Meghan Daum

This is the story of somebody for whom a book changed his life, though it is almost random that it happened at all, that he got to know this book in the first place.

Jeremy Goldstein tells the story.

That story by Jeremy Goldstein.

In 2023, years after we first broadcast this story, Roger Wendler died.

Before he did, he wrote a book called Shotgun on My Chest, Memoirs of a Lewis and Clark Book Collector.

Act 4, Little Sod Houses for you and me.

When you really love a book, what exactly are you supposed to do with that feeling after you've finished reading the book?

And then perhaps finish reading about the book.

If you feel strongly enough about the book, I think there is this impulse to somehow get closer to the book, to somehow try and conjure the world of the book right here in the real world somehow.

So if you read about a Broadway playwright, maybe you move to New York City, start writing plays.

Or, if you already live in New York City, but the book takes place somewhere else, you head out there.

Megan Daum has this story.

She taught at three schools.

Megan Daum.

Two weeks after we first aired this story, Megan left New York City for Nebraska.

She lived there for several years.

She's since written a bunch of books, moved back and forth across the country a few more times, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder.

You can find Megan's writing and a link to her podcast, her very interesting podcast, at megandaum.com.

By the way, these days, the actors in the pageant about Laura's life on the prairie actually speak their own lines themselves.

Thanks to the advent of inexpensive wireless microphones, they no longer lip sync to a prerecorded track.