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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, it's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

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

And today, I'm very pleased to have a very special guest, but I'm also very pleased to have a very special guest,

but I'm also very pleased to have you, my listeners,

because I'm going to be talking to you directly

and making a special request of you.

My guest today is Craig Nova. He's written 14 books and I think of the writers

writing in America today, he's one of the very greatest. The new book is the constant heart.

And what I want to talk about is the

extent to which we readers can take back our culture because it belongs to us no longer to the

publishers, no longer to the book reviews, no longer to the bookstores, but to us.

So I want at the very outset to ask all of you to buy a book called The Constant Heart.

It's by Craig Nova. I'm telling you whether you read it or not.

It's a book of excellence, worthy of our approval and support. And I want to ask you, because we,

a lot of people don't know this yet, but we are a significant force in

literary America, perhaps the significant force.

You have formed yourself into an audience all over the world who can affect the career and destiny of a book and a writer,

and I want to see that happen with this book and this writer,

...