In June 2004, The Radio Reader, a.k.a. Dick Estell, celebrates his 40th anniversary of bringing newly-published books into the homes and automobiles of America.

Estell began broadcasting The Radio Reader in 1964 on WKAR-AM/FM, the same year he was promoted to station manager. The program, which originally was broadcast only to the mid-Michigan area, has expanded over the years to a national network of 100 public radio stations in 40 states with 1.5 million listeners. Currently, AM 870 WKAR airs The Radio Reader weekdays at 8:30 a.m.

“Since my first program was broadcast in June 1964, I have read 494 books on the air in their entirety,” Estell said. “At an average of 350 pages per book and 432 words per page, I have a read more than 155,000 pages and nearly 75 million words to my listeners over the past four decades. And, that comes to 10,400 half-hour programs – that’s 5,200 hours – which computes to 217 242-hour days of continuous reading and that’s not counting the times I forgot to push the record button! Looking at it in still a different light, if I started reading books on January 1, non-stop 24-hours a day, I would be reading until August 5!” And, Estell is always as surprised as his listeners to find out a book’s conclusion, since he does not read the books prior to recording them for broadcast.

Estell selects only recently released books for The Radio Reader, many of them best sellers, such as Bleachers by John Grisham, and A Perfect Day by Richard Paul Evans. The books he has read during the past 40 years literally encompass the best and most interesting general works that the publishing world has offered here in the United States. “Two of the most popular books with my listeners have been Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns and Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage,” Estell relates. He receives between 10-20 e-mails each day from listeners who want titles of books read from months or years past, or want to suggest a book to be read on the air.

Estell, who retired as WKAR Radio’s general manager in 1978 and continues to produce The Radio Reader program from his home studio in Haslett, took a few minutes recently to reflect on how the program was originally produced.

“The program originated in the studios of WKAR-AM and -FM at Michigan State University when the station was located in the Auditorium Building, and expanded through a national network that began with Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon, and Nashville, Tennessee,” Estell explained. “Back in those days, before we had the satellite interconnection between stations, we would have to send copies of the program to other stations airing it. If there were 30 stations airing it and the book had ’40 episodes’ then we’d have to send out by bus 1,200 tape copies, through the tape network, for one book to be aired on different stations.”

A small sampling of books that have either struck a chord with Estell of listeners over the years include: Incredible Victory (World War II Battle of Midway) by Walter Lord, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott, Richie (a sorrowful, disturbing, heart-rending book) by Thomas Thompson, Centennial (90 half-hours) by James Michener, Mawson’s Will (1900s British expedition to Antarctica that captures the unbelievable suffering and fortitude of man) by Lennard Bickel and Edmund Hillary, Kane and Able by Jeffrey Archer, A Fine and Pleasant Misery (humorous) by Patrick McManus, Growing Up (Estell’s all-time favorite) by Russell Baker, Fatal Voyage (worst sea disaster in American naval history) by Dan Kurzman, The Far Side of Victory by Joanne Greenberg, Having Our Say (a remarkable and charming oral history) by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany, The Ditchdigger’s Daughters (a family biography that is a modern Horatio Alger saga) by Yvonne S. Thornton, M.D. and Jo Coudert, The Professor and the Madman (the 70-year task of creating the Oxford English Dictionary) by Simon Winchester, and Last Train to Paradise (a true account of the construction and spectacular demise of the Key West railroad) by Les Standiford.

Congratulations Dick on a job well read!