Books That Have Impacted You - Story Share Series Part A

In this episode of Jacqui Just Chatters, hostess Jacqui Lents brings back the story share series focusing on books that have impacted listeners' lives. The episode features guests sharing anecdotes and insights about books that shaped and influenced them significantly. Lents co-hosts this episode with Kara Infante from Bookish Flights, exploring various stories, including how books were able to establish connections, enable emotional catharsis, and transform perspectives. If you or someone you know is an active military member, the story from Jessica Guidone is especially moving. Jacqui stressed the value of sharing personal narratives and reflections from books, validating the human experience through shared emotions and struggles. The episode ended with a teaser for the continuation of discussions in the Bookish Flights podcast.

Info/links from guest or topic:

Marion Agnew:
She is a writer and editor, a dual US/Canadian citizen, and she lives and works from a home on Lake Superior in Northwestern Ontario.

Publications – An essay collection, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER'S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER'S, was published by Signature Editions (Winnipeg) in 2019, and her debut novel, MAKING UP THE GODS, was released by Latitude 46 Publishing (Sudbury) in October of 2023.

Socials -  She is most active on the Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), where she is @marionagnew. Her website has more background and occasional musings: www.marionagnew.com 

Link to book - Mrs. Miniver. (upenn.edu)

Jessia Guidone:

She is an Air Force Reservist, Army spouse, freelancer, and stay-at-home mom who enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her family.

Link to book - Hookah Smoke and Hellfire: Poems from War (The Desert War Collection) https://a.co/d/hzSSLjN

Do you have a story idea or thoughts about the episode? Connect with Jacqui at the following.

www.JacquiLents.com

FB: Jacqui Lents Author Facebook

IG: @JacquiLents

YouTube: @JacquiLents

Music used for this episode includes –

Ratatouille's Kitchen - Carmen María and Edu Espinalfound

Always – Nesrality

Simple Gifts - Cooper Cannell

Tearful – Lesfm

Transcript

 Story Share Books That Impact You

Jacqui: [00:00:00] Hello friends. If you're new here at Jackie Just Chatters, I'm glad you stopped by my storytelling podcast. Feel free to stay a while. This is a pretty chill place. To the rest of you, Thanks for coming back. My story share series is back for 2024. I am pleased to bring you another of these episodes. Our theme today is books that have impacted you.

We've got stories of love, overcoming trauma, and finding the beauty in the everyday. I also have a buddy sharing the fun with me. Are you excited? Cuz I'm pumped today. Welcome to Jackie Just Chatters. Thank you for joining me. I'm your hostess, Jackie Lentz. And I'm trying to make the world a little better, [00:01:00] one story at a time.

Whimsical episodes come out every other Tuesday. What's your story? If you've got one, reach out via my website. Now let's get chatting.

Welcome back to the show. So if you haven't been around for a story share, it's pretty simple. I pick a theme and people send in stories about that theme. What is different today is I'm not alone. I have a co host and not just like a co host for the episode, but we're doing like a legit crossover episode.

So my, my co host for today, my crossover special gal is Karen Fonte from Bookish Flights. Welcome, Kara. 

Kara: Hi everyone. Thanks for having me, Jackie. 

Jacqui: I'm so glad you're back. For those of you who have listened a long time, this is not her first time on my show. Every time I get a chance [00:02:00] to snatch her and bring her on my show, I absolutely do.

And it's a joy every time. But, um We have a good time 

Kara: together. We 

Jacqui: do. We always do. 

Kara: Too good. So I am Cara Infante and I am the host of the Bookish Flights podcast. And I guess first and foremost, I am a wife and a mom and books are my passion. And so I host a podcast where we have a book flight per episode.

And so that means you'll get three book recommendations and that could be from your favorite authors. to a recommendation to try the fantasy world or sci fi or romantic fiction. There is all sorts of episodes. We don't do just fiction either. I should say we do nonfiction, we do fiction, and I am a huge believer that books bring people together.

And it brought you and I together, Jackie. So proof is 

Jacqui: in the pudding here. Books are definitely a great. Connector of [00:03:00] people. They're amazing. It's just magic of when you like become book buddies. I 

Kara: totally agree it. And then I will think about my friends as I'm reading to write of, Oh, I know that Ashley really likes these books, so I should forward this one on to her.

And so it like, it's a great way to continue a friendship. And in saying that I'm also a military soft, so we move a lot. So my friends live far away from me most often. So. Books and reading and sending them a little book mail are my way to love them 

Jacqui: from afar. You are so thoughtful with your books. Cause you do, you're always like, Oh, this book for this person.

And that you're just, you're such a giver. You're such a giver. I try now what's interesting about this episode, because it's a crossover half of the episode is here on my podcast. Jackie just chatters the other half. So when you're done listening to this half, you're going to want to go over to Kara's podcast and hear the second half.[00:04:00]

Yep. 

Kara: It's live, so you can find it there. It's 

Jacqui: awesome. Okay. So let's get on with our stories. And here is the first one. My first story comes from Marian Agnew. Her debut novel, Making Up the Gods, was published in October of 2023. She also has a collection of essays about being a child to a parent with Alzheimer's.

Marion reads her story herself. My name is Marion 

Marion: Agnew, and I'm a writer and a dual U. S. Canadian citizen. I write fiction and essays from a home and office overlooking Lake Superior in northwestern Ontario. The book that stayed with me for 50 years now is Mrs. Miniver. By the UK writer Jan Strather, which is a pen name for Joyce Maxton Graham.

A movie, which isn't very much like the book, came out in 1942, but I'm talking about the book published in October of 1939. The book [00:05:00] began as a series of short stories published serially in the Times of London between 1937 and 1939 before they were collected into a book. They're told from the perspective of an ordinary woman who lives in London in the late 1930s, the uncomfortable time before Hitler invades Poland.

Both Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt credit the book with helping make the growing war in Europe more real to North Americans. Of course, the designation, Ordinary Woman, comes with many caveats. Mrs. Miniver is an upper middle class white woman. She and her husband Clem, who's an architect, own a town home in London and a country home in Kent.

They employ various domestic servants. And their older son attends boarding school. But even with everything that makes Mrs. Vinnerer's life far from ordinary, I have always found her irresistible. She's perceptive and open hearted, intelligent and articulate. The book begins with her [00:06:00] returning home in October, after the holidays.

Here's a brief excerpt. That was the kind of thing one remembered about a house. Not the size of the rooms, or the color of the walls, but the feel of door handles and light switches. The shape and texture of the banister rail under one's palm, minute, tactual intimates, whose resumption was the essence of coming home.

Mrs. Miniver, beyond its cultural role, is important to me. The book itself, as an artifact, connects me to my past, and Mrs. Miniver's sensibilities opened the way to my own writing. I was a teenager when my mother loaned me her copy of Mrs. Miniver. The book was a favorite of hers, too. When it first came out, my mother was in her early 20s, studying mathematics in the U.

S. Through the book, she'd stay connected to her faraway mother, my grandmother, back home in Canada. Both of them agreed strongly with Mrs. Miniver's abiding point that all lives, [00:07:00] even or perhaps especially the lives of women, are worth reading about. My mother gave me my own copy of the book when I, in my turn, moved away from home.

Reading it gave me a way to continue to feel connected to my mother through decades, especially as she developed dementia, and even after her death. Reflecting on that difficult time of illness and personal essays became my first book, published in 2019, entitled Reverberations, A Daughter's Meditations on Alzheimer's.

In Mrs. Miniver, the moment that has stayed with me the most vividly comes from a scene near Christmas. When her children wake her in the early morning to open their stockings, she notes that the sky outside her bedroom window is still dark. As Mrs. Miniver watches them unwrap gifts, she feels connected individually to each of her children and to her husband.

Here's what comes next. Mrs. Miniver looked towards the window. The dark sky had already paled a little in its frame of cherry [00:08:00] pink chintz. Eternity framed in domesticity. Never mind, one had to frame it in something to see it at all. I love this image, eternity framed in domesticity, so much that I use the quote as the epigraph of my debut novel, Making Up the Gods, which was published in October of 2023.

The story is about a widow named Simone, who loves parts of her isolated life very much. But is intrigued when a stranger claiming to be her cousin shows up at her door. And it's about much more. Family, choices, grief, and openness to new chapters in life. Through decades of re reading Mrs. Miniver, I've learned that stories of individual people going about their daily lives can address important and eternal truths.

And as a writer, the lives of women so long relegated to obscurity have been the perfect place for me to start spinning my own stories. I'm grateful to have the pleasure and honor of writing books, two now, [00:09:00] about women both ordinary and extraordinary, much like Mrs. Miniver. If you're interested, the text of Mrs.

Miniver is available online at the University of Pennsylvania Digital 

Jacqui: Library.

Kara: So I just loved this story from Marion about Mrs. Miniver because I feel like it spoke to my life so much. And she talks about the simpleness, right? Of this ordinary life. But as she said in the beginning that both Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt credit this book. With helping make the growing war in Europe more real to North Americans.

That is not ordinary. Like I read that and I thought [00:10:00] that is extraordinary that a book could do that. 

Jacqui: They often talk about how when you're trying to tell people or get them to think about something, respond to it, do it through a story. Because like when you give them these large statistics, people just they can't understand it in their brain.

Just doesn't comprehend it. But when you give them a person's story or this tale, that people then can connect. And again, it's that power of books of how they can just transport you to a time, a place, a different world. And it's like you get to travel there for free. 

Kara: And that's why I love historical fiction because it's putting history to a story.

And then I can categorize it in my brain and feel like I'm learning along the way. 

Jacqui: I've never read the book. I've heard of it. I'm, I'm very interested now to read it. I loved how she talked about the slice of life, like the kind of average things people were doing. I feel that's [00:11:00] so missing in history.

People find that fascinating. We want to know how people live. And I wish there was more of that. Ellen Montgomery, everybody knows Anne of Green Gables. Most people often don't get beyond the first book. There's eight books in the series. My favorite one is actually the last book, and it's about Rilla, her daughter named after Marilla, and it takes place during World War One.

It starts at the outbreak of World War One, which the United States, we didn't get into the war till like the very end of the war, where Canada, because they were part of the British Empire. They started on day one. So they were in that war for four years. It's about how Rilla grows up and deals with living on the home front during the war.

And there are not many examples of North American home front [00:12:00] experiences. It's just fascinating to read. I adore that one. And yeah, Mrs. Miniver, it sounds a little bit, again, like you can walk into that time period and see things. So it's tempting. 

Kara: That, there was that other quote she gave us about. That was the kind of thing one remembered about a house and she went in all these descriptors of the house from the textures to the colors on the wall, the feel of the door handles.

I'm like, that is so true. I like wrote this with exclamation points because that drew me in right there. And it's so simple. It's ordinary, simple life. 

Jacqui: Yes, it's that zooming in on those little things that just, they 

Kara: grab us. And then I loved how this book connected her with her mother and that it was also her mother's favorite book.

And then as her mother went through her illness, that it was able to connect them through that. 

Jacqui: Yes. And [00:13:00] how it could help her hold on to who her mother really was. Yeah. And that's beautiful. Now, cause you're such a reader and I'm sure you've given books to your mom. Do you and your mom have like a book connection at all or no?

Kara: I'm laughing because she just sent a box of a Valentine's day box to my kids and I'd given her two books when she was here in December. She sent them back. So, but yes, we do have a book connection. I think my mom I think in a good way, she's become more of a reader since she's retired. And so it's been a lot easier for us to swap books.

And just in our period of life, we've had more time for 

Jacqui: reading. That's nice that you guys are able to talk books. Yeah, 

Kara: I love having that. I also was obsessed with that. Yes. 

Jacqui: That was such a good line 

Kara: because that is so true. That is our life. I think of that Mumford and Sons [00:14:00] song, Awake Your Soul or Wake My Soul.

I think it's called where you invest your love is where you invest your life. And I say that to myself all the time about when I'm thinking about where I'm spending my time. What's going to matter to me when I'm 80, I try to put things in perspective and just be in the moment. That's And because eternity is made right there.

Jacqui: Yep. Absolutely. It was. And how we put it in context of eternity is right along with how we live our everyday lives. Like they're intrinsically bound together. 

Kara: It might seem small. It might seem small moments, but it's That is what makes our life. And I have not read this, but I have already added it to my to be read list.

Jacqui: I'll tell you between like your show and just all of the bookish people and other writers that I connect with. On the social media world. My TBR pile is out of freaking control. Oh, 

Kara: yeah. No one wants to know how many I actually have on my [00:15:00] list on Goodreads. 

Jacqui: Oh, like Goodreads doesn't even have all of the ones that I haven't even put them all on there yet.

Okay. 

Kara: Mine's in the 500s. 

Jacqui: That is not shocking to me at all, knowing you. 

Kara: I call them my emotional support books. I'll never run out of ideas. 

Jacqui: That's true. Like, when you've got a TBR pile of 500, there's gonna be something in there that you're like, oh, in the mood for, and yet you're still gonna buy that new book.

Yeah. 

Kara: Cause it's gonna draw me in off the shelf. 

Jacqui: Right. Absolutely. Okay. I think it's time for our next story. I hope you are enjoying this episode of Jackie Just Chatters. I would like more people to join our community here and you can help. Most people learn about podcasts from word of mouth. So tell your friends or post about the program on your social media.

Also, shows with more positive reviews and five star ratings get wider [00:16:00] promotion on apps. Leaving a quick five stars or mentioning why you liked the show makes a difference. Together, we can spread those positive vibes. Thanks again for listening. I'm grateful for you. Now back to the show. Our second story comes from Jessica Guidonin, an Air Force reservist, Army spouse, freelancer, and stay at home mom who enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her family.

Jessica's public affairs background in the military includes more than a decade of writing, editing, and running a base newspaper when those existed. Here is her story. In my mind, poetry was always for the lyrical and free spirited, the artsy individuals who blew with the wind and talked about love, heartbreak, and misfortune.

But what about poetry for the strong and brave? For the service members who inherently know the rhythmic noise of a helicopter's [00:17:00] rotor blades and the type of weapon being fired by the sound and the rate of which the rounds leave the barrel, what about the poetry for the member whose spirit lies somewhere between the dead caused by their own hands and the duty called to them to protect our country?

Where are the words for the defenders who can't travel with the wind because they have to calculate its speed? In order to make the shot. Or the words to encourage the uniformed mother who has to leave her family so you can keep yours. Those words are so desperately needed to help service members heal, feel connected, and loved for their sacrifices.

Those words that had been void to our military members for too long. I found these words in the form of poetry during a time I didn't know I needed it. A fellow veteran saw my struggle, my pain, my need for something, and left the book Hookah Smoke and Hellfire by Ellie Gardner [00:18:00] on my doorstep. I laughed.

I laughed at the thought of poetry because I wasn't a free spirited individual who read words that danced with the music of birds. I was a tough woman made of grit. A mom who pushed my demons just below the surface so I could save my children from their gruesome faces. I was an American airman whose mission was to fly, fight, and win.

I didn't think poetry would help fade the faces of those who haunted my dreams. I didn't think anyone knew how I felt, and surely those feelings weren't written down on paper. We didn't expect those feelings, we didn't falter, and we never failed. So I laughed and put the book on my shelf. After a few weeks, I opened Hookah Smoke and Hellfire, slowly to keep its glare from piercing a hole through my head.

Go ahead and read it so you can say that it was all right, I thought. I [00:19:00] read the first poem about a girl experiencing a bag day, hauling equipment too heavy, bulletproof vests too large, and boarding a new adventure with eyes wide open to Afghanistan. Sure, I'd been there. Reading on, the girl who arrived to this foreign land would return a grown up because no one goes home a kid.

What a child I was arriving on my deployment. But what a woman I was coming home. I read a few more, and put the book down. The hairs on the back of my neck needed to ease, and the racing of my heart needed to stop. I wasn't ready for the words that may connect my shredded heart. A few days later, I felt brave enough to pick it back up.

I don't think I laughed about my deployment like I did after reading The Latrine. Not like this, number one. No. No one wants to die within the four walls of a port a potty that [00:20:00] seeps the foul smells of our human remnants. God, I know you have a sense of humor, but please God, not like this, you can imagine.

My husband also wears a uniform, but it's much different than mine. He pushes his demons just below the surface too, but they have different faces. They drip with blood from dropped bombs, multiple gunfights, and more near death experiences than we'd like to acknowledge. I made him read Let us get the poison out that starts with saying the ugly words about killing and seeing things no one should have to see.

It goes on to describe getting out all the guilt and shame one may feel after such experiences, but then acknowledging the pretty words of also saving lives, saving so many we will never know. Many service members find hardship. And recognizing the good in what some of our duty calls us to do. It's hard to see that [00:21:00] life was also the answer when the duty was death.

I could go on and on about the power behind the words in this book. It changed me for the better. It made me laugh, cry, and think back on my deployment in a way that I had not done before. On days that I struggle, I think back to these poems full of stories, just like mine, just like my husband's. It's not just us, it's every uniformed service member.

We are not alone. You are not alone. And if you feel alone, Ellie perfectly expresses these sentiments in Please Don't Go. You know I'll never judge you on the dark things you say. After all, I saw the same things. I fought with some of the same demons. I've seen all of those same reasons you are thinking of leaving.

But my brother, my sister, please [00:22:00] listen close. You are so very loved. Please don't go.

The variety of emotions expressed in this book are hard to say out loud. That's why a lot of us keep them in, hidden so tight and nestled away to grow into other things. After reading this book, I felt more confident in voicing my struggles out loud and discussing things more in depth with my husband.

It motivated me to find more healing that I so desperately wanted for myself. I bought 10 copies and passed them out to my military friends. It even gave my parents a better understanding of what we go through as military members. Without having to have had those difficult discussions, this book not only connected me to buried [00:23:00] thoughts I had about my deployment, but it connected me to my husband and my family.

I can only hope this book continues to travel among the ranks and help those who need it not coming from an overly military family. Like, we've got some military, but it's not like we have this big, long tradition or that I'm living it. I really appreciated the inside view into the minds and hearts of those who serve.

It was a very intimate view of just what she's going through. And I was so impressed with the vulnerability of that story, because She really just opened herself up about how she felt and her struggles. And honestly, it takes so much bravery to do that, but given her military history, that shouldn't surprise anyone because she's clearly an extremely brave woman.[00:24:00]

Kara: Yeah. I thought so as well. It was real. It was a bra and even being a military spouse, but not the active duty member, it puts so much perspective for me. On what they go through and especially the women in the military, like that bag drag story. I was like, I had never even thought that, but that would, if I was put in that situation, that would be me.

It 

Jacqui: was really interesting and I loved how she used it as a way to bridge to not only other military people. But also non military people like her family to be like, okay, I don't want to tell you about it. I don't want to relive it. I don't want to discuss this, but I know you're curious. I know this will help our connection here.

Read this and you'll have a pretty good idea of kind of the stuff I have to do and what goes through my head. And then you'll understand me more without having go through all that baggage [00:25:00] again. 

Kara: And I thought about that of what a dichotomous way to live in. And I feel like this is probably why we see so many mental health issues among our service members is they can't reconcile these two sides of themselves.

She has that line. It goes on to describe getting out all of the guilt and shame one may feel after such experiences. But then acknowledging the pretty words of also saving lives, saving so many, we will never know. And just how hard that must be to have these two different thoughts in your mind and maybe feeling like you can't bear your soul.

Maybe you don't even want to bear your soul to your family and your loved ones, but you're in this inner turmoil within yourself, but you're trying to put an outward face. To the community and your family and your kids. 

Jacqui: Yep. It's interesting that it made me think about, especially when we were growing up with the gay [00:26:00] community, because there was so much more hostility than today.

And so you had a lot of people who had to closet themselves and their suicide rates were higher and all of the. The difficulties they went through because they were leading dual lives. They had this one interior life that they tried to keep hidden and stuff down. And then there's their public persona.

And I think. Anytime somebody feels like they have to hide and stuff down a part of themselves that's a big part of who they are, that is not going to be healthy. That is not going to be good for them. Their brain is just going to be in conflict. It's like splintering their soul. 

Kara: Yeah, and she talked about that, right?

She wasn't ready for the words that would connect her shredded heart through this poetry, and it made me think of Kintsugi. Do you know what that is? It's the Japanese art form with [00:27:00] pottery. Oh, with the gold! Yeah, with the gold and it, I always think about that of we, we, things are going to happen in our life, right?

They're going to shred our heart. They're going to make us fractured. But I think that Kintsugi, y'all should look it up, but it is where they heal broken pieces will heal. They don't heal broken pottery, but they repair broken pieces of pottery with gold. And I think that. We can look at this as that we are pieced together with even more beauty in the end, and it might be so hard in the moment to go through these things and reconcile ourselves, but what hope that's going to be more beautiful in the end.

I looked it up last night, so I could talk about it, and they also have this philosophy that it treats the breakage and repair as part of the history rather than something to disguise. And I thought that was perfect 

Jacqui: for this. [00:28:00] I adore that you said the pottery was being healed. Because I think you're right.

That idea of taking something that's broken and healing it. And I, I think I should try to use that more often in my every day. Like my, my printer, my printer is not going to be healed. It's just being replaced. 

Kara: I tried to heal. The history does not continue with that one. 

Jacqui: Yeah, I tried to heal my printer, but it was just like, nope, nope, we don't want to do this anymore.

Kara: But I think it's so true, it goes back to we so often want to disguise ourselves, right? We want to hide, we want to stuff things down that are hard. But what if we looked at it as this way that we're honing ourselves to be better in the long run? Or it's part of our history. And everybody around us can accept that.

So we can accept that within ourselves. 

Jacqui: I thought it was interesting, one, it [00:29:00] made me laugh of her kind of stereotyping of poetry. How it's this flower child, hippie dippy kind of thing. Like at the beginning, I'm just imagining this woman with a daisy chain headband and she's like skipping through the meadow.

That's the image of the poet. I 

Kara: do think poetry has an imagery though. It does. Yeah. 

Jacqui: And I love that she like acknowledges like, okay, I, that she has this image and that she was willing to step outside and question that and okay, I'm going to try this and oh, okay. Poetry isn't everything I thought it was.

It's not to say that there isn't the flower child hippy dippy poetry out there, but poetry comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. And I love that she was willing to. Expose yourself to something new. And [00:30:00] it transformed her, it helped her heal and she's not going to look at poetry the same anymore. And she, I think that the hippie is a lot less running through the meadow now.

Kara: Yeah. And if we look at our prompt of books that impact us, truly did that. 

Jacqui: Absolutely. I love the message in the passage she shared where it talks about that. Even if you've been through dark things, you are worthy of love and that you are not alone in your pain. That really spoke to me. And I think that's an ideal we all hope for.

I think everyone wants to be seen and then understood. And so much of the poetry, it seemed to have that. It allowed her to be seen like, Oh my gosh, somebody else sees me. Somebody else knows exactly what I'm [00:31:00] going through. They understand it. They're accepting of me. I can have love. I can have all this darkness.

And I'm worthy and I'm lovable. I don't know a single person who doesn't want that, doesn't want to be like, We get it. You have baggage. We've all been through stuff. We all have a dark side, but you're still worthy of love. You're still seen. Yeah, 

Kara: I think when we know that someone else has gone through a journey that we have gone through, there's so much comfort.

Jacqui: Absolutely. I think that wraps up our half. If you guys want to listen to the other stories, we're going to be over at bookish flights, and we're going to have a couple more stories and we're going to react to them as well. They're pretty good. It was really hard. Like we separated them more based on time because it was like, I want every story.

Kara: Yes, we had a good time and we had some great 

Jacqui: submissions. [00:32:00] Thanks to those of you who stayed to the end. Doing this wouldn't be much fun without you. I've been planning out the themes and calendar for the rest of my story shares. So, if you or someone you know are interested, keep an eye out on my Facebook and Instagram accounts for updates.

I'll be releasing them soon. Don't forget, make sure you head on over to Bookish Flights to hear the other stories in this series. If you are interested in knowing more about these authors, their writing, and links, you'll find them in the episode notes. Until next time, I wish you well.