In our new micropodcast, "Bookmarks," we ask authors to tell us about a book that changed their lives forever. Recently Anne Strainchamps and I went on Wisconsin Public Radio’s afternoon call-in show, Central Time, to talk with host Rob Ferrett about the podcast. And we got some great calls from listeners telling us about their Bookmarks.
Lenny, now 90, found and read "A Child’s History of England" by Charles Dickens in her grandfather’s library. It was devastating. "I was so distressed by the injustice and the violence that I decided there was not a benevolent God… I really cried."
Sheila was going through chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s Disease as a young child and remembers her mother reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" to her. "When I went to chemo and had to lay there, I decided each one of the chemo drugs was a different fellowship member and was fighting the cancer cells.”
And Mike said he was not much of a reader, but after reading “East of Eden” was so taken by John Steinbeck he read everything by the author. As someone who was politically conservative, he was particularly challenged and enlightened by "The Grapes of Wrath." "It helped change my world view in a healthy way."
We’d love to hear your Bookmarks. Email me titles and your book stories at listen@ttbook.org or, you can leave a voicemail — just click on the orange button that says "start recording."
–Shannon