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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 be without books?

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

Today, my guest is Michelle Hunovan.

Her book is called Off Course, and it's published by Faris Strauss and Giroux under the imprint of

Sarah Crichton books. And I got to tell you, I read it in two days, and it was such a read. It was so

emotional. At first, I thought it was very, very sexy, and then I realized, oh, not everyone's going to get what they want.

And it really put me in the human frame of mind where, yes, it is true, the wages of sin.

You think that you're going to go off track, put aside your dissertation,

fall in love with the perfect man, the most juicy man available, but he does not turn out

to be a safe man. He's always juicing everywhere he looks. And then she finds another, and you think,

oh, what a landscape, a place of paradise, you know, sex, and then more sex. I just thought,

what an incredibly pleasurable place to visit until we realize that real life

is going to visit, and it gets better still, because real life is better, even if it teaches

you harsh lessons. Now, when you started this, Michelle, did you know that you were going to write

something like an erotic fairy tale that would come crashing?

I knew that there was a certain edinic quality to it.

...