Interview Answers #1

I'm going to do these bit by bit as they seem to be looking like the longest answers on the planet. So, here's a start and then I'm off to the couch to read a couple of my new books.

Where were you born?

Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, July 12, 1969. We left before I turned one to live in Victoria, BC and although I went back to Alberta for almost 10 years, I've never gone to Lethbridge and now that I think about it I can't say that my birthplace factors in my life at all the way it seems to with a lot of people.

What are your top five favourite books?

Jen,also is right, this one is tough, in fact, almost impossible. I think the best I can do is to tell you the books that I have RE-read over the years and that I take with me from place to place. I can pick up a book in the library, get it home and, within three pages, tell you if I've read it - before I put it down because only very rarely does something engage me or fascinate me or resonate in me so much that I can bear to read it twice. So, here we go. Three sets, the first one is novels. I'm terrible at articulating what makes them special to me - it's some kind of mental block or something - so I'm going to do that with a review that says some of what I would if I weren't so hopeless.

Shadowland by Peter Straub. I first read this in my early teens and even now, it never fails to fascinate and to make me cry at the end. One of my other favorites is Stephen King / Peter Straub's The Talisman - at their very core, they are similar and both are so very powerful and vivid.

Straub burst into fame with his previous book "Ghost Story" but this book has always been my favorite. It has stories within stories, details in one part that take on ominous meanings later in the story, and a weird meshing of magic and Grimm fairy tales. What is real and what is not is a constant question and never fully answered. It does lead to a very stunning though violent ending. It is also a coming of age book but so different from many others of that type. Truly unique which may be why it confused people at first because it fit no clear cut category. With its stunning deatil and visual images, I am amazed no one ever made this book into a movie.

Imajica, Clive Barker. Takes me breath away.

After finishing this series (reading them all in one volume can be arduous at times...but, it's worth it), I felt that aching void in my book-world... that feeling where there is no other book out there that can fulfill your fantasy cravings... no other book that can take you to the Imajica world(s). Barker's imagination is some really powerful stuff. I guess that's why I ended up reading Imajica a second time...and I'm sure I'll return to it again sometime down the road.

Everville, Clive Barker.

'Everville' could possibly be the best work Clive Barker has ever written. Although considered a sequel to 'The Great and Secret Show,' 'Everville' will stand on its own for most readers. TG&SS provides some important background material on, for example, the nature of the conflict between the inhabitants of Quiddity (the Dream Sea) and the humans here on Earth. The book overflows with Barker's imagery, and he presents vivid depictions of the Dream Sea and its otherworldly menace, the Iad Urobros. His characters are fleshed out in the extreme, and many rank with some of the most memorable in all of literature: The orphan-Maeve O'Connell, the religious skeptic-Harry D'Amour, and the unspeakably evil men vying for control of the portal to the Dream Sea above Everville, Kissoon and Tommy-Ray.

In A Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson. It's not often a book makes me laugh out loud - this one did countless times. It's a 'travel book' about Australia that no other could possibly live up to. Brilliant.

Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.

Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling--and yes, Australia is mostly dirt--finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like ...

listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction