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 be without books?

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

Today I'm thrilled to have as my guest, Susan Orlean.

The book, most recently, Rintin Tin, The Life and the Legend, it's published by Simon

and Schuster.

Well, you know, I usually do fiction and poetry, and I found myself reading Rintin Tin,

maybe because I liked the orchid thief so much, and I learned all kinds of things

about this remarkable dog that I didn't think would be part of my life.

And there is something incredibly endearing about this kind of reporting.

Describe this kind of reporting. What is it?

That's a good question because people often say, what do you call this?

Is this narrative nonfiction?

Is this, what is it?

And I just say it's storytelling.

What happens is I fall in love with an idea.

And in this case, I had encountered a little bit of information about the real story of

Rintin Tin, not the television character that I knew, but the real dog behind that character.

...