Hi, I'm Anne Strangeamps, and I have an invitation for you.

This week, to the best of our knowledge, is launching a brand new micro podcast.

It's called Bookmarks, Tiny Stories from Writers about the books they love most and why.

And we'll tell you all about it after this.

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Hamps.

Is there a book that left a mark on you? A book you've read and re-read more than once.

A book you can't forget.

It took some time before she was used to the movement, and then she felt a wild exhilaration.

She was riding a bear.

Writer Chloe Benjamin picks The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

Lyra wanted to talk to the bear, but he was so strange and wild and cold that she was shy, almost for the first time in her life. So as he loped along, his great legs swinging tirelessly, she sat with the movement and said,

nothing. And all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North.

We interview a lot of writers on this show.

And for years, we've been asking them to tell us about a favorite book.

And thanks to them, we have traveled from the streets of Harlem to 19th century St. Petersburg

in the snow.

From a Nazi concentration camp to a madwoman's attic,

and from the witches of Eastwick to that mysterious northern land of armored bears.

Here's what I've learned.

The relationships we have with books can be among the most profound and meaningful of our lives.

Books can dazzle, entrance, comfort, and

also enrage us. They can shape our thinking, even the course of our lives. But we don't

...