I never, ever miss an author’s note!  A great author’s note is like the key that turns the lock to all of the author’s obsessions, motivations, disappointments and intriguing morsels from their childhoods.

Here’s an example: Natalia Petrzela’s new book about America’s obsession with exercise is a lively arc of exercise history that begins with a trend in Teddy Roosevelt’s day.

But Petrzela’s author’s note was replete with juicy details about her own life as an awkward and out of shape young Bostonian who had no talent for sports or dance.  

“The activity I most despised was the required one: physical education," she writes.

This is the stuff I live for!  

If I’m going to spend hours reading about how we got from here to there in America’s infatuation with fitness, I want to know what inspired the author to spend years researching and writing a book about it.  

Sometimes the author’s note or the acknowledgments page details the struggle the author had to bring the book to fruition.  

I love those!   

In Kelly Barnhill’s young adult novel, “The Ogress and the Orphans,” she slips an ode to her readers in her acknowledgments page about how she thinks about writing.  

“A story is an experience. Or, no, that’s not right.  A story is a process," she writes.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s novel “The Evening Hero” includes an author’s note that details how essential the stories of Korean War veterans were to the writing of her novel.

Then there’s Ann Patchett, she doesn’t believe in author’s notes or acknowledgments. Too revealing, she says.

Luckily for me and all of the readers whose curiosity doesn’t end with the story on the page, Ann Patchett is the exception, not the rule.

— Kerri Miller | MPR News