Meredith Schwartz Has Your Next Perfect Read

Doree Shafrir (0:10)

Welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise Hu (0:16)

And I'm Elise Hu, and we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Doree Shafrir (0:20)

And today we have Meredith Schwartz on the pod.

Elise Hu (0:24)

So we're going to be talking a lot about books.

Doree Shafrir (0:26)

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. Like what kind of reader you are, and I don't know, it's an interesting conversation.

Elise Hu (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 Fabulouso Books.

And I generally make a point to buy a book from an Indie Book Store in the staff recommendations sections, because I like all the care and the love and attention that goes into the staffers' recommending books. And I was very touched anytime a reader would send me my book out in the wild with a little staff recommendation. But I also, I don't know, 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, Enfabuloso? 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. But 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.

Doree Shafrir (3:02)

That's so funny. Wow. Well, do you want to talk about why you were in San Francisco?

Elise Hu (3:07)

Oh, yeah, of 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 Haring, which was a tech magazine that fashioned itself like an economist, but for tech and so they didn't have bylines. 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 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 could attach a string to a card. 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.