Fantastic collections of essays by one of the best fantasy writers ever. It's a collection of things written over the years, so there's often repetition as she talks about her influences. Even better, I think, is the way she talks about writing, what she wants to do in her books, how books comes together. One of my favorite surprising nuggets was when she talked about two things coming together in a strange way to form something new and fantastic. The example she uses is from her childhood, when she'd been relocated to the Lake District during WWII. She was told to fear Germans and never to drink from a tap that connected to water infested with typhoid germs. Being very young, she conflated Germans with germs, and typhoid with Twyford (the manufacturer of the tap), giving rise to a nightmare of Germans dashing across the surface of the lake and coming through the tap to give everyone Twyford.

That story's just particularly fascinating for a fan of DWJ, because that kind of alchemy is at the center of her books--I've always found it there more than anywhere else.

I also particularly liked one of the essays at the end by her son Colin, who talks about how his mother used real life in her books--only often inaccurately, in his view. I think I liked that because listening to DWJ talk about her life, I couldn't help but think that she was one of those people who turned every experience into a Diana-type story (or a "Girl Jones story" to use the language of the village where she grew up). I couldn't help but imagine that other people who had experienced these events with her would probably see the facts as distorted or shaped to her pov, and this seems to be exactly what Colin talks about in his essay. Though even there again you can see his pov shaping the events in ways that aren't quite accurate either.

Just a fascinating read start to finish!