Bossing Some TBRs + Streamlining Bookish Problems (S9E10)

Meredith Monday Schwartz (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.

Kaytee Cobb (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.

Meredith Monday Schwartz (0:35)

I'm Meredith Mondae-Schwartz. I'm both a mom and a Mimi and a full-time CEO living in Austin, Texas, and sometimes I am such a smarty pants.

Kaytee Cobb (0:45)

And I'm Kaytee Cobb, a single homeschooling mama for in Arizona, and the Bookish Friends never fail me. This is episode number 10 of season nine and we are so glad you're here. Meredith, I would disagree and I would say all the time, you are such a smarty pants because I am just, I'm so lucky to get to know you and work with you and benefit from your genius.

Meredith Monday Schwartz (1:06)

Yeah. Well, you needs to talk to Mr. John Schwartz, who knows that I absolutely am not a smarty pants all the time, because I'm constantly walking up to him with some amount of food and an empty container and saying, baby, will this fit in this?

He's like, no, no, that's not going to fit at all. Then I'm like, okay, I'll go try again. Like I have no, I'm a dummy on some things. But I do feel smart for the thing that I came up with this week.

Kaytee Cobb (1:34)

Okay. I'm excited to hear about it. Y'all today for our deep dive, we are going to boss some new victims into their TBR, their next picks for their next reads. But first we have a bit of mischief to manage, which we only do once a month here on Currently Reading. As you know, we are ad free all the time, except for on the first Monday of the month, when we have an ad for ourselves. So we are going to toss it over to one of our Bookish Friends who can't wait to tell you why she loves supporting Currently Reading Podcast.

Meredith Monday Schwartz (2:05)

Right. We are so appreciative of our Bookish Friends. Thank you so much. Yes.

Kaytee Cobb (2:10)

It's so good to hear from you and what you love about being behind the paywall. Of course, as a reminder, you can always join us over on patreon.com/currentlyreadingpodcast for just $5 a month. You get all that great content, our amazing Bookish Friends community, and you keep this show otherwise commercial free. That's our mischief managed. Meredith, let's get into our Bookish Moments. Why are you such a smarty pants? All right.

Meredith Monday Schwartz (2:35)

I was having a problem in that I knew that I wanted to choose my next book, and I knew I wanted to be on my Kindle.

But every time I go to do that, I have hundreds and hundreds of books on my Kindle, and I'm always like, I just feel like I can't properly make a choice there. So I was like, but a Kindle is in a lot of ways just a USB drive.

So I was like, what if I connected my Kindle to my Mac and downloaded the title information from the books that I have there, and then cross-referenced that with Goodreads ratings, and then I could say, give me all my unread books and sort them by Goodreads rating, and so that's what I did. Then I was able to go, oh, this book that I had, and by the way, toss out anything with fewer than 100 ratings, because then the ratings, if it's fewer than 100, the ratings are like-

Kaytee Cobb (3:39)

Wishy-washy.

Meredith Monday Schwartz (3:40)

Yeah, it can throw the rating off. So, but then I was like, now I'm able to say, okay, of the 759 books that I have on my Kindle, I was then able to figure out, and I was also able to create a spreadsheet, so then I could sort it by genre. So I was like, I'm in the mood for a mystery, but I want it to be like a really good quality mystery. And so then with this spreadsheet, I was able to do that. And I just felt like such a smarty pants. Now when I go to choose a book on my Kindle, I go to my spreadsheet first, and I take a look at that. And I cross-reference it and say, OK, what am I in the mood for? What is the highest rated?