Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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

All sorts of people tell me that they have special ways of knowing whether or not I like the book I'm talking about.

You don't have to wonder today.

Today I have as my guest, Carl Ova Knauskard.

He is the author of a six-volume novel titled My Struggle. It has been published here in hardcover

by a magnificent small press called Archipelago and is being published in paperback by

Farras Strauss-Sin-Jeroux. So far, the first three volumes have appeared.

Most recently, My Struggle Book 3, which is Boyhood.

And the hero, who is also named Karl Ova, has been married and seen his father die,

and now we're seeing him as a child at age six.

He is coming by bus with his parents to a place called an estate.

Now we don't have this word in English.

What is an estate?

Is it like a housing project?

Yeah, I guess so.

There's a lot of new buildings built at a place where there were no buildings before

...