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Radio was never supposed to be my career.

As Steve Jobs said, I can only connect the dots looking backward.

One of my first jobs at the college radio station included being Music Director.

I got to open the boxes of new albums each week and was responsible for listening to them and then filing them in the music library and featuring the best on our little station.

I remember the excitement I felt hearing Sweet Baby James, the first Elton John album, Piano Man by Billy Joel – and those 3 all arrived within the same few weeks!

I couldn’t wait to share these new artists and their songs with everyone I was connected to.

I mean, maybe that’s a function of youth, right? Being so passionate about music…

Anyway, now I get passionate like that about books and authors, and I can’t wait to share with everyone who’s important to me.

Do you know the work of author Elizabeth Strout? Boy, are you in for a treat!

“So Lucy told him about an elderly couple she had seen by the elevator in the lobby of her building in New York. “They were old, Bob. Like maybe ninety, and she had a cane and was shorter than he was. He was a big man, I don’t mean fat, but he was big and tall, and he was leaning toward her and laughing, I mean he was really laughing, his chest shook with laughter—and then—” Lucy turned toward Bob. “And then he reached over and touched her face. Her hair. He smoothed her hair back behind her ear. Bob! It was the sweetest thing I’ve seen in ages.” She added, “And then they sort of hobbled off, slowly.”

That’s from her most recent novel, Tell Me Everything.

“That was about the same thing that every story Lucy and I have shared is about. People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.”

And that, as well.

I will tell you this, as Oprah writes on her site, you don’t have to read all Strout’s books in order to appreciate the stories and the characters. You can start with this, her latest one. But if it captures your heart, as it captured mine, you will then want to go back and read each one in order.

“Oprah’s 107th Book Club pick is the story we Strout superfans have all been waiting for: one that brings all of her most beloved characters together at the same time, in the same place, for one spectacular story. As Oprah describes it, ‘Tell Me Everything has all the things: romance and mystery and secrets and even a possible murder experienced through the unrecorded lives of just ordinary folks.‘

Over the years, I have read each one, beginning with Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and produced as a mini-series on HBO, starring Frances McDormand, who played Olive so perfectly she is now and forever Olive in my mind’s eye.

I feel like I know these people, that I have grown old with them, struggled like them, persevered as they have, that we have dealt with the stuff of life and suffering and death together.

That’s an extraordinary gift for a writer because I know I am not alone.

So, today, I am excited, as I was way back in 1970, to share something I love, with you: Tell Me Everything.

As Elizabeth Strout writes,”You know,” Lucy said slowly, raising her hand and sort of drawing a small circle with her finger, “this is what I wonder. I wonder how many people out there are able to be strong—or strong enough—because of the person they’re married to.”

“We are all standing on shifting sands.”

Every single one of us!