TTT: Authors

This week’s Top Ten at The Broke and Bookish is Top Ten Authors I Would DIE to meet (living or dead). So fun. And tricky. But I bet you can guess the first one.

1. Salman Rushdie. The man is a linguistic genius. And a staunch believer in the power of language and our right to use it. Check out this lovely NYTimes article. Yes, Mr. Rushdie, one day we will meet. Book signing when you write about the fatwa?

2. Thomas Friedman. Major journalistic envy for this guy. I love his writing, I love his idealism, I love his knowledge of the Middle East. I love his new NYTimes photo. Looking good, there, Tom. Are you perhaps friends with the advertising manager for the Times? We had lunch a few weeks ago, you know.

3. Chaim Potok. His books are beautiful and heartbreaking. Quite a bit of my initial Jewish knowledge came from him, and we all know how much I love that.

4. Madeline L’Engle. The older I get, the more I love her young adult fiction. I’ve read all her YA books multiple times. I like the way she blends the religious with the scientific. And there is such a thing as a tesseract. *shiver*

5. David Crystal. I love his analysis of English linguistics. Very accessible to laymen (which I am not, but still), and not so descriptive that I feel like all grammar rules are utterly forgotten. Plus, he blogs! He’s responded to comments I’ve made on the blog—does that count as meeting? I think probably no. 

6. L. M. Montgomery. I feel like I keep saying this, but I love her books. They never get old. They have also inspired me to take the ferry from Maine to Prince Edward Island at some point while I live in Boston. I want to see where the Anne-girl lived.

7. J. K. Rowling. How can I not include the woman who created the magical world of Harry Potter? Talent like that is truly astonishing, and there are so many questions I would ask her about her writing process. Plus maybe she’d invite me to have tea with her and Alan Rickman. Now wouldn’t that be something.

8. C. S. Lewis. The man is brilliant. What interesting conversations you could have.

9. F. Scott Fitzgerald. I am fascinated by his life. Could I meet Zelda too? They are so horribly tragic, but his writing is lovely. And I’d love to hear him talk about working with Maxwell Perkins. And Hemingway.

10. Margaret Mitchell. The woman who wrote my favorite book of all time, but then nothing ever again. She had a pretty interesting life herself.

I’d like to mention that I have met two authors who would normally have made it on this list, but since I’ve talked to them already they no longer qualify:

Simon Winchester. I told him his discussion of the Oxford English Dictionary was brilliant; he told me to apply for a scholarship he was starting in honor of Larry Ashmead and he’d pull some strings for me because I like his books.

Leif Enger. I heard him read from So Brave, Young, and Handsome at Powell's and fell mildly in love. His brother Lin read from his book Undiscovered Country at the same time. Both great (people and books).