Describe your latest book.My new book, Thunder and Lightning, is about weather and humankind through the ages.
How did the last good book you read end up in your hands, and why did you read it?
I'm reading Ian Frazier's On the Rez, which was given to me by a friend. Fantastic book.
Aside from other writers, name some artists from whom you draw inspiration.
Charlotte Salomon, Frances Glessner Lee, Jockum Nordström, Otto Dix. Also early medieval painting, 15th-century German portraiture, Flemish still lives, film stills, and scrimshaw art.
What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?
When I was a kid I worked with my grandfather and his brother, my great-uncle, at their grocery store in Worcester, Massachusetts. I helped my grandfather behind the meat counter. Sometimes this involved getting slabs of beef out of the meat locker, sometimes I had to slice chickens in half with an electric saw. I loved the store, but it made me a vegetarian.