One of my favorite bookish links on the Web is The Writer’s Almanac, an archive of a radio show hosted by none other than Mr. Lake Wobegone himself, Garrison Keillor. From today’s show:

It’s the birthday of the novelist J K (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling, born on the outskirts of Bristol, England (1966). In school, Rowling often entertained the other children at lunch by telling stories in which all of her friends performed heroic and daring deeds. Her parents encouraged her to study French in college so that she could get a job as a bilingual secretary, but she found that she hated secretarial work. Instead of taking notes in the meetings, she daydreamed and wrote possible names for fictional characters in the margins of her notebooks.

The full story is on The Writer’s Almanac website, where you can listen to the audio recording or read a transcript.