Novelist Ann Patchett Loved This Beloved Book As a Kid: 'I Was Obsessed'
- - Novelist Ann Patchett Loved This Beloved Book As a Kid: 'I Was Obsessed'
Lizz SchumerDecember 27, 2025 at 3:24 AM
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Emily Dorio
Ann Patchett -
Ann Patchett appeared on a recent episode of Wild Card With Rachel Martin
She revealed her favorite children's book — and her time on a farm
The author's newest book, Whistler, hits shelves this summer
It's no surprise to anyone that author and bookstore owner Ann Patchett was a bookish child.
The author revealed her childhood favorite during a recent episode of the Wild Card With Rachel Martin podcast, as well as how living on a farm influenced her adulthood. Patchett, whose latest book Whistler comes out this June, is also the owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn.
"When I was a child, we lived on a farm for several years," she told Martin. "It was not a working farm. It was just a collection of absolute weirdness."
The farm consisted of "a couple of horses," a rabbit, dogs, cats and chickens that were all named after members of President Nixon's cabinet, she explained. "And, most importantly, I had a pig, which I got for my ninth birthday because I was obsessed with Charlotte's Web," she added. "It was just a very animal-laden, isolated life. And because I'm an introvert, that worked out fine for me."
Patchett, who also released an annotated version of her novel Bel Canto last year, added that she comes by her love of books honestly: Her parents and stepmother were all "very big readers." And even though they didn't read to the kids, what she observed turned out to be even more valuable.
Harper
Bel Canto
"I have later found out that that is actually more important than reading to children, that children see adults reading and engaged in relationships with books," she said. "In the same way you wouldn't walk in a room and interrupt a conversation between adults, you wouldn't interrupt an adult who was reading. And so I just had that modeled for me that reading was a very important activity."
The novelist also shared that, while Bel Canto is dedicated to her husband — who she was "just dating" at the time — she almost dedicated her second one to a cheating ex.
"What kind of madness was that?" she said of the former choice. "That's so nuts. And I wanna tell you my second novel, which was a book no one ever read called Taft, and I dedicated it to my boyfriend at the time."
"And I found out that he was, shall we say, stepping out on me as the book was going to press," the author went on. Fortunately, she contacted her publisher about it right in the nick of time and was able to change the dedication.
When asked to pick a moment when she'd "like to linger a little longer," Patchett also found herself mentally going back to her time on the farm.
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"It's not that childhood was all that happy, but those moments of nature and complete silence, those moments before anything called me away to do something else, you know, that sense of time when no one's gonna call you until it's dark," she reflected.
"I remember when I was a kid, I used to think so much about that whole thing of if a tree falls alone in the forest, and I would always think, I'm here. I'm I'm here. If the tree falls, I'll hear it. I'll see it."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
