Reference Librarian On the Radio!

 A completely unexpected joy arrived in my library life one day. That joy began when WCAI called the library and wanted to know if another librarian would like to talk about books for half an hour on The Point with Mindy Todd. As it turned out that reference librarian did not want to talk about books on the radio, but she asked me if I would be willing to talk about books on the radio. I said sure.

And so I went to the WCAI studios in Woods Hole and I met Mindy, and Melanie Lauwers, who was at the time the Book Editor for the Cape Cod Times. Something sparked between us, and before long we became regulars on the show. When Melanie retired to Florida in 2014, I became the regular book talker on what had become an hour long live radio show once a month. It has been such a treat to have an hour of live radio every month just to talk about books! As far as Mindy and I can recall, the first show was in February 2005. Also, as far as we can recall,  the November 24th show, which was my final show,  was the 166th book show! There were, of course, some shows that were repeated, but just let's say ... I've done a surprising number of book shows, considering it was supposed to be a one-time event.

One of the great joys of the shows is, of course, our listeners, who call in or email the station with their picks on whatever book topic we are discussing. There have been many, many topics. Here are a few: books that changed your life, LabLit (novels with scientists as characters), Cape Cod authors, cats & dogs, travel, movies, April in Paris, baseball, banned books, planes, trains & automobiles, fairy tales, survival stories, maps, whales, birds, dreaming, pirates, fish, letters, detectives, insects, romance, sisters, colors, cookbooks, magic, water, stories of the sea, and radio. When the pandemic hit in March, we began to do the shows from our homes. The library was closed to the public at that point, and so author Peter Abrahams and I did two shows on the books from our home bookshelves! Many of these shows you can find archived on the CAI web page.

It has been such a gift to share books with the CAI listeners. After one show on trees where I mentioned how much I love winter trees, a listener called in and told us about a book they adored which was all about trees in winter, with beautiful illustrations. Next thing I knew, they had sent me a copy of the book! Another time I was talking about how my mother loved to read Josephine Tey mysteries, but I had never read any. Within a few hours, a listener delivered a bag of paperback Josephine Tey mysteries to me! What a gift our listeners have been.

The last show was the day before Thanksgiving, originally scheduled for the last Wednesday of October, but it turned out to be a Nor'Easter that day, so there was no book show that morning. Mindy Todd, Peter Abrahams, and I had a great conversation about books about radio, and Mindy encouraged me to be a guest book talker whenever I was available. I look forward to doing just that, and thank all of the CAI staff who were involved in making book radio happen once a month for their help and their enthusiasm for the book show. Long may it flourish, and I look forward to listening from home.  If you would like to see some photos taken which are all related to the book show, just pop over to my Flickr photo feed.