Create Your Own Author Quarantine House

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Happy Post-Easter/Post-Passover Monday!

I’m sure you’ve seen the memes circulating around the internet offering up choices of authors for your ideal quarantine house. The first I saw on my Facebook page, gave the following author options (all, sadly, dead):

Apart from the fact that there are some weird juxtapositions on this list, I would be a definite for House #3…if only Ayn Rand wasn’t in it:)…though, to be fair, she would be a pretty interesting person to debate (and who wouldn’t be having some heated debates in an author quarantine house!).

The next quarantine author house choice meme I saw circulated was this:

For this one, I think House #1 is too good an opportunity to pass up (I mean, Stephen King!) and I, for one, would love to see the potential genre mash-up that could result from a collaboration between all the authors in House #1…

Finally, I saw this list, which was based on bestselling authors and which included, yet again, Stephen King (an obviously popular quarantine choice!):

These house options posed the biggest dilemma for me – I mean Neil Gaimon would be awesome, but J.K Rowling would also be an amazing author to hang out with during quarantine, not to mention Philip Pullman…In fact, if I was to create a quarantine house based on this list of bestselling authors I would have all three of these authors plus Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguru…although given some of their versions of dystopia, things could get pretty depressing in that particular quarantine house!

All these memes are a fun distraction from the uncertainties and challenges of real life in the current lockdown and so I thought, why not create our own challenge here at the TKZ?!

To start things off – and get the ball rolling – I propose the following five authors for my own ‘ideal’ quarantine author house:

  • Jane Austen (who understands, after all, the need for social distancing)
  • Albert Camus (for a dose of existentialist angst)
  • Joseph Conrad (included only because of my obsession with Heart of Darkness)
  • Umberto Eco (for erudite conversations that mess with my mind)
  • Daphne Du Maurier (for some gothic scares)

So TKZers, what about you? Who would you nominate for your author quarantine house??

25 thoughts on “Create Your Own Author Quarantine House”

  1. Winston Churchill (who, let us recall, won the Nobel Prize in Literature)

    C. S. Lewis (for intellectual conversation mixed with whimsy and a pint)

    Bill Shakespeare (so I could watch him work)

    Robert Benchley (because we need the laughs … and the martinis)

    Raymond Chandler (to trade metaphors with)

  2. I’m not that cerebral. If I’m stuck with authors, I want to keep things light. So, with no specific reasons for each, other than I think they’d be interesting companions, I’d pick
    JD Robb
    Agatha Christie
    Robert Crais
    James Scott Bell
    Erma Bombeck

    And then I’d wonder what they’d think of being stuck with me.

  3. What a fun post!

    Corrie ten Boom (I love WWII history, stories of bravery and sacrifice)
    Joel Rosenberg (Ditto spy and espionage thrillers)
    C.S. Lewis (I could listen to him debate Wormwood the livelong day)
    Charles Martin (I can’t even imagine his gorgeous prose at the dinner table)
    Frank Peretti (All stories are black hat/white hat, good vs. evil, and his are among the best)

    If I were quarantined with this bunch, I wouldn’t have to say a word the whole time. Just listen and learn.

  4. Ursula Le Guin
    Kate Atkinson
    Ray Bradbury
    Douglas Adams
    Mary Roach

    I have so many questions. Plus each would help me to focus, some while making me laugh MAO. Who couldn’t use both right now?

  6. Does anyone remember Steve Allen’s PBS show, MEETING OF THE MINDS? Having brilliant historical figures chatting was an awesome and interesting concept.

    My brain isn’t at its best, today, courtesy of pollen so thick it’s bothering me inside of a closed home so I could only come up with one name beyond some mentioned here. Arthur Conan Doyle. Beyond Sherlock Holmes and his historical fiction, he had a fascinating and important life which included his input into submarine warfare and saving sailors in sinking ships. Sadly, he’s best remembered for the fairy debacle and his desperate belief in fake mediums.

  7. JD Robb (Nora Roberts
    JK Rowling
    Jane Austen
    Lee Child
    Michael Connelly
    Catherine Coulture

    I’m not any of these people would mix well, but it would be fun to watch Eve Dallas, Elizabeth Bennett, Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch/Renae Ballard, Savich/Sherlock, and Cormoran Strike save the world from Covid 19

  8. I’m choosing strictly the living. I could easily double or triple this. Maybe make a quarantine hotel.

    Stella Rimington (would love to hear firsthand MI5 stories)
    Tana French
    Mo Hayder
    Lee Child
    Robert Crais
    Michael Connelly

    • I almost had Tana French on my list too…and yes, let’s have a hotel rather than just a house. There’s too many great authors (both living and dead) I’d want to spend time with!

  10. All my choices are to learn more about craft and their processes:

    Suzanne Collins
    Rick Riorday
    Dan Wells
    Kendare Blake
    Mary Robinette Kowal (I also want her to teach me voice acting)

    I’m guessing most of you wouldn’t recognize half these names.

  11. I love Suzanne Collins’ books and would actually love to ask about her Gregor of the Overland series (which was a favorite of my boys!). I bet Rick Riordan would have some great craft tips for YA and middle grade fiction too:) I haven’t read books by the other authors but now I’m intrigued:)

  12. There are so many it’s hard to decide! Here are just a few:
    Stephen King
    Dean Koontz
    Agatha Christie
    PD James
    Heather Graham
    Mary Roberts Rinehart

  15. Mine is a bit genre specific
    Harry Harrison
    Mervyn Peake
    Theodore Sturgeon
    Harlan Ellison
    Zane Grey -to talk about the outdoors

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