“The Reader’s Notebook” is a radio feature using general interest pieces, often of literary or historic significance. Topics include science, technology, philosophy, folklore and the arts.
The series is written and hosted by J. D. Reeder, a retired educator, historian, avid reader and regular writer, director, and performer with the Morehead Theatre Guild.
Each segment will include vignettes about writers, artists and other noteworthy people whose birthdays or other significant events coincide with the date of the program.
Word and phrase origins will be explored, often with a Kentucky connection or include poems and excerpts from other writings associated with the subject of the day. Each episode will conclude with the phrase: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year,” a quotation from noted American poet and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Theme music for "The Reader's Notebook" provided by Todd Kozikowski ("Shadows of the Moon"/1997).
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After 11 years and 1,500 episodes, J.D. Reeder has announced his retirement of hosting “The Reader’s Notebook” on Morehead State Public Radio. -
Since 2014, “The Reader’s Notebook” has been researched, written, and hosted by J. D. Reeder, a retired educator, historian, and writer. -
Julia Alvarez is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Yo!. -
Strother Douglas Martin Jr. was an American character actor who often appeared in support of John Wayne and Paul Newman and in Western films directed by John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. -
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. -
Carl Reiner was an American actor, comedian, director, screenwriter, and author with a career spanning seven decades. He won 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 1999, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. -
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was a British explorer, army officer, orientalist writer and scholar. -
John Caldwell Calhoun was an American statesman and political theorist who served as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. -
Daniel Lambert was an English gaol keeper and animal breeder from Leicester, famous for his unusually large size. After serving four years as an apprentice at an engraving and die casting works in Birmingham, he returned to Leicester around 1788 and succeeded his father as keeper of Leicester's gaol. -
Thomas Augustine Arne was an English composer. He is best known for his patriotic song "Rule, Britannia!" and the song "A-Hunting We Will Go", the latter composed for a 1777 production of The Beggar's Opera, which has since become popular as a folk song and a nursery rhyme.
