Janice Page and an Unlikely Memoir

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Case – "Janice Page and an Unlikely Memoir"

Podcast: The Book Case
Hosts: Charlie Gibson, Kate Gibson
Episode Title: Janice Page and an Unlikely Memoir
Date: January 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into Janice Page's memoir, The Year of the Water Horse, exploring why memoirs—especially those not driven by sensational or traumatic stories—can still be utterly captivating. Charlie and Kate Gibson speak with Janice about the origins of her book, her process as a journalist-turned-memoirist, the themes of family, cross-cultural experience, adoption, survival, and the surprisingly cinematic narrative of an "ordinary" life. The episode also features a segment with independent bookstore owners from Booksmart, emphasizing the episode’s thread of finding extraordinary stories and communities in unexpected places.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Appeal of “Ordinary” Memoirs (01:04–05:42)

• Setting Up Three Weeks of Memoirs: Charlie introduces a "memoir trilogy" on the podcast, starting with Janice Page.
• The Draw of The Year of the Water Horse:
  • Not a headline-grabbing, sensational memoir ("not a true crime story" or "sharing her innate trauma").
  • Both hosts emphasize how an “ordinary” life is made extraordinary by good writing and vivid storytelling.
• Kate: “She takes her life and blows it up and makes it vivid and beautiful and funny. I loved this book.” (02:43)
• Book’s Structure: Janice, a long-time arts and entertainment journalist, writes her life story in clear, chronological stages—her Massachusetts childhood, navigating cross-cultural relationships, genetic anxieties, and ultimately adopting a daughter from China.

2. Janice Page on Writing a Memoir (06:02–09:16)

• Janice’s Reluctance and Process:

  • She didn't set out to write a memoir; it began as a magazine piece about adopting a child from China and her mother-in-law's dramatic story of exile during the Chinese Civil War.
  • The strong public reaction to that piece emboldened her to go deeper.
  • Memoir structure evolved over time—early drafts started with her mother-in-law's story or her husband's proposal, but the book eventually opens with a childhood memory of her mother, advised by her agent as the strongest entry point.

• Janice: "If you're not sick of yourself when you write a memoir, by the end there is something wrong with you. I mean, honestly, daily I would be like, who wants to read this much about me? Not even me." (08:25)

3. Navigating Identity, Independence, and Family (12:06–14:19)

• Charlie and Kate ask about Janice’s hesitance toward marriage, her views on independence, and the complex dynamics of entering a mixed-race marriage.

• Janice: "I grew up thinking I’m going to prioritize making something of myself and my life and then inviting someone in who makes it better and we make each other’s lives better. Right. And I just wasn’t there." (12:41)

• Janice describes meeting her Chinese-American husband’s mother (her future mother-in-law) and how her story—escaping China, leaving a child behind—inspired the book.

• Kate probes: Was it hard to get her mother-in-law to tell her story?

• Janice: "If she was exotic to me, I was sure as hell exotic to her. ... I think that she. She had not been asked." (14:24)

4. Cross-Cultural Reconciliation and Survival (17:24–19:56)

• Deep Family Trauma: Meeting her husband’s half-sister, left behind in China, who had to survive immense hardship but eventually reconciles with her mother.
• Janice: "What’s at the heart of the book is survival, which I think a lot of people think is a static state. ... To me, it is not. It is a fluid state. It is something that evolves." (19:29)

5. The Memoirist’s Instinct and Motivation (20:22–21:12)

• On why Janice writes:
  • To process and integrate stories into her own life.
• Janice: "At its core, you're trying to process when you're writing… I let it be what it wanted to be for me." (20:22)

6. Adoption and the Meaning of Home (21:32–26:49)

• Adoption Narrative:

  • Janice and her husband, unable to have a biological child, choose to adopt from China. The familial symmetry—her mother-in-law leaving a child behind in China, now returning to adopt—felt cosmically right.
  • She always considered adoption a meaningful option, placing less value on biological ties.

• Tackling the “Ordinariness” of Stories:

  • Are all lives worthy of memoir? Janice suggests that while our lives may seem ordinary to us, the act of writing and reflecting can elevate them—though not everyone can, or should, publish them.

• Title Discovery: The fact that both her adopted daughter and her husband’s half-sister were born in the Year of the Water Horse came late in the process, but crystallized the memoir’s meaning.

• Janice (on writing): “It’s better than anything. I know. And that includes the thing you think I’m talking about. ... If you’re a perfectionist or a control freak...that’s the torturous part. You always could make it better. ... In his [my husband’s] business, the chicken is done when the chicken is done...in my business, the writing business, the chicken is never done.” (24:28)

7. Memorable Quotes & Reflections

• On Truth and Storytelling:
  • Charlie reads from Janice's opening:
    "What's true is not always convincing, and what's convincing is not always true. That's Nietzsche, I think. But it might be something I made up, or did I find it in a fortune cookie? Doesn't matter. It still produces a good story and a good memoir." (25:27)
• On Home and Serenity:
  • Janice reading from her book (26:13):
    "The idea of home has changed so much for me. It's no longer confined to a tiny kitchen in Braintree, Massachusetts, where the Serenity prayer hangs on a wall. Home now extends at least as far as China...and all my digging would lead right back to serenity, the model that's attained instead of granted, not as platitude but as creed."
• Writing Philosophy:
  • Janice (36:18): "The words I try to live by come from a higher power, and that is Fran Leibowitz who said, think before you speak, read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself."

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 00:07 — Intro & Memoir discussion
• 03:24 — Book overview & Janice’s journalistic style
• 06:02 — Janice Page interview begins: why a memoir?
• 08:25 — On writing about herself
• 12:24 — On independence and marriage
• 14:19 — Gaining trust, telling stories across culture
• 17:24 — The story of reconciliation and survival
• 20:22 — Why writers write memoir
• 21:32 — Adoption, meaning of family
• 24:01 — The memoir's title revelation
• 24:28 — On the masochism and joy of writing
• 25:27 — Reflections on truth and memoir, closing reading by Janice Page

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Bookstore Feature: Booksmart, California (27:53–35:34)

• Interview with Brad Jones and Cinda Meister:
  • 30+ years running Booksmart, now with two locations.
  • Their journey from “book desert” to community hub.
  • Challenges of running a bookstore, joys of the job, and their role as community anchors.
  • “If you love books and you love people, then I think this is the kind of business to be in.” – Brad (34:01)

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Episode Takeaways

The Year of the Water Horse is not just one woman’s journey; it’s a meditation on how so-called ordinary lives are extraordinary when rendered with insight, empathy, and humor. Janice Page’s narrative is both deeply personal and widely resonant, inviting readers to reconsider the boundaries of family, home, and what stories are worth telling.
The segment with Booksmart reinforces the episode’s core idea: that there is magic and meaning in the everyday, whether it’s family history or a local bookstore’s endurance.

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Notable Quotes

• "If you're not sick of yourself when you write a memoir, by the end there is something wrong with you." – Janice Page (08:25)
• "In my business, the writing business, the chicken is never done." – Janice Page (24:39)
• "Think before you speak, read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself." – Janice Page quoting Fran Leibowitz (36:18)

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This summary captures the episode's warmth, insight, and the contagious enthusiasm for stories—big, small, and all those in between.

Transcript

[A]

Well, welcome, bibliophiles. It's the bookcase with Kate and Charlie again. We're now solidly into the new year, and we're glad you're sticking with us. We really appreciate your being here. Anyway, I'm the Charlie Gibson part of Kate and Charlie.

[B]

I am the Kate part of the Kate and Charlie. And I live in the Midwest. And the way that you can tell I live in the Midwest is I am indoors, sitting in my own bedroom, wearing fingerless gloves and a scarf. And so I think we finally got into that very important Les Miserables at the end of the day stage of winter in the Midwest. And I'm embracing it, and I'm looking forward to it not being January anymore. Welcome.

[A]

Kate said her street is a solid sheet of ice, and I'm in Seattle, and guess what? It's raining.

[B]

Excellent. Excellent.

[A]

So we have. We both have weather that lives up to our.

[B]

I passed my neighbor the other day and he goes, you know, I bet if I bent over, I could see my face in the street. And we tried it, and we could.

[A]

We have this week a memoir. And I mention it because over the next few weeks, we're going to have three memoirs. I love memoirs. I think they're really interesting if the person captivates my interest, and that's incumbent for a memoir writer to do, they have to make you fascinated by their lives. This week we have Janice Page, who has written a book called the Ear of the Water Horse. I will explain why that title is there. In a couple of weeks, we're gonna talk to Susan Orlean, who wrote a book called Joyride, which is wonderful. And then the third one is an unknown author. Her name is Joan London. She's written the story of her life. It's the first book we've accepted being on the podcast without having read it. Now, why would we do that?

[B]

First of all, what a lovely name. Was she named after the city? No, just kidding. I'm just kidding. I make that joke because Joan is almost like a member of our. You know, she's been at our dinner table and we've been at hers. And so she's written a book, and we can't wait to talk to her about it. But this week, Janice Page, it's funny because this is not a memoir you picked up because it's a true crime story. This is not a memoir you picked up because she's sharing her innate trauma of blah. It's not one of those memoirs that's gonna grab headlines because it's got a Big story, I think, is what I'm trying to say, or what we would consider a big story. And yet I don't even remember how we got this book. Dad started reading it. Anytime dad is reading a book and he laughs out loud more than once within a half an hour, I know I'm reading it. And he did. He laughed a lot at this book. And I said to him, what are you reading? And he said, it's called the Year of the Water Horse by Janice Page, who is a big deal in the newspaper business. But I'm not quite sure why I'm reading it. And I don't mean that to, to, to, to denigrate Janice Page or the amazing life experience that she's had. But many of us, I think, would look at her story and go, well, that's a sort of ordinary story. And yet she makes it extraordinary. She takes her life and blows it up and makes it vivid and beautiful and funny. I loved this book. It was a great book. And it made me sort of fall in love with Janice Page, made me fall in love with her husband and her whole extended family.

[A]

Well, as you mentioned, she's a journalist. And as she says, I had to write this in a journalistic fashion. So there are distinct stages in her life and she writes them sort of naturally in chapters. She starts out in a family. She's the youngest of six kids living in a tiny apartment in Massachusetts. Her mom is bipolar, she's anorexic. At one point she falls in love with a Chinese man. And she has to deal with the cross cultural aspects of that. She finds out that her biological family is perhaps cursed with a gene that presupposes everyone to cancer. So she's worried that she shouldn't have children. But then she finds out, well, she's the exception, she doesn't have the gene. And then she meets the woman who was going to be her mother in law. And the mother in law's story is fascinating. And that really is what takes her over the edge and thinks that I really should tell this story. And then she and her husband can't have a child, but they decide to adopt in China a girl. And that's a wonderful story. And so it's really an interesting series of events. And she writes so well that you are really along with her for the ride. And each one of those distinct stages of her life get an interesting chapter in the book.

[B]

She writes. Her beat, I guess, as a journalist is oftentimes to cover arts and entertainment. And so there are parts of this book that she writes in screenplay. But I would describe this book, even if there weren't those parts that are actually written in screenplay, as the movie of her life. The fascination she has with her mother in law's escape from China into Taiwan and the way she tells that story and the way that it shapes her as a storyteller. And then this amazing daughter that she adopts in China. And again, you're sort of going, huh? I became fascinated with her life. I got hooked on her life. And it really is a sort of beautiful look through the window into someone's house and home and life. It reminded me that the human experience is a beautiful one that we all share and that I would love to read more people's stories like this if they were this well written, because it is very well written.

[A]

Well, that's the litmus to me of a good memoir that you really get taken with this person's life, you like this person who brings you into their lives and you want to share it. So here is our conversation with Janice Page. The book again is the Year of the Water Horse.

[B]

Janice Page, it is such an honor to have you in the bookcase. Your book, the Year of the Water A Memoir. As somebody who's done writing for the newspaper, your first full length is a memoir. And that fascinates me because as somebody who has tossed around the idea of writing but never done it, a memoir strikes me as the most intimidating thing that you could write. Why start here?

[C]

Oh my God, you have put your finger right on that. Don't is my advice. Do not do that. I am crazy, and I think that comes out in the book, actually. But it wasn't intentional at the beginning. So let me explain that. I wrote a magazine piece which is much more my wheelhouse, ostensibly about the journey to adopting our child from China, where my husband's parents had been from and had fled during the Chinese Civil War and left a child behind when they did so. And that was what I thought I was writing. But actually I was writing this piece about the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China, where it's the crossroads of adoption from China, because you have to go, you have to pass through Guangzhou, where the. You get rubber stamped to come back to the US and most people stay at the White Swan, some don't, but everyone passes through there. So anyway, that's what the magazine piece was about. And in telling that story and that vantage point, I infused it with our personal narrative, which made sense, but only in a little, in small ways. And I got such a huge Reaction to that piece, like just at the time, real snail mail and emails and all that from all corners of the world and some people who are still in touch would be. And I realized it had very much, you know, been something that people related to. And I knew there was so much more to tell. So I thought I will maybe do a book that is my mother in law's story of leaving that child behind and our story of going to China, a place where one had child had left behind. We were taking one child with us and it seemed poetic, it seemed great. And I really saw it as two stories, twin pillars that would come together at some point in the middle of the book and that would be that. So it would be a sort of hybrid memoir.

[B]

How many times did you think to yourself, what the hell am I doing?

[C]

Oh my God. Not only what the hell am I doing, but if you're not sick of yourself when you write a memoir, by the end there is something wrong with you. I mean, honestly, daily I would be like, who wants to read this much about me? Not even me. So I really, I don't get it, honestly. But I, I do understand it. I mean, I'm, I'm joking, but I do love a lot of memoirs. So like, I understood that. But the only way I could survive it, survive that entire task of, you know, anyone who writes for newspapers for a living, like to get up around the 85,000, 90,000 word mark is already torture because we're trained to shut off our, you know, storytelling at either 1000 words for daily consumption or 5000 words ish for a magazine. So like, you know, it's just unheard of. It's so indulgent, it's, it's just crazy.

[B]

I'm picturing you in your living room going, okay, if I'm going to get myself there, I need this part, right? And I need this part and I need my mother in law's part. So like, how did you know you'd gone back far enough and did you write it in order?

[C]

The answer is no, partly because it was in a different order when I first wrote. Like, this is maybe the fourth order. I started with the magazine piece, which was an arc that now is separate chapters, many chapters apart, like, and doesn't even come in till near the end that we. The adoption part. So if you think about, that's where it started. But then I, I started to think, well, how do I, I jump into telling this? It's in the first draft. It was, I started with my mother in law because I thought that's the most exotic and it's wrong to even say that, but as a white person, I thought, well, I've read lots of white girl stories, but I haven't read this one. And it fascinated me so I wanted to tell it. So I started with her, but that, that did not work at all. That felt wrong. Then I started with my husband, with his first proposal to me, which happened to be naked, which I get to pretty, which is not something I like being having to say, but it was true. So I started there because it was funny. And I was like, okay, let's start here and introduce us as this, you know, mixed race couple and cross cultural couple. And that also felt like a clearing of the throat. So one of my agents, I, I'm lucky enough to have two Val Frankel said to me, your strongest chapter, your strongest memory is the one of your mother and this huge day, which I call my greatest day, where she had a fight with my father and we just stayed out all day to piss him off, essentially. And it was that chapter came out in one day that I sat down to write it and it came out. And the reason it came out like that, I believe, is I was looking for a way to show the reader what my relationship was with my mother, but also like get my siblings in there and really, really be able to dig in and say something about my childhood that is so seared into my brain, even though I was only five on that day. And that chapter I ended up actually performing in a little like moth like thing called Globe Live for the Boston Globe. And the response to that was also great. And when my agent read that chapter, she was like, this is, this is it, this is where you start. And I said, but that would make it chronological. And she said, is that bad? And I said, well, as a person who watches a lot of movies, it's a little boring, right? I mean that directors go far out of their way to not construct stories that are purely chronological. And this isn't purely that, but it is mainly that. And then like so many things, I just stopped resisting. She was right. That chapter is the way to go. It's the way to start.

[A]

So to earn money, you go to work in a Chinese restaurant to make money, to get to college, and you meet James and that's cross cultural. You struggle with that. He keeps proposing, you keep holding him off for years and years and years. What did that say about you?

[C]

It said that I was a woman who was raised in a generation to think that independence was really really paramount. Right. If I wanted to be the fully realized woman, it didn't mean I couldn't be married. That's not what I mean. It meant I had other things that were a priority. And I thought having seen traditional marriages, including my mother and father, and how I think repressed my mother was how she just, you know, let having kids consume her and she wasn't really ready for it. And that's part of why she had so many troubles. And I'll never know whether she started out as simply postpartum. You know, like that's her depression. The root of her depression was postpartum depression. I don't know. I don't know. But what I do know is I grew up thinking I'm going to prioritize making something of myself and my life and then inviting someone in who makes it better and we make each other's lives better. Right. And I just wasn't there. I just wasn't. I didn't think. I don't know if I would have ever really gotten there without pushing and. But he was exact kind of person that I needed because he. He kind of just didn't take no for an answer. He didn't get. He wasn't rocked by all these no's for 10 years.

[A]

He didn't take no as an answer. And you go to China to meet his family, not engaged. You have promise rings, you told me. And you meet his mother and she has an extraordinary story, or at least you thought it was very extraordinary. What was it about her story that so moved you and essentially produced this book?

[B]

Well, and I want to add to that, because you don't really talk about this either. Was it hard to get her to tell her story? Because I would imagine that this was a story that would be difficult to tell. Like, how did you establish that trust with her to get her to. To explain her childhood to you all the way through her adulthood?

[C]

Yeah. So it was easier than you might think in that I think that she. Look, if she was exotic to me, I was sure as hell exotic to her. Right? So, I mean, here I was. Who was I. I was coming into this picture and asking her a bunch of questions, which is, what is my profession? So it seemed natural, Right. It would just be conversational, except I had notebooks and tape recorders out. But she. I think she found it kind of funny and, and, you know, quirky and charming in a way. And to be honest, I think that she. She had not been asked because, to answer fully your question, this is a common story. In Taiwan, many of the people who came to the island came during this, this, this time where they were, you know, in exile. These were people who were part of Chiang Kai Shek's army or military and were fleeing Mao Zedong. And they thought they were coming temporarily, just escaping and they'd go back and, and it was not that uncommon to leave family behind. That's probably the most common story. I don't know how many people left young children behind, but it was very dangerous to try to get out of the country. So this is not that uncommon. And so because of that, not all that many people ask about it. They kind of know the narrative in general, if not in specifics. And also, at least in my husband's family, I don't want to speak for all families. It was viewed as something that would be hard for her to talk about. And they didn't want to ask, they didn't want to probe.

[A]

Did her story in any way convince you to marry James?

[C]

Interesting. What a. What a great question. No. And the reason her story did not, his relationship to his mother and the woman I came to know and how much he resembled her. Meaning he was one of the most. He is one of the most evolved males I have ever met. Like, I used to call him the Phil Don, the Chinese Phil Donahue. At the time, that was actually a really spot on reference. Like, he just, he. He has a really evolved feminine side. He really like and he really tries so hard to get, to get women. This is hence why he would even stay with me after proposing and me, you know, rejecting him multiple times. He also, he just, he's up, up to the challenge. And I realized when I got to know his mother that she was one of these people. She's a strong, strong woman, outspoken, does not back down, and yet. And yet is conventional in ways, you know, follows the rules and stuff. And so this combination of pragmatism that I had been raised with and think is very much a part of my personality, coupled with a strong kind of like, renegade side. And it can be difficult at times. He found attractive, and that, of course, made him more attractive to me.

[A]

You go to China and you not only spend that time with your mother, the woman who had become your mother in law, but you also meet the daughter that she abandoned after years and years and years, and that daughter's had a rough life, a very rough life, and yet they reconcile. That was amazing to me. How did it happen?

[C]

So, yes, you Ying, my mother in law left a child to show in her early years and that was a combination of it was too risky to a very long, arduous journey to get out of the country or to get to Shanghai, where my father in law was stationed before leaving for Taiwan. So that journey would have been rough. And also his parents were still there in the mainland and you know, as in Chinese tradition, thought they needed someone to take care of them. And an offspring is always the person you would choose. Even though they had to act as though she wasn't their biological granddaughter because her parents were now, you know, rebels and that connection would have been dangerous. So they just treated her as a foundling, which is what my daughter is, who we adopted because we do not know the state of her parents. She definitely could have been bitter and was somewhat bitter about that, right? Because she grew up, was thrown out onto the street by the grandmother, eventually step grandmother, actually grew up very poor through the Cultural Revolution. You know, that's all just really tough stuff, right? And later on, once the gate to China is open and she discovers she has this whole other family, that family, those children grew up in relative, you know, a lot easier existence in Taiwan. So she had a lot to be angry about, to be bitter about. But I would have to say that pragmatism is a very strong part of at least the Chinese people I know, and much like my own family. You know, I think she decided, made a conscious decision that a living mother who was returned to her was something she was going to embrace and that she wanted her in her life. And that's really what's at the heart of the book, is survival, which I think a lot of people think is a static state. You are a survivor, so you have survived something. To me, it is not. It is a fluid state. It is something that evolves. The way you look at those events over time, change the way you are able to manage them, change.

[B]

When you're telling your mother in law's story. I'm always looking for sentences about why writers write. And I read when Yu Ying began telling me about her encounter with the bully and about how she plotted to get even. I listened without embellishing. It was only later, when I sat down with the full transcription of that interview, that I started embroidering, not to co opt her experience, but to share in it, letting it be the creative inspiration for yet another movie shooting in my head. Is that why you write?

[C]

Hmm, great question, Kate. Yeah, I think it is. I think at its core, you're trying to process when you're writing, right? You're, you're Doing that. And look, I am not Chinese. I am not her. I'm not even of her generation. And I didn't want anyone thinking I was trying to do that because really, honestly, I'm trying to process. And you can feel me trying to do that in the book. I'm trying to process what her story says to me and how it can integrate in my life and actually, you know, teach me things, because that's how we evolve, right? And so I let it be what it wanted to be for me. And that's not the same way anyone else would have heard her story. It's not the same way even that she is probably telling it. It's just how I heard it.

[A]

To jump ahead. You finally accept James. Finally.

[B]

Way to go, James. I know.

[C]

Victoria. It would have been a funnier, funnier movie. Would have been if he had walked away at that point, but.

[B]

Right, okay, well, I can't do this right now.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have. That would have been a much Funnier.

[A]

After his 722nd proposal, you finally say yes. And he says, well, it's about damn time. And you decide you want a child and you can't have one. So you decide to adopt, and you decide to adopt in China. What were your emotions and thoughts as you went through that process? And why China?

[C]

So, first of all, there's a lot of. It's liberating to be the last of the brood, right? A large family, because no one's looking at you to carry on the family name, especially if you're a woman. But even for him, it wasn't like, oh, you must go forth and multiply and carry on the name. And I think, honestly, I had always thought of adoption as something that was great to do. Like, as in, there are children in this world who exist and who do not have the comforts of a home and parents that, you know, are dedicated to them, and I don't see any difference. The biological connection did not. Was not preeminent for me. It was never that big of a factor. So adoption was always on the table between both of us. The last reason, and I did think of it in this way, was his mom had left a child behind. We would go, and this would be one child taken from a land where one had been left behind. And that felt so enormously right that I. I didn't want to ignore it.

[B]

We did a book a few years ago with a fabulous Hmong writer, Kao Kalia Yang, and she wrote her mother's story called Where Rivers Part. And when she sat down to write her mother's story. Her mother said, I don't want you to tell my story because it's too ordinary. And of course, it turns out not to be ordinary. They're fleeing with a baby through a river. And the. And you, Ying, thought her story was too ordinary. It sounds to me like there were times where you thought your own story was too ordinary. So I'm just wondering, is all of our lives. Are all of our lives worthy of a memoir?

[C]

I think there are people who would say yes, but doesn't mean everyone can write them. But someone said in one of the reviews of this book that memoir is its own kind of therapy. And I would agree with that. That process is the same. What. Trying to figure it out, just talking it through or writing it through. What I think is different about putting it down and putting it out as a book is it does have to be a bit more than that.

[B]

Was the title one of the first things you had nailed down or one of the last?

[C]

Last one of the last. I didn't discover that these two children were born in the Year of the Water Horse until a couple of years ago.

[B]

And when you read that, were you like, that's it?

[C]

I yelled. I. I yelled at my computer. I went, no effing way. That is what I said. It was too weird to. But it's not the only coincidence of this book. But it's so, so, so strange.

[A]

You talk about writing, and I'm quoting you as a magnificently masochistic craft. Really? And. And why do you push yourself through that?

[C]

Oh, man. Because it has, like, all the rewards. I mean, it's better than anything. I know. And that includes the thing you think I'm talking about. It's. It's better than anything. It's a high that I. When you crack the code of a great sentence, a great paragraph, it is art. And it is something I recognize in other people's writing and something I constantly look for in my own. And it is absolutely worth. But it is. If you're a perfectionist or a control freak. Raising my hand, It's. That's the torturous part. You always could make it better. As my husband says, the. In his business, the chicken is done. When the chicken is done. If you cook it too much, it's inedible. If you don't cook it enough, it could kill somebody. But in my business, the writing business, the chicken is never done.

[A]

Janice Page, it's wonderful to have you in the bookcase. Thank you very much. And all you need to do is read what's in the fly leaf and you know you're in for a good time. As she writes at the beginning, what's true is not always convincing, and what's convincing is not always true. That's Nietzsche, I think. But it might be something I made up, or did I find it in a fortune cookie? Doesn't matter. It still produces a good story and a good memoir. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

Janice Page, the Year of the Water Horse. There's no spoiler involved in this, but toward the end of the book, she gives us very nice sort of encapsulation of where she's come out and we ask her to read that paragraph.

[C]

The idea of home has changed so much for me. It's no longer confined to a tiny kitchen in Braintree, Massachusetts, where the Serenity prayer hangs on a wall. Home now extends at least as far as China, which my parents used to recommend. I dig to as they handed me a beach pail and the flimsiest plastic shovel money could buy. They didn't foresee that I would get there eventually, multiple times, and all my digging would lead right back to serenity, the model that's attained instead of granted, not as platitude but as creed.

[B]

Janice Page, and an example of why you should read the Year of the Water Horse. There's great writing in this book, a terrific memoir. And when we come back, we'll talk to Booksmart in California, a great independent store who's optimistically expanding.

[C]

Foreign.

[D]

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[A]

And we have a bookstore for you this week. It is Book Smart in the San Jose region in California. In this day, when I think people still have an impression, which was true for a while, that there was a contraction of the number of independent bookstores in the country, they're now expanding and Booksmart has expanded to a second location. So we were interested in talking to them about why. This is Brad Jones and Cinda Meister who are the two owners of the store? And while we talked to them, they were the only people in the store working, and customers kept coming in and they would have to leave the microphone. You'll hear that as we talk to the two of them, the owners of Booksmart in the San Jose region in California. Brad Jones, you've been 30 years in one location and you now open a second location even bigger. That's optimistic. One of my favorite trivia questions about California is what are the three most populous cities in California? And nobody ever guesses. San Jose. It's a big city. So now you've got two parts of it covered. Where are you and why did you expand?

[E]

Well, Morgan hill is about 12 to 15 miles south of San Jose. We're a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. And a lot of people moved here like 40 years ago because IBM opened a plant nearby. It grew real fast. Then it kind of settled into a steady pace of growth here. And the bookstore that had been in town had been through five owners. And we saw them go out of business again and said that we just.

[A]

Can'T let that happen.

[E]

We have to have a bookstore in Morgan Hill. We looked at it as everybody needs to read. You know, we were young and naive and that it was an. An inventory management and customer service business. And we have been doing that since we were kids. So we, we literally took over the space that had been the bookstore. It still had bookshelves in it, got our credit card and bought some books. And every day there was. There was a book wholesaler at the time in San Jose. And every day I would take my list of books we had sold and go up to San Jose and go through their warehouse and pull new titles and bring them back. And that's how we got started. We love our location, we love our landlord, and we wish we had a little bigger space here, but we don't. And the center where we are now is very popular. There's never. The space never opens up. You know, we were here, we're settled, we're doing well. The east side of San Jose was a book desert. There just. It was like, from our location, it was like 40 minutes to get to a bookstore. And we felt that that was just a prime spot to bring books to the neighborhoods. And so that's what we did.

[A]

So that's ambitious. I mean, after 30 years of being in one part of San Jose, to go into this large store in the Eastridge section, what caused you to take the plunge?

[E]

Optimism and maybe a little hope.

[A]

Your wife Was reluctant. What did you say to her to bring her along?

[E]

Well, she said, well, if you get the loan, I'm fine with it. Thinking that I would never make that happen.

[B]

Showed her.

[E]

So when we got approved, she was like, oh boy, why did I say that? And so begrudgingly she went along and it was kind of hard to get her to open up to the idea. But once we started getting into the planning stages and stuff, then she got excited about doing it. I think that I've always felt good about this community. And they're wanting to have a bookstore in the community. And we were supported by several different groups in our community at amazing, amazing level. There are many groups here. One is, I don't know if you're familiar with the aauw. It's the American association of University Women. They have a strong chapter here and they were always supported us very strongly. The Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, has always worked with us on projects because lots of times they. They buy books for underserved populations and they would always do that through us. Just time after time after time, people have stepped up to support us and vice versa. And we always wanted to be a part of wherever we lived. We didn't want to be just a fixture as far as being installed. And that's it. We wanted to help improve our community and make it a better place. I'm going to go find Cinda so she can join in this conversation.

[A]

Brad was saying that when it came to a second location, you were not over the moon about it. What was your hesitation? And we asked him, how did he convince you to do this?

[F]

He wore me down. My hesitation is just finances, basically. You know, I didn't want to go into anything like that. Totally under financed. We've tried that before and, you know, it's just not the way to go. So I wanted to make sure we could, we could do it and do it right if we were going to do it.

[B]

Who was the driving force behind deciding you wanted to do this in the first place? Was it you or Brad?

[F]

Brad. We both were in between jobs. We worked for businesses that kind of went under. And there was a local bookstore and Brad drove me over there and there was a sign in the window that said bookstore closed. And he said, what do you think? I said, oh, that's really sad. He said, no, what do you think? I said, it's sad, Brad, what do you mean? He said, no, how about opening a bookstore? And I thought about it and said, well, yeah, we know customer service, we know food. It had A little cafe. We were in the restaurant business all our life. How hard could it be being the naive person that I am?

[A]

The new location in Eastridge, just looking at your website, it's pretty big. It's bigger than the original store in Morgan Hill. Is it? Or is it about the same size? What's the comparative size?

[E]

No, it's about two and a half, three times as big as this location.

[A]

Talk to me about. Since you're 30 years into this now, or more than 30 years, talk to me about the satisfactions that you have found in owning bookstores.

[E]

To tell you, I was thinking about this this morning, about how every morning when I wake up, I am glad to go to work. And, you know, there is an occasion where I'm like, I wish I didn't have to go in today. But generally speaking, I am glad to get to work and get started every morning. And, you know, I'm almost 70. And to be still be saying that is, you know, I think that a lot of people don't have that same kind of experience at work. If you love books and you love people, then I think that, you know, this is the kind of business to be in.

[A]

Brad Jones and Cinda, thank you both for being with us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

30 years. 30 years in the Morgan Hill section of San Jose and now expanded into the East Ridge center loop. We wish you well with your second location, and may the first continue to do well.

[B]

Brad Jones and Cinda Meister running Booksmart in its second location. I not only take hope in the fact that they're expanding, but I sort of love that interview. You know, sometimes we talk to bookstore owners on their day off and they're at home and it's very quiet, or they look like they're professionally set up. I love that. Not only were they serving customers, and we were listening to the Bell, which was constantly going during the interview, but at one point he's like, here, talk to my wife. And like, it was. It was like a real phone call. It was kind of like, here, talk to. Talk to my friend for a minute while I do something else.

[A]

Well, and there wasn't much question as to what their first priority was if a customer walked in. Well, we're glad to be tweaking to the podcast, but we got to take.

[B]

Care of the customers.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

There may be a sale involved. And you ain't making us any money. Charlie and Kate.

[B]

Heck, no. Heck no. Heck no. Okay, so that was really fun.

[A]

We'll bring you up to date or I'll bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible, and then we'll have a final thought from Janice Page. The Bookcase With Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions and our Executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kulberg and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast, you can find them listed in the episode description.

[C]

The words I try to live by come from a higher power, and that is Fran Leibowitz who said, think before you speak, read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself.

[G]

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[C]

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