Do you have questions for authors of books you read?

[charlatti]

When you read a book, how often do you have questions for the author? I keep getting notifications from Goodreads that various authors are doing Q&As, but I can never think of anything I'd want to ask that wouldn't have already been answered in previous reviews or interviews.

[aurora]

I had all sorts of questions I wanted to ask JK Rowling, esp. while waiting for the next books to come out! And sometimes I might have some questions when I finish a book. For example,

If I could talk with Leo Tolstoy I'd ask him why he ruined an otherwise perfectly good book like War and Peace with a ridiculous anti-woman diatribe at the end.

I'd ask Margaret Mitchell exactly what she really thought of slavery, race relations, and the civil war.

I'd ask Suzanne Collins where in the world she got the idea for a bunch of kids being thrown into a ring to kill each other (though she may have already answered that in an interview somewhere).

By the way - I didn't open your post earlier because I read the title as a question you wanted to ask people who are authors, so you might want to edit it to get more responses.

[charlatti]

Apr 20, 2013 11:00:36 GMT -5 aurora said:

By the way - I didn't open your post earlier because I read the title as a question you wanted to ask people who are authors, so you might want to edit it to get more responses.

And I misspelled questions! Hopefully the edit makes it more clear; my brain seems to be on standby this week.

[MrsAxilla]

I'd like to ask George RR Martin when the fuck the next book is coming out!!

[dorothyinAus]

Most of my questions would be "why didn't you continue the series?" unless the author in question is dead and then the list of questions would be much more along the lines of "what happened to the characters?"

[hopecounts]

Apr 20, 2013 11:00:36 GMT -5 aurora said:

I had all sorts of questions I wanted to ask JK Rowling, esp. while waiting for the next books to come out! And sometimes I might have some questions when I finish a book. For example,

If I could talk with Leo Tolstoy I'd ask him why he ruined an otherwise perfectly good book like War and Peace with a ridiculous anti-woman diatribe at the end.

I'd ask Margaret Mitchell exactly what she really thought of slavery, race relations, and the civil war.

I'd ask Suzanne Collins where in the world she got the idea for a bunch of kids being thrown into a ring to kill each other (though she may have already answered that in an interview somewhere).

Have you ever read a biography of Margaret Mitchell?
its really interesting, so much of GWTW is autobiographical.
she was fairly liberal for the time so it would be interesting to ask her what she thought of all of that.
I'm torn between thinking she was just using an interesting setting to depersonalize some personal stuff she was working through in her writing and being realistic that she was from a time/class/culture that would've glorified the Civil War and the rest.
though given the way she gave the finger to the Atlanta Society during her debut year I don't know how much she tok that in beyond the interesting stories.

[aurora]

Apr 21, 2013 17:21:04 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Apr 20, 2013 11:00:36 GMT -5 aurora said:

I had all sorts of questions I wanted to ask JK Rowling, esp. while waiting for the next books to come out! And sometimes I might have some questions when I finish a book. For example,

If I could talk with Leo Tolstoy I'd ask him why he ruined an otherwise perfectly good book like War and Peace with a ridiculous anti-woman diatribe at the end.

I'd ask Margaret Mitchell exactly what she really thought of slavery, race relations, and the civil war.

I'd ask Suzanne Collins where in the world she got the idea for a bunch of kids being thrown into a ring to kill each other (though she may have already answered that in an interview somewhere).

Have you ever read a biography of Margaret Mitchell?
its really interesting, so much of GWTW is autobiographical.
she was fairly liberal for the time so it would be interesting to ask her what she thought of all of that.
I'm torn between thinking she was just using an interesting setting to depersonalize some personal stuff she was working through in her writing and being realistic that she was from a time/class/culture that would've glorified the Civil War and the rest.
though given the way she gave the finger to the Atlanta Society during her debut year I don't know how much she tok that in beyond the interesting stories.

No, never read a biography and don't know much beyond the book itself, but I could definitely see writing a book like that to work through some confusion in your own life.  That's interesting that a lot of GWTW is autobiographical. 

[hopecounts]

Apr 22, 2013 8:45:19 GMT -5 aurora said:

Apr 21, 2013 17:21:04 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Have you ever read a biography of Margaret Mitchell?
its really interesting, so much of GWTW is autobiographical.
she was fairly liberal for the time so it would be interesting to ask her what she thought of all of that.

No, never read a biography and don't know much beyond the book itself, but I could definitely see writing a book like that to work through some confusion in your own life.  That's interesting that a lot of GWTW is autobiographical. 

It is.
her first fiancée died of Spanish flu during WW1 (like Scarlett's husband died of dysentery), her Mom died while she was away at college like Scarlett's died whole she was away, they had a difficult relationship (her mom was a suffragette and very big on women's rights/activism and she just wasn't and felt like a disappointment) 
and so on its really crazy.
her Rhett was her abusive husband and her Ashley was his BFF that she ended up marrying and being with the rest of her life.

[duckduck]

Now I feel like I need to re-read GWTW and look up a biography of Margaret Mitchell! That's so interesting.

I usually don't have any questions that I would like to ask authors. I like to view the works as standalone, self-contained pieces, for the most part. If you're into literary criticism theory at all, New Criticism always resonated with me the most.

Sometimes, particularly with Mark Twain, I really like to trace the author's development of themes throughout his/her body of work. But even if Mark Twain walked into my office right now and I got to ask him a question, I'd probably just say "Would you tell me a story?"

[GilliC]

I want to ask Yann Martel what the point of that whole bit about the algae island is in Life of Pi.

I want to ask Cormac McCarthy why only one paragraph of The Road is in first person.

And I want to ask Walter James Miller a dozen things about A Canticle for Liebowitz, but I doubt he'd answer. I think half the point was to walk away thinking/wondering/speculating about it. If I got one shot, I would ask if the old man was really Lazarus or if he was simply a personification of the Jewish population.