Hi, I'm Michael Silverblatt. Thanks for tuning into Bookworm. Some of our most exciting storytellers share their work orally, and that's the kind of work you can hear on KCRW's Unfictional.

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Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good? No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today my guest is Charles Baxter.

Now I hear you saying, wait, Charles Baxter, wasn't he on last week?

Yes, he was.

I have been waiting for 25 years to talk to Charles Baxter

on my program, and I'm not letting him go away without talking a bit about reading, because

he has introduced me to more of my favorite books than any person I've ever met.

You know, his taste is such that I know sooner here of a book Charles Baxter recommends

than I run off to get it. He recommended five books in the Wall Street Journal. The one I didn't

have I put on order. It came yesterday. I'm going to read it as soon as I get home today.

So this is a looser-limbed conversation about reading and writing. Charles's new book is, there's something I

...