On tour: Meet the author John Darnielle

John Darnielle is a writer, composer, guitarist, vocalist for The Mountain Goats and author of Wolf in a White Van (Scribe). He is travelling to Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne in February and March.

What would you put on a shelf-talker for your book?
New by-mail game—deadly future/irradiated world. Fight to survive in search of the trace Italian. Play four turns free. Send four self-addressed stamped envelopes to: Focus Games, Montclair, CA.

What are you reading right now?
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin (Faber).

What are you planning to read next?
Picking out a next book is always an agonising evening-long exercise. Right now I’m looking hardest at Michael E Veal’s Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Wesleyan University Press) and Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching (Picador). 

Which book do you always recommend?
Mercè Rodoreda’s A Broken Mirror (University of Nebraska Press).

What was the defining book of your childhood?
Hard call. Early childhood, How to Eat Fried Worms (Thomas Rockwell, Orchard). In the fifth grade our teacher read us Tolkien and I identified strongly with Gollum, so The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (HarperCollins).  

If you were a literary character you’d be …
Realistically, Sir Tristram from Le Morte D’Arthur (Thomas Malory).

What’s your favourite book adaptation (film, television or theatre)?
Doubtless The Wizard of Oz.  

What’s your favourite books website or blog?
Three Percent: www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent. 

Hardback, paperback or digital?
I never read the books I put on my hard drive, they just sit there. Between hardback and paperback it depends on the book! Nothing like a lovely hardback though.  

Facebook or Twitter?
Different functions! False choice! Facebook for keeping in touch with old friends, Twitter for jokes. 

In 50 years’ time books will be …
Obsessing a new generation of book fiends.