Which Authors Would You Like to Eat With?

Well there is my trinity of Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Gaiman. If I need to explain that one, I don't think I'm doing a good enough job showing what I like. I suppose the other two would have to be Pratchett and Adams, you know, just to mellow things out a bit.

Looking at it though, I'm almost certain Pratchett, Adams, and Gaiman would carry the conversation. I imagine Tolkien and Lovecraft would be a little too academic. And I mean I would just be gaping like the little fan-boy that I am.

I'd love to have dinner with Tolkein, CS Lewis, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Louisa May Alcott andErik Durkschmeid (author of The Hinge Factor, non-fiction, history stuff) but I'm afraid I might not have fun at that dinner. It might be a bit too stodgy.
So, my fun dinner list would be Kevin Hearne, Nicole Peeler, Jeaneine Frost, Team Ilona Andrews and Dakota Cassidy. I think that would be a freaking blast.

I answered the question with these folks: Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Edith Wharton, Jim Thompson and Jorge Luis Borges.

Not a romance novelist in there, unless you count Wharton (at least one of her books had a happy ending), but I chose people who were outgoing and clever. Borges is probably the shyest of the bunch, but I would wager he's the smartest, and Thompson is the loosest cannon, but I am guesing Swift and Sterne could rein him in, or Wharton would crush him with a glance.

I think I would go with J.K. Rowling, Mercedes Lackey, Harper Lee, Kresley Cole, and Simon Van Booy (he'll add the male and very literary demographic to the table, class it up a little. Plus he's pretty to look at and has an accent).

This pretty much sums up my evolution of reading and I think they would be interesting people to have dinner with in general. This list may change dramatically within the next month when I'm done with my Kresley Cole and Simon Van Booy obsessions.

My, my, we must only pick 5 ? Choix cornélien...
I'd like to have dinner with :
- Charles Baudelaire, because he's probably my favorite poet, I just love his paradoxical and tortured mind ;
- Patrick Suskind - because obviously a man who wrote an entire novel about being afraid of a pigeon is worth meeting ;
- Oscar Wilde, because he never fails to delight me ;
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, because he was pure genius ;
- and definitely George Sand, because she was such a strong, free-spirited woman it simply commands respect... and I was beginning to feel a bit lonely as a female-gender representant around the table ;)

But there are so, so many others _ Hugo, Chateaubriand, Molière, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Woolfe, Austen, Brontë, Sade, Vian, Bukowski, Hemingway, Proust, Racine, Sappho, Christie, Poe... I can already picture gathering all those brilliant minds during one evening, around a buffet perhaps ;)

Why only 5?! I think five couples, better for the seating :)
Christopher Hitchens/Dorothy Parker - for the alcohol and the vitriol
Virginia Woolf/Vita Sackville-West - for the elegance
Seth MacFarlane/Alex Borstein - bc I've never laughed harder than when I saw them live in Vegas
Julia Child/Jacques Pepin - for the love of food
Tina Brown/Harry Evans - bc they'd know everybody

This is a tough one but irresistible. It goes without saying that Jane Austen would be at the top of my list. Then, Loretta Chase, whom I'm sure would also like to have dinner with Jane and who would be around to hash over the party afterward. Dorothy Sayers for erudite gossip. Samuel Pepys (can we count him as an author?) to flirt with the ladies. And Nathaniel Hawthorne for eye candy.

Baudelaire,Bulgakov,Mayakovski, Hemingway- that dinner would be a blast.

For a romance dinner:
Laura Kinsale, Jo Beverley, Loretta Chase, Mary Balogh, Connie Brockway, Jodi Thomas, Jo Goodman, Joanna Bourne, Meredith Duran, and Eloisa James.

For a mystery dinner:
P.D. James, Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Harris, Elizabeth Peters, Michael Jecks, Sharon Kay Penman, and Elizabeth George (even though I don't read her any more--used to be a big fan--I've attended her talks and like her).

For a poetry dinner:
Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Shelley, Yeats, Frost, Shakespeare, Burns, Coleridge, Blake, and Byron.

For a literary dinner:
Austen, Bronte sisters, Alexandre Dumas, Louisa May Alcott, Jules Verne, Tracy Chevalier, G.B. Shaw, Walter Scott, and Bernard Cornwell.

1. Catherine Coulter
2. Maya Banks
3. Lori Foster
4. Linda Howard
5. Teresa Medeiros

I think a good mix would be Jacqueline Susann, Truman Capote, Zora Neale Hurston, Jackie Collins and Nora Roberts. I’d like to add 3 or 4 more to this. Not enjoying the cut off at 5. I mean it would be fun to have E.L. James talk with Dorothy Parker or Jane Austen about 50 and fan fic.

How about a really "FUN" Urban Fantasy dinner in New Orleans.
Kim Harrison, The Hollows
Jennifer Estep, The Elemental Assassin
Jeaniene Frost, The Night Huntress
Suzanne Johnson, The Sentinels of New Orleans
Steven King, some of his stuff must be urban fantasy.
We could all have Muffuletta's & Strawberry Abita beer.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, father of the Renaissance --- a no-brainer;

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson --- they had brains, and they knew how to use 'em;

Augusta Ada King, The Right Honourable the Countess of Lovelace --- oh, my, where to start? Lord Byron's only legitimate child, brilliant mathematician, the very first computer programmer, educated by some of the great mathematicians and scientists of the day. She was Baroness Wentworth in her own right (hence the Right Honourable in her style). Again, a no-brainer.

Robert A. Heinlein --- I read my first Heinlein novel when I was an impressionable six years old, and his philosophies warped shaped me. I never got the chance to meet him ... the one time I could have, I wasn't able to make the trip.

Now ... what to serve, what to serve ...?

I was looking for a broad range of ladies to fill out my dinner party. Sorry, no men allowed tonight. Most are considered romance authors, and with all the element of their stories that I enjoyed most were the romantic elements. They are a bit of a mix of the present, the past and the future.

Barbara Cartland, because like it or not, she's the grande dame. She's where it all started, and for me, the lady is a legend. She's brings the elegance to the dinner party.

Jean M Auel, because really, I just have a few questions to ask her regarding her last book in the Earth's Children's Series. I'll be nice, I promise, but I did devote nearly 30 years to that series and I deserve answers.

Sherrilyn Kenyon, because I'd just love to see first hand how her mind works. How she keeps track of all the characters and storylines in all of her many books and series' just gobsmacks me. Plus, she's very fan interactive and I bet she'd actually show up.

Stacia Kane, because when she thought up Chess Putnam she created the most diverse, interesting, perfectly flawed character I have ever came across, and also because I want to be as close as I possibly can to Terrible and the Downside scene.

Dianne Duvall, because she's a new paranormal romance author whose first two books, Darkness Dawns and Night Reigns I found I enjoyed. I'd love to hear how she came up with her ideas. I think it would be cool to have a new author there, just to hear things from a different perspective.

Only five? Hmm . . . Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maud Hart Lovelace, Laura Ingalls Wilder . . . but then there are so many others . . . .

miscellaneous group: Moss Hart, Zane Grey, P.G. Wodehouse, Robert Browning, A.A. Milne

lit theory group: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Raymond Williams

YA classic group: Maud Hart Lovelace, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Natalie Savage Carlson, and Louisa May Alcott