Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tender.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

And today I want to introduce you all to a writer you probably do not yet know.

He is here from Iceland. His name is Shon, S-J-O-N. And he is a magical writer, one of my friends to whom I've given these books,

and I've given them already to many people,

said, oh, it's as if the magic realism of South America

has traveled to the frozen north.

It's as if the stories in the classic epics were being retold by someone who does not come from that

culture and then putting them side by side with stories from Norse culture and the friction between them creates sparks, but they're

not sparks of heat.

They're sparks that come from, say, the blade of an ice gate on the ice.

AS Buy it calls you a magus.

Are you a magician, in the sense?

Well, Antonia's words are very big, you know, and at least she's put the mark very high for me to aim for.

So let's say I'm aiming to become a magician of words.

But what you're saying is absolutely right.

...