Episode 57: For food critic Nancy Leson, deadlines got in the way of a good time

Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing 

Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food. 

That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out! podcast. 

Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year. 

Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood.  

She’d always wanted to own a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, so she filled out a postcard to get more information. 

It was a particularly cold winter night in Anchorage, Alaska, when Leson heard a fateful knock on her apartment door.   

She opened the door and exclaimed, “Are you the encyclopedia salesman?” 

The man was flustered. “The guy looks and me and asks, ‘How did you know that?’” 

In his many years of sales calls, no one had ever asked if he was the encyclopedia salesman, he explained. 

“Damned if that night did I not buy, a poor nursing student in my 20s in Anchorage, Alaska, a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, a gorgeous leather set, that this man came into my house and did nothing more than sell me a set of encyclopedias. I was a very brave young woman.” 

Leson still has those encycl