delights and made sure all the kiddos were covered because between the two of us, we've got six of them, we had wide-ranging conversations over genres and life events and then we went to lunch and we talked even more. I came home with my cup totally overflowing with bookish goodness and it was so nice that Citra planned way in advance, she sent me an email I think in April asking if I would be available that week and we made it happen. It was delightful. That is I know you both had a really really good time doing that. We did we did tell me your bookish moment what is this thing you read aloud. All right so I was listening this week to Sarah's Bookshelf's live of course you know we talk about all the time that we love that podcast and behind their paywall they have a show that they do that's called Unscripted and this particular episode they were doing they were talking about first lines. one of their hosts does is she does kind of an Instagram feature often where she features, she's like a graphic where she features first lines of whatever it is that she's reading. And so then over time they've been talking more and more about first lines and why first lines matters. And then they just did this unscripted episode that was completely devoted to this concept of what makes a great first line, what makes a not great first line, what are our preferences. How does the first line of the book set up or make a different line of a different in your experience of a book if it does or it doesn't. It was a really really interesting conversation and I realize that for me I very much will fall for a good first line. I oftentimes will read the first paragraph of a book before or instead of reading what's on the flap right or the inside or the back of the book whatever because I think first lines tell you so much and when I start a book I will if I am in any position to be able to do that and most often I am because I prefer to start a book where I'm someplace quiet and alone so I can concentrate because I want to start a book well right I will often probably 90% of the time I will read the first few sentences out loud I just feel like first lines read out loud help me to sink into a book so I highly recommend always listening to Sarah's bookshelves live I highly recommend their patron content I pay it with my own cash dollars I absolutely love I absolutely love support them and their unscripted episodes, especially this one are some of my favorite. They are so good over there and I love the conversational dynamic between Sarah and all her hosts and the ways that they're able to draw each other out and get into things that really matter for each of them. So, very fun. Great bookish conversation. All right, Katie, let's get into our thing that we're known for, which is talking about what we are currently reading. What's your first book for us? Yes, my first book for us. The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell and everybody just rolled their eyes. I don't care I can't wait to tell you all about this. No one is surprised when I bring a book with Octopus in the title which is why not one but two of my favorite booksellers made sure to put this specific book on my radar. I was intrigued by the cover but I did put it on my shelf to simmer and I finally picked it up this month. Here's the setup. As our story begins, Eve Shaw, who is an art appraiser, is an elderly man named Max Everly in her office. She feels a spark of recognition, especially when she shakes his hand. And it's probably not only because he shares a name with her favorite composer, who was born at the turn of the 20th century more than 100 years ago. But she's never met him before, and the meeting is a little strange. He leaves her a small glass octopus. It's nearly completely white, except for the tip of one tentacle dipped in black like a quill into ink. Even more matches the octopus tattoo that she has on her body, the one that moves and changes shape and goes from her back to her thigh to her arm depending on how she's feeling and what's happening around her. Eve's curiosity is peaked as I would be. As an art appraiser, she decides to pursue this. She's curious about the provenance, starts investigating this tiny little glass sculpture, only to find that there's a mystery beneath it. There exists in the Swiss Alps, a white octopus hotel. of the hotel, but you cannot go there unless you know where it is. The room keys are prized possessions and there are some doors that lead not to rooms but to different eras. The hotel stationery is rumored to grant someone a single wish, but since it closed a long time ago nobody can find any more pieces of it. Eve knows exactly what she would ask for. A death to be reversed in her past, the weight she's been carrying since she was child to be removed from her shoulders. She would fix it, if only she could. So begins her quest to find her rewrite her family's past and her own future. This set up, this book, it has so many pieces that immediately work for me. It's got the octopus, of course, not just as part of the hotel name, but it's a tattoo like mine, except it's one that travels across her body, the dream, that I could have a tattoo that would move. It's so cool. It also has this hotel with magical rooms. We love a magic room here at currently reading. It has time travel via those hotel rooms. It's a recipe for Katie goes into a book with only a few tropes and comes out with five stars. However, the mystery elements within and the ways that the time travel elements wrapped back over and onto themselves get a little bit muddled in the execution. It felt like there were too many moving parts to deal with as we tried to determine how the old man and the hotel and the trauma from Eve's past were all connected. I did find myself enjoying the ride but also kind of looking around like how did we get here and where are we going next. I found the note from Ashley at Book Tenders in West Virginia from when she had mailed me the hard copy that I had. It was also put on my mental radar by Elizabeth at Fabled, so I had already reached out to her about it and said thank you for sending this to me, I'm getting started with it now. Ashley and I agreed that the plot elements got a bit confusing as she tried to make everything work together. But the setting of this hotel in the Alps with beautiful hand-carved keys and doors that opened to different times was so tangible that we wanted to and the words to travel there ourselves. So I loved the setup and I loved the tropes in this one the way the recipe came together didn't quite work for me in the way that I hoped. I ended up giving it four stars and I think it will also work for any readers who are willing to go for vibes over Blat because that's where this one really shines. This is the white octopus hotel by Alexandra Bell. Alexandra Bell sounds familiar beyond just the Alexander Bell. I feel like maybe maybe I've even read. something by her. But that premise of that book sounds really magical. Like I would absolutely be sucked in by that premise even if it didn't have octopie or octopuses involved. That's a beautiful cover. It's like great scatsby time frame. Yeah, but purple and purple and purple. Purple and I love purple. Of course it's a galley so it's only white on the spine. There's a bit you that it's going to be purple when it comes out. It's out. I just waited too long. It came out in October of 2025. So, so, so. So, so. So, so, so. So, so, so, so. you all right well my first book is a book that is going I needed to bring it to this episode because we won't have any normal episodes before our break after this one so I wanted to talk about country people by Daniel Mason this comes out on July 7th here's a setup our lead character is miles and he is a devoted husband he is a doting father and he is known for his wildly inventive bedtime stories the owner of a truffle hunting dog named Giuseppe who lives in a land with absolutely no truffles. He's also, if we're really being honest, poor Miles, our devoted dad is a little bit lost. He's 12 years late finishing his PhD, which is on Russian folk tales and he has a growing sense that he's become a disappointment to his family to his wife. And so when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college, tucked into the forests of Vermont, Miles decides this is it. This is the year he's finally going to get his act together. But Miles is what Kate would call a man with a great capacity to fall in with anyone anywhere, and no sooner has the family landed in their new life than he finds himself tangled up with a cast of small town characters who are colorful and strange. It's all very charming, very distracting, and not at all conducive to Miles finishing his dissertation. And then Miles to Miles to his dissertation. And then, on to a bizarre local legend, one that everyone around him seems to take surprisingly seriously, and he starts to suspect that it might just be a legend after all. All right, I was such a fool for Daniel Mason's North Woods that when this one popped up a Nat Galley and I got a copy of it, I jumped into it pretty immediately. As I said, it doesn't come out till July 7th. Normally, I would have held off, because I read this a couple of months ago, I would have held off until closer to time, but I kept circling around it on my Kindle like it was actually calling to me. It's got a completely gorgeous cover just like North Woods did, but that is where the similarities between the two books end. I went into this book blind, I didn't even read the blurb. I think going in knowing nothing about it was a great way to tackle this book and I loved it. But here's what's interesting. For the longest time as I was reading this book, I couldn't tell you why I was enjoying it so much. It was just good, right? Like I just wanted to be reading it. I wanted to be with these people. And with country people, I kept reading it and going, what is it that is pulling me so magnetically forward? Wasn't the plot? I want to be really clear about this. It is not the plot. This is a very prosaic slice of life kind of over the course of a year with a family. A few things happen here and there, as I talked about in the setup. these are the things that would lead you to believe that it's like a mystery or literary suspense because that is not what we have here. This is literally just you being grabbed by the hand, by the narrator, and watching the life of a couple and a family who are peopled by a group of characters that are really nice and normal and you're just seeing what happens to them. That's it. So what was it that I loved so much? And I've had weeks and months now to think about it. I've thought about it. I've thought about it. I've thought about it. on 10 different levels and I think I finally figured out that at least one part of it is the narration itself. The book is written in third person but with this really interesting twist. Mason is using a third person omniscient narrator who occasionally steps forward and addresses the reader using that we, as in we have seen kind of construction. It's something I recognize of course from 19th century literary fiction because Dickens does this a lot. The narrator becomes almost a character in their own right, a kind of knowing guide who is leading you through the story. It creates this sense of intimacy for me, even though it's technically in the third person, and I've discovered, Reader, Know Thyself, that this is a narrative device that I absolutely love. It makes me feel like I'm being let in on something, like the narrator has chosen me to share this family story with. And then there's Miles. This lead character, I will say would make me absolutely crazy if I was married to him. He's the ultimate Iniagram 9 and I cannot. But he's also very sweet and he makes a great lead character because