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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

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.

My guest today, Jamie Gordon, won this year's National Book Award with her novel, Lord of Miss Rule, published by McPherson and Company.

It occasioned a great deal of surprise. The other nominees, three of them were very well known.

Jamie Gordon was probably the least predictable winner, and yet, for me, the most thrilling.

Janet Maslin in the New York Times says, this novel is so assured, exotic, and uncategorizable,

with such an unlikely provenance that it arrives as an incontrovertible winner,

a bona fide bolt from the blue.

Jamie, you must have been thrilled.

I was thrilled and I remain thrilled, but because of exactly that surprise, that was the principal thing that was mentioned in the press for two weeks,

I felt that a bad thing could happen not only to me but to the judges who'd been brave enough to pick a book that was unexpected

and to the National

Book Foundation if one New York Times reviewer said this was a complete mistake and the

National Book Foundation should call up Jamie Gordon right away and say we're really sorry but

you have to give it back.

I'm capable of terrible dread.

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