HeyJaredRevisions, How Our Favorite Books Change Us
Las Vegas-Clark County Librarian/author Jen Nails chats with authors, actors, comedians and librarians about why certain books from growing up made such a splash in their lives!Look for Season Three, out in late November, 2025, featuring local Las Vegas students Dara and…
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Jul 31, 2026
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- Checking…
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- Jul 31, 2026
Latest episodes
"The Virgin Mary was a Superhero!" Juliet Jeske unmasks the truth with the Reverend Lawrence Lovasik's Picture Book of Saints (1979). (opens the original)
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Journalist Juliet Jeske (Decoding Fox News) opens up one of her very favorites from childhood and confirms that she was as astounded and disturbed by the horrific fates of female saints when she was seven years old as she is now. Her stories of growing up Catholic will have you laugh-crying, just like the Virgin Mary statue that visited her small town in Missouri when she was a kid. Check out these book recommendations based on my hilarious and truly cleansing conversation with Juliet!
"I Wouldn't If I Couldn't:" Jen repunctuates her enthusiasm for well-loved childhood books with I Would if I Could by Betty Miles (1982). (opens the original)
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In revisiting one of her all-time favorites from third grade, Jen remembers all the weird ways she and her sister kept themselves entertained in childhood, and she makes connections to the weird ways she keeps herself entertained in grownupland. Check out these recs based on this episode!
"A Library Hanger-outer:" June Marie Lanza Nails (my mom) kicks back and reminisces about her reading revolution with Hugo's Les Miserables (1862). (opens the original)
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My mom shares how her older brother's book obsession (he had 72 overdue books one time!) influenced her and encouraged her own love of reading! I remember she knew every book, she seemed to know every thing I ever had a question about. When I needed help with a class project on Emily Dickinson or Nigeria or the Soviet Union or Helen Keller, she seemed endlessly available, open, and wholly focused on me and what I needed, as if there weren’t dirty dishes, ungraded papers, or unfolded laundry wait
"An emotional bomb:" In the aftermath of reading John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946), V's (Eve Ensler) inner interviewer is born. (opens the original)
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After discovering Hiroshima in her older brother's room when she was ten, the book became one of the first that Tony-winning writer, performer, and activist V (One Billion Rising, City of Joy, Vagina Monologues, I Am An Emotional Creature, In the Body of the World) read all the way through. Over the course of our extraordinary interview, she will explore why Hersey's account of six survivors of the atomic bomb affected her so wholly, and how the form and structure of this classic text encouraged
"Cultural dissonance:" Jane Kuo struggles across a language divide with Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia (1977). (opens the original)
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Author Jane Kuo (In the Beautiful Country, Land of Broken Promises) discovers as a child Paterson's Newbery-winning classic around the same time that she learns English. She will explore in our interview the resources that both were and were NOT available to her as a young learner navigating a new language and culture, and we will journey together back to the playground in our effervescent conversation. Click here for book recommendations based on my beautiful chat with Jane.
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