Will and Jane and Dot and James, by Catriona

READING: Borrowing from the NYT Q&A with authors: You’re having a dinner party. Which four authors living or dead do you invite?

It is so tempting to cheat on this question by pretending I misread it, and go for fourteen and a table extension. (I've got one in the garage that my dad made.) Or even forty, although that would have to be a buffet.

But if I'm really going to hold it down to four, it's pretty easy.

1. Shakespeare. Who else? How could you get the chance to meet any dead writer and choose...