WELL READ with Janet Stewart
Seen every night on CBC News at Six, Janet Stewart has called Winnipeg home since moving from Halifax in 2001. She spent five years at CTV before moving to CBC earlier this year. With a hectic schedule, it can be difficult to find time for herself, but Stewart says she tries to take time every day to read. Here are three of her favourite books.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
by J.K. Rowling
“I had got into this place where I felt reading was something I had to do,” says Stewart. She says she would read history and non-fiction books, because they were what she thought she thought she should read.

That all changed when she met a certain young wizard.

“Once I decided to read Harry Potter, it reintroduced to me that reading can be fun,” she says. The Harry Potter series, which now are available with more mature covers for adult readers, is so accessible and easy. Perhaps one of the best things about it, she says, is that there is nothing to learn from it. “It’s a true escape. J.K. Rowling changed my life.”

Three Times Carlin: An Orgy of George (Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty,When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops)
by George Carlin
Stewart was lent this anthology by Murray Parker, CBC’s weather specialist. “There is no plot, just joke after joke after silly observation,” she says. “It’s made me laugh out loud.”

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
While it has been a few years since Stewart first read this book, it still stands out as one of her favourites. “It’s very twisted and warped,” she says. “I like John Irving’s style of writing. At times it’s tragic and dark, but there were also moments where I laughed out loud.”

UP NEXT: She hopes to finish the George Carlin anthology, and then re-read the Harry Potter books, before the final installment of the series comes out on July 21.