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Welcome book nerds. It is the end of November, which means, I don't know, the trees are now, they finally, the last tree in my backyard, finally let go of the ghost, the silver maple. So I got them all picked up. But I love watching the colors change and I love listening to the sound of, I don't know, leaves skittering across

the pavement in the wind. It sounds, it's just something sort of romantic about fall, even as it

comes to an end, and the Minnesota hellish winter is coming. So. Well, your trees, your trees are,

this is Charlie Gibson, by the way. Kate's allowed me to add a word here. Your trees are

already barren in Minnesota. I'm looking out the window, and in Seattle, This is Charlie Gibson, by the way. Kate's allowed me to add a word here. Your trees are already

barren in Minnesota. I'm looking out the window, and in Seattle, we have a symphony of colors.

Still, it is a beautiful fall, and I do love fall. I don't want climate. I want weather. And I like it when the seasons change.

You want to, it just gives you, I don't know,

it's a nice feeling. I remember the first time I went to California, I got off the plane,

and I looked around and somebody said to me, isn't this great? It's like this 361 days a year,

Southern California. And I said, well, God bless them. I'm glad they enjoy it. I want, I want weather instead. I don't think they know it's Christmas unless they tie the red bows around the palm trees. And then it's like, oh, it's Christmas time. Right. I forgot. Right. That's right. The red bows are there. Yes. I want to make a mention of the fact that we skipped a week, and I apologize. We just got sort of overwhelmed,

and we haven't done that in a long time, and we won't do it again, I hope, for a long, long time.

So it was nice enough to have Catherine Newman up for two weeks with her book Wreck, but we lost

some momentum there, and I apologize for the fact that we didn't do a podcast last week.

But this week, this week we've got John Irving, the wonderful John Irving, who has a new book,

Queen Esther.

Before we get to that, there's one other thing I want to mention, which is that an event this

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