On tour: Meet the author Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of The Signature of All Things (Bloomsbury). She is attending Adelaide Writers’ Week and touring Australia and New Zealand in February and March.
What would you put on a shelf-talker for your book?
Pride and Prejudice meets Master and Commander!
What are you reading right now?
Frances & Bernard by Carlene Bauer (Vintage). I’m only three pages in, but it’s lovely so far.
Which book do you always recommend?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It’s remarkable how many people haven’t read it—or haven’t read it since they were forced to read it in school. It’s eternally marvellous, especially that first scene in the graveyard. You simply can’t write a better opening to a novel than that.
What was the defining book of your childhood?
The complete ‘Wizard of Oz’ series of books by L Frank Baum. We had an old set of them from the 1930s, with amazing Art Deco illustrations, passed down lovingly through the generations. These volumes of wonder constituted our family bible, basically.
If you were a literary character you’d be …
Isabel Archer.
What’s your favourite book adaptation (film, television or theatre)?
Brokeback Mountain.
What’s the best advice an editor or publisher has ever given you?
Don’t pursue a career path; just pursue a path.
Hardback, paperback or digital?
All of the above, depending upon whether I’m at home, at the beach, or on million-hour overseas flight.
Facebook or Twitter?
Both, though I like the sweet earnestness of Facebook better than the general insecurity and snarkiness of Twitter. That said, when I’m feeling insecure or snarky, Twitter beckons.
In 50 years’ time books will be …
… passed illegally, hand-to-hand in tattered remains, between brave revolutionaries living in a dystopic anti-intellectual nightmare landscape. Just kidding! No, books will be exactly what they are now and have been for centuries: the most efficient and lovely form of imaginative escape and emotional transformation humans have ever invented. Books may not look exactly how they look now, but that’s still what they will be.
Tags: ontour
Category: Features
