BS: Your Favorite Authors

Subject: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 04:56 PM

Well, since Bobert's "Favorite Visual Artists" thread is on its way to 100 posts, howzabout another non-musical favorites thread? Who are your favorite authors? Serious fiction, non-fiction, popular fiction, science fiction...it doesn't matter. No limit on the number. But, let's limit it to prose and save the poets for a thread all for themselves.

Here's my list:

Kurt Vonnegut
Tom Robbins
Carl Hiaasen
Stephen King    (Shhhh! Don't tell anyone I said that!)

Yeh, I'm kind of a lowbrow. Got enough "real literature" as an English Major in college to last for a long time.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: YOR
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 05:10 PM

Kurt Vonnegut
J.R.R. Tolkien
Mark Twain

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Poddy
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 05:15 PM

Can it only be three?

Robert Heinlein
Spider Robinson
Mercedes Lackey
Orson Scott Card

The rest I don't admit to.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 05:19 PM

Dorothy Dunnett
Dana Stabenow
Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels
James Lee Burke
P.D. James

That's only the top shelf in one (out of 20) bookcases.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 05:21 PM

SOME of my favorite authors are:

Sherri Tepper
Russell Banks
Kurt Vonnegut
Gloria Naylor

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Raedwulf
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 05:27 PM

Tolkien
Iain M. Banks
Tolkien
Terry Pratchett
Tolkien
Rudyard Kipling
Tolkien
Gene Wolfe

In no particular order, you understand... *bg*

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 06:17 PM

Too many to to list all, but this is interesting to try and select only one:

right now that would have to be William Least Heat-Moon

Lyle

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 06:26 PM

George Orwell
H. L. Mencken
Dwight Macdonald
James Agee
Arthur Koestler
W. H. Auden
George R. Stewart
Mark Twain
Willard V. O. Quine
Douglas R. Hofstadter
Philip Wylie
Frederik Pohl
C. M. Kornbluth
Bertrand Russell
John Dos Passos
Rudyard Kipling
Greg Egan
Richard P. Feynman

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 06:35 PM

The number of SF authors showing up is interesting...Poddy, I never would have guessed Heinlein! 8-)

No particular order:

Robert Heinlein
Mark Twain (my ol' drinkin' buddy)
Dana Stabenow (had an interesting evening in Anchorage with her....)
Spider Robinson
R. Austin Freeman
Stephen J. Gould
Mike Doogan
Pierre Bertram (the guy who writes about the Yukon)

and a whole lot of others whose names don't come to mind right now.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Gareth
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 06:41 PM

C F Forester anyone ?

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 06:57 PM

Fiction;
The non-maigret Simenon books
George Gissing
Stanley Middleton
Cheever
Hardy
The best of Arnold Bennett
and "Crazy heart" by Thomas Cobb, best novel about the music biz I ever read.

Non-fiction.
Diaries and letters...I collect 'em!
Biographies of artists, graphic, performing, etc
Travel, History, Politics.
"Dreadnought" by Robert Massie the most unputdownable history book I ever read.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 07:02 PM

Robertson Davies
John Irving
John Steinbeck
Ernest Hemingway
Douglas Adams

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 07:17 PM

C.S.FORESTER.
John Myers Myers.
Homer

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Deckman
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 07:19 PM

Ivan Doig!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 08:02 PM

NOT A MENTION OF ISAAC ASIMOV????
The good doctor must be top of my list,along with J R R Tolkien and the wonderful Terry Pratchett.
And Gareth,I am Surprised at you not getting C S Forresters initials right.
They would be my top three but Heinlien,Mc Caffrey,Scott Card,and J R
Rowlings are in there as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: RangerSteve
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 08:27 PM

Mark Twain
PG Wodehouse
Bill Bryson
Dave Barry
William Least-Heat-Moon
Stephen King - unlike BWL, I don't care who knows.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Poddy
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 08:29 PM

Yeah, I wanna add Rowlings too. And Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Lewis Carroll, and C.S. Lewis. And Neil Gaiman, and Terry Moore. There's just so many!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 08:46 PM

Well, now I know this may surprise the heck out of alot of Catboxers but I'z severely dexlexic so books don't do a lot fir me so I'm respondin' as an illiterate. With that said, accoring to a couple a documents out in a foot locker in my studio my old boney Wes Goinny butt got a couple of college degrees so I guess I musta read somthin'...

My favorite current author is GUEST even if GUEST has really pissed me off (excuse my French...) acouple of times. GUEST is a good writer and doesn't dangle any participles...

Okay, Tom Robbins. In "Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues" he talks about the rednecks on Southside Richmond, Va. and having lived there I know exactly what he was seeing. Unrelated he also writes: "If a hen and a halk can lay an egg and a half in and hour and half, then how long will it take a monkey with a wooden leg to kick the seeds outta of a dill pickle?"

But my favorite author is tough. Comes down to a coin toss between Matthew, Mark, Luke or John... but I'm going with Matthew...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: khandu
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 09:04 PM

Harper Lee (though she only had the one novel!)
Dean Koontz
Frank Yerby
Peter Straub
The guy who wrote "Lonesome Dove"
& the guy who wrote "Little Big Man"
Max Lucado
O. Henry
Oscar Wilde
Longfellow's poetry

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 09:13 PM

Khanny:

"Lonesmoe Dove" was written by Larry McMurtry, whose son is from 'round thes parts and is one heck of a singer song-writer who now lives and plays in the Austin area, James McMurtry.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 09:44 PM

Khandu - Thomas Berger wrote "Little Big Man". Another one of those literary "one hit wonders" I suppose. I've certainly not heard of any other books he wrote, but "Little Big Man" is a great one.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: kendall
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 11:01 PM

John Myers Myers
C.S. Forrester
Homer

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 16 Dec 02 - 11:47 PM

I'm not much of a fiction reader but I wait patiently (he writes a book every six or seven years) for a new Tom Robbins book.
Then there is Edward Abbey-The Monkey Wrench Gang. Great book.
And I like the writings of Richard Bach-Illusions, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull author.
Peace, Rustic

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Benjamin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 12:46 AM

Neil Postman

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,van lingle
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:22 AM

William Boyd, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, E.M. Forster, very early Hemmingway.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: mack/misophist
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:49 AM

Whoever traqnslated my copy of Dante was great
Xenophon
Marcus Aurelius
Machiavelli
Any good translation of Tao Te Ching
The guy that wrote Dee Goong An
Others
Plus Robert van Gulik

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Geordie
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 08:44 AM

Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, Robertson Davies,Lewis Carroll,Tolkien,P.D. James, Yeats,Walter Pater, Margaret Laurence and Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare because you can just open it anywhere, any play and be amazed at the art of it.
   Great thread..Thanks

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: MMario
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 08:52 AM

Most of those already mentioned - plus:

Thornton W. Burgess
L. Frank Baum

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bagpuss
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 08:58 AM

Neil Gaiman
Iain Banks
James Kelman
Douglas Adams

Thats off the top of my head - I'll probably come up with a few more soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:17 AM

Nabokov.
(Sigh.)

Raymond Carver, Calvino, Updike's short stuff, Shakespeare's long stuff. I like Shaw for some reason I can't understand, read everything, I think, even the intros.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: kendall
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:27 AM

Shakespere is in a class by himself.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: MMario
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:29 AM

That's becuase he drove everyone else out by speaking in rhyming couplets.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:34 AM

In some univerities Shakespeare is in three classes by himself: one for the thagedies, one for the comedies, one for the histories.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:38 AM

Dear Bruce,

Always proofread your posts, no matter how short. Shakespeare did not write any "thagedies". He did, however right some really nice "tragedies".

Your Mom

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 11:46 AM

Carl Hiaasen

Elmore Lenard

James Patterson

Dr. Zeuse

Dick Frances

John Stienbeck



Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 01:36 PM

Spider Robinson
Richard Halliburton
Kenneth Roberts
Elizabeth Peters
Carl Hiaasen
Naguib Mafouz
Mervyn Peake
Christopher Morley
Patrick Dennis
Bruce Chatwin
Lois McMaster Bujold
Thorne Smith
Dashiell Hammett
Rumer Godden
Arthur Upfield
Robert Heinlein

. . . for starters!

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Gareth
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 01:39 PM

OOOOPS Typo !!

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 01:44 PM

Sounds like Mom more is little more than kin and less than kind. Pickin' on a guy's obvious typo...

*tsk tsk tsk*

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:02 PM

If I might add some more?

Al Pope (esp. the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" for it's invective)
Billy-Bob Shakespeare
John-Boy Dunne (*love* his "MacFlecknoe")
Larry Ferlinghetti
Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" stuff (ONLY!)
Loyal Jones
Billy Ed Wheeler
Sandra Boynton
Dee Brown

That's enough for now and forever. There are lots, lots, more!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:10 PM

Well, thank gods I'm not the first one to mention Neil Gaiman... "Smoke And Mirrors" is some of the BEST short speculative fiction ever written... and "American Gods" would make a fantastic movie...

Looks like I am the first to mention William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk... We fans of his are still waiting (Especially given the sucess of movies like The Matrix) for a really good movie adaptation of his book "Neuromancer"... but given the dreck that 2 of his stories have already been made into, ("Johnny Mnemonic", and "New Rose Hotel"... great stories... lousy movies...) we're not holding our breath...

If Neal Stephenson knew how to end a book to save his life, William Gibson'd be off the top of my list though.... the first chapter of "Snow Crash" might be the coolest first chapter ever...

For High Fantasy and Historical Fiction, I pick Guy Gavriel Kay as my all time fav... I'd much rather read the back cover of "The Fionavar Tapestry" then ever have to read anything between the covers of "Lord Of The Rings" ever again (Oh how I wish that Tom Bombadil hadda been in "The Hobbit", instead of being glossed over in that over crafted pos...) George RR Martin though, is running a VERY close 2nd right now, simpley because I've only read the fist in his "Game Of Thrones" series... man oh man can that guy write!

Hard Science Fiction... well, I'm kinda partial to dudes like Arthur C Clarke, Marshal T Savage, and Frank Herbert...

When I wanna read a good scary book, I take Stephen Kings advice, and read Clive Barker

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: wilco
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:10 PM

James Fenimore Cooper
Majorie Kinnan Rawlings
John Steinbeck

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Bman
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 02:45 PM

It's so hard to narrow it down. If I were gonna pick just one, it would probably be John Crowley (Little, Big) by a whisker. May be the best book I ever read. Scott Turow. Charles Dickens, for the wonderful language. Thomas Hardy, for his exposition; the incomparable John Varley, the amazing Tim Powers (may actually be first), Richard Powers (no relation, far as I know), John LeCarre, Barbara Tuchman, Sebastian Junger; Malcolm Macdonald, a British author who writes historical fiction. Connie Willis (To Say Nothing Of the Dog, Passage), William S. Gibson, Joanna Russ, Ursula K. LeGuin. There's a wonderful cyberpunk book called Vacuum Flowers by a guy named Michael Swanwick; it's great. Edward Gorey, for the pictures. Wallace Tripp, likewise; if you have small kids, you really oughtta find a copy of Granfa Grigg Had a Pig or A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me. Heck, find copies even if you don't have kids. (What can you say about a guy who draws a mouse taking off a pair of boots and saying "My feet hurt. Gad, how I hate anthropomorphism!) Theodor Seuss Geisel, for his wonderful earlier work like McElligot's Pool, To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, and If I Ran the Circus; you can have most of the later stuff. Rita Mae Brown, John Brunner. Roger Zelazny for his early work; don't care for the Nine Princes in Amber series. Heinlein for the early work as well. Larry McMurtry. I have an indescribable book by one of the Theroux, Alexander I think, called The Shinocephalic Waif; it's one of my personal treasures. Dee Brown. Martin Cruz Smith, for Gorky Park and Polar Star. These are some of the top tier. There are many, many more. Did I mention Robert D. Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts, The Ends of the Earth, Eastward to Tartary)? Oh my goodness, almost forgot Robert Louis Stevenson! regards, Bman

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 03:55 PM

Saw John Myers Myers mentioned a couple of times above and I'd like to third that nomination. Other nominations to numerous to mention.

As long as the subject of film adaptation is brought up, I can't understand why nobody has set Bester's "Stars My Destination" to celluloid yet. Seems a natural to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 04:04 PM

Aw hell, I'll mention 3 more anyway:

W.O. Mitchell
Ernest Hemingway
Ian Rankan

Sure, and Roddy Doyle too, though The Commitments is still the only movie that surpasses the book I've ever seen. The Barrytown Trilogy is hilarious. They'd better get busy and make "The Van" into a flick before Colm Meaney gets too old.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 04:09 PM

Whoops, should be Ian Rankin

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Pushkin
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 04:14 PM

J R R Tolkien
Anne McCaffrey
Mercedes Lackey
Ian Rankin
Louise Hamilton
Lewis Carroll
P D James
Terry Pratchett
Rudyard Kipling
Jonathan Kellerman
P G Wodehouse

and anything with vampires in it (yep, even Buffy)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 06:31 PM

It's alienating how few of the recurring authors here I can get anything out of. What's the deal with Robert Heinlein? He's everywhere it seems.

Also, Jim Wayne Miller. Always better than I remembered it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Just Amy
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 06:46 PM

For those of you who would like to try something different: Try any history book by Allison Weir - you cannot put them down. And "Be Ready with Bells and Drums" by Elizabeth Kata. It is the book that the movie "A Patch of Blue" was taken from. I also like David Brin for his Science Fiction.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: rube1
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 06:06 AM

James Ellroy

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Grab
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 06:46 AM

Favourite authors that haven't yet been mentioned:-

- A A Milne (can't beat Winnie the Pooh! ;-)
- Roald Dahl (both the kid stuff and the adult stuff)
- Desmond Bagley
- R L Stevenson
- H G Wells
- John Buchan

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: JennyO
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 07:04 AM

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about Roald Dahl.Love his sense of the bizarre and unexpected. I wish I could write like him!

Also Douglas Adams
    Tolkien
    J.K. Rowling
    Gary Zukav

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 01:18 PM

Norman Maclean
Cormac McCarthy (for some reason makes me feel like I'm reading Hemingway again)
John Steinbeck (slightly surprised that the guy who wrote Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men had me laughing all the way through Cannery Row)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Kim C
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 01:35 PM

In no particular order (because it changes):

Charles Dickens
Victor Hugo
Howard Bahr

I have talked about Howard a fair bit in the threads at one time or other. He wrote two Civil War novels, The Black Flower and The Year of Jubilo. Both are excellent.

Some of you know that I wrote a song inspired by his novel The Black Flower. Mister and I have since met Howard, and we have become fast friends. He is a really swell guy, loves the old songs, and plays the fiddle himself.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Fran
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 01:48 PM

J K Rowling
Roald Dahl
Bodie Thoene
Georgette Heyer

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: TIA
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 02:02 PM

Douglas Adams
Richard Feynman
Stephen J. Gould
Dr. Seuss
Robert Parker
Kurt Vonnegut
James Trefil
LLoyd Alexander

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 02:35 PM

Robert Heinlein has patrimonial claims on fifty per cent of the good scifi ever written, and deserves more credit than he's gotten for his anthropological observations and his studies of the mating rituals and defense behavbiors of homo sapiens sapientes.

That said, I think you guys have said it all, except I didn't see Poisonwood Bible authoress Barbara Kingsolver on the list, and she is a fo' shuah don't miss.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: TIA
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 03:15 PM

Right on about Heinlen, but the best SciFi book ever was A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. Actually could be called a philosophy and/or religion (or anthropology?) book as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,lola
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 03:38 PM

KATE ATKINSON!!!!
has anybody read "Behind the Scenes at the Museum"?
Nancy Willard
Tom Robbins
Joyce *sigh* -class by himself
Roddy Doyle, and yes, there is a film for every portion of the Barrytown trilogy, though i myself prefer "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors"
and Howard Pyle for his four-and-twenty martvelous tales, being one for each hour of the day

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 03:48 PM

They really filmed "The Van"? How did I miss it?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: alanabit
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 04:53 PM

I could go on a bit here, but I should start by saying that Shakespeare semed to know more about human beings past, present and future than anyone else I have ever read. I'll add:
    Mark Twain
    Oscar Wilde
    W.Somerset Maugham
    C.S.Forester
    Harper Lee
    Rudyard Kipling
    Douglas Adams
    another twenty tomorrow...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amergin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 05:33 PM

tim pat coogan...

Jean Markale...

tolkien...

douglas adams...

harry turtledove

morgan llewyllyn (sp?)

jack london

woody guthrie

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amergin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 05:34 PM

forgot to add patrick macgill...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: RangerSteve
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 05:40 PM

I forgot: O. Henry and Saki (H.H. Munro). How come no Brits mentioned him? Also, HG Wells, Jules Verne, H. Ryder Haggard.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 06:01 PM

*Tolstoy*
Alasdair Grey
Robert Burns
James Kelman
Victor Hugo
A S Byatt
Doris Lessing
Charles Dickens
Charles Dodson
Samuel Clemmens
Sholokov
Mercedes Lackey
Henry David Thoreau
John Muir
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fyodor Dostoyevesky
Thomas Hardy
Mary Ann Evans
Dylan Thomas
James Kelman
Tom Robbins
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
Maddam Blavatsky
Krishnamurti
Alice A Bailey

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 06:13 PM

Tolkien, Tolkien, Tolkien, and Tolkien! I count four different fields of writing, although some of them are related.

1. Tolkien, for Lord of the Rings and to a lesser extent, The Hobbit.
2. Tolkien, for The Silmarillion and (with posthumous editing by his son) The Book of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales and another whose name I don't recall at the moment.
3. Tolkien, for his fairy stories (not all for children, by any means).
4. Tolkien, for his translations of Middle English poetry, such as Pearl, Sir Lancelot and the Green Knight and more.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amergin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 06:14 PM

i thought that was sir gawain and the green knight....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Micca
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 07:07 PM

Bat Godess, I Know now why I like you!!!!
Arthur Upfield and Thorne Smith!!!!!!
Mine include,(both the above)
Kipling
Heinlein,
Fred Hoyle
Edmund Cooper,
Susan Cooper,
Eric Frank Russel
Frederic Brown,
Richard Matheson
Asimov,
Feynman
Spike Milligan,
Guy Bellamy
Robert Graves
etc. etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: KateG
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 07:10 PM

Ohh, where to start...

In no particular order, other than free association

J.R.R. Tolkien
Jane Austin
Lois McMaster Bujold
Ursula K LeGuin
C J Cherryh
Dorothy Sayers
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (non fiction, social history)
Icelandic Sagas, any of them
Elizabeth Peters
Saki (H.H. Monroe)
Charles Dickens
Banjamin Franklin (his autobiography is a hoot)
Nancy Mitford

But not Heinlein. I enjoyed his stories as a pre-adolescent, but then I grew up and realized that his view of women was antediluvian. In the early stories they are interlopers or should stay home and tend the kids (Podkayne of Mars for example); in the late ones they become sex toys for dirty old men.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 07:13 PM

Beg to differ, there, KateG -- I believe almost all the sexual activity in Heinlein's stuff is completely consensual and mutually celebratory. I don't think that qualifies as "toys".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Poddy
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 08:33 PM

Also, you have to keep in mind that although he (Heinlein) did often portray women as only good for tending to the home and children in his early stuff, he was writing in the 1940s and 1950s. Not that that justifies it, just makes me not mind it so much. And Poddy, even if she was a bit wimpy and girly, was pretty feisty! And while his women did enjoy sex, I don't think they were toys either. Friday, Maureen, the twins...pretty much everyone gave as good as they got. The men were sex objects too.

My boyfriend is surprised no one's mentioned Aldous Huxley, so I'll add him to my list.

Does anyone care to make a distinction between "favorite" authors and "authors that I really really like and think everyone should read"? Are they synonomous?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 11:16 PM

Didn't notice Melville listed above anywhere.

Anyone else find Moby Dick a real slog? Been working on getting through that one for years. Read a couple of chapters then put it away for about 6 months. Jeez, how many pages did he spend on the symbolism of the colour white? Great story, but not "light" reading, by any stretch.

Heavier even than Tolstoy... Nikolai, I mean. "The Coming of the King". I was so busy trying to figure out who was who in that one, I could barely follow the story. Did he ever write any more books in that series?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 Dec 02 - 11:40 PM

All my faves have been mentioned but I don't recall seeing

Louis L'Amour

Dick Francis

Or

H. Beam Piper

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 02:16 AM

Good point Don. I found it hard work getting past the first page. However, why has nobody mentioned the fact that Charles Dickens is unreadable and that Virginia Woolf would not be worth reading even if if was readable prose?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 02:24 AM

It was Cluin who made the comment about Moby Dick. Apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 02:38 AM

As I was rehersing this evening, I found myself glancing at a book I have just recently finnished, and hadn't put back on the shelf... and then was moved to remember how much I enjoyed it... and that I had not mentioned it here. Well, I've reached the gelling stage for the new song, and... The author of the short stories is Heinrich von Kleist. It has been said that Kafka (who I also failed to mention somehow) was heavily influenced by Kleist's writings, which seems plausible to me... ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 02:42 AM

Apologies, huh? Not good enough, alanabit... not quite good enough.

I'll see you out on the common at 6 AM sharp. Dress warm and wear good hiking boots. I'd suggest eating light too.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Raedwulf
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 04:00 AM

Well, I stuck strictly to *favourite* authors, & didn't include authors some of whose works I've read & are very good, etc. Otherwise, yep, I could have included Somerset Maugham, Graves, Silverberg, Dumas, the guy who wrote The Red Badge of Courage (now *there's* an ACWar novel!), Philip K. Dick, John Holdstock, Austen, Peake, & many more besides. The ones I listed I go back to time & again.

I certainly wouldn't include Heinlein or Dickens though. Like Kate I enjoyed them in my teenage years, but then found I didn't like the way he wanted to keep moralising all the time (not quite as bad as Piers bloody Anthony got, perhaps). Plus his social attitudes, let's say, have dated rather badly! As for Dickens, I do read one from time to time, but I'm always astonished at his enormous reputation. He has the most appalling plots, founded on constant unlikely coincidences (often of relation), combined with the worst of Victorian verbosity.

As to books I can't get through, yep, I've false started on Moby Dick two or three times, but another one is Don Quixote. I normally don't have a problem with older writing styles, but I just cannot get going on that one!

Oh, & with all due respect to Shakespeare, I'd class him as a playwright, not an author - out of bounds, surely?! *bg*

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 06:03 AM

OK Raedwulf, but when BIll was writing the novel was not really established as a literary form. I couldn't agree more about Dickens though - and my what beastly prose!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 06:50 AM

"Your Favorite Authors" -- not "favorite novelists" or "favorite playwrights" (I first wrote that as 'playwrithes' and that seems appropriate for some of them) or "favorite poets" (noted earlier that that should be another thread).

No one has mentioned Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- his "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is outstanding! Or Tim O'Brien for "The Things They Carried" or Defoe for anything *except* "Robinson Crusoe" (God! He had a whole city's worth of stuff to help him 'survive'!) or Bret Harte or Baxter Black or Wallace Macrae (read his "Old Proc" and somebody set "Reincarnation" to music, please) or....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Catarina
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 06:50 AM

Now, let me see...
Eça de Queirós (magnificent author!)
Álvaro Guerra (less magnificent, but still great!)
José Saramago (even with the Nobel and everything, I only love some of his books)
And that's for "home" authors. Now for foreign guys in no particular order, since I'm a carnivorous reader:
Oscar Wilde
W.Somerset Maugham
Lewis Carroll
Rudyard Kipling
P G Wodehouse (I've always wanted to have my own Jeeves!)
Jane Austen
Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte
W. M. Thackeray
Frances Burnett
E. Nesbit
Mark Twain
Ursula K LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Laura Argiri (only one book, but what a book!)
Patricia Nell Warren
Madame de Ségur (I cried a lot, as a little girl, over Sophie's misforntunes)
Margueritte Yourcenar
Simenon
Simone de Beauvoir
Jean Genet (some of it, at least...)
Alexandre Dumas (father)
Elio Vittorini
Cesare Zavattini
Luigi Pirandello
Primo Levi
Vasco Pratollini
Leon Tolstoi
Dostoievsky
Boris Pasternak
Thomas Mann
... God, I do read a lot, should slow down a bit, hum?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: TIA
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 08:58 AM

Also not mentioned yet is Anon. Perhaps that's because Anon's stuff is so inconsistent...sometimes stunning, other times pure drivel.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 09:06 AM

I don't know about all the social attitudes in Heinlein, I just read one book and it didn't do anything for me. I don't read much sci-fi, I guess I usually can't tell what the reality-average is, and am too lazy to learn. I did love a book called The Artificial Man when I was a kid, don't know who wrote it.

   I made it through Moby Dick last year, but it seemed just like one of those "great" books. I love Hawthorne's short stories, not the ones that are usually anthologised, but things like Wakefield, scraps and stuff.

   Proust. until the fourth volume or so.
   
   I keep promising myself to read Cervantes just so I can read Nabokov's lecture. Nabokov is my only real favorite, in the sense that I like his flaws as much as his gifts--I love it that someone so clever, stagey, florid, etc. can be convincing at all. The way my mother loves Mondrian, who was a pretty bad candidate for the office of an artist.

   There are lots of writers I just don't get--Murder In The Cathedral reminded me of Monty Python. My favorite thing Mann wrote was that Hamlet was "almost certainly" an artistic failure. I love that--"almost certainly". Almost is my favorite word.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: YOR
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 01:00 PM

Thank you TIA for listing Dr. Seuss. Thats one I forgot, how could I? Doh!

Roy

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 01:07 PM

I always go back to Tennyson... and then the pendulum swings to Pasternak...

"The Status Quo is our Point of Departure." ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,maire-aine at work
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 01:14 PM

Arthur Conan Doyle (I started reading Sherlock Holmes stories when I was about twelve, I think.)

Wilkie Collins (such a short life, but what a wealth of material he left).

Agatha Christie (ya gotta love 'er)

Ellis Peters (Edith Partenger) for the Bro. Cadfael books

Umberto Eco

Dorothy Sayers

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Chuck
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 06:59 PM

Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men)

W. Somerset Maugham (The Razors Edge)

William Styron (The Confessions of Nat Turner)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 07:07 PM

P.D. Eastman (Are You My Mother?)

Helen Wells (Cherry Ames, Army Nurse)

Franklin W. Dixon (The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Whistling Snotball)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: TIA
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 08:38 PM

You're Not My Mother, You're a Snort!

Hooray for Cluin!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Nancy King
Date: 19 Dec 02 - 10:40 PM

Count me among the Dick Francis fans. The taped versions are PERFECT for long car trips.

Ken Follet is uneven, but often very good.

Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Patrick O'Brian.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Art Thieme
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 12:28 AM

First, foremost, primo and tops in my book---THOMAS WOLFE

Then, in no particular order:

Lafcadio Hearn

John Steinbeck

Ernest Hemingway

W. Somerset Maugham

George R. Stewart

Jack Kerouac

Lawrence Durrell

V. S. Naipaul

Willa Cather

Floyd Dell

Richard Llewellen

J.R.R. Tolkien

Ray Bradbury

B. Traven

Kenneth Graham

Oliver LaFarge

Walter Mosley

Cam Hubert

John Gardner

Sarah Orne Jewett

O.E. Rolvaag

Henry Miller

Sherwood Anderson

Robert Service

-----(submitted by Art Thieme)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: alanabit
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 02:04 AM

How did I forget John Steinbeck? "The Razor's Edge", by Somerset Maugham, has a slow build up, but it left me in a daze when I read it back in the early seventies. "Cakes and Ale" has another hammer like ending.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Sarah
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 09:51 AM

JR Tolkien
Chaz Brenchley (Macallan books)
Charles De Lint (Tamson House stuff)
Robert Holdstock (everything)
Douglas Adams
Neil Gaiman
Julian May
Roger Zelazny
Emma Bull (War for the Oaks)
CS Lewis
Shakespeare
Greg Bear (Infinity Concerto)

Cheers
Sarah

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Kim C
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 11:04 AM

Cluin, in Melville's lifetime, Moby Dick was a colossal failure. It wasn't until it was thrust upon unsuspecting high school kids in English class, that it became a Literary Classic.

I haven't finished it yet either, and some of the 19th century prose is ponderous (like a lot of other 19th century prose) but I think the first few interactions between Ishmael and Queequeg are hysterical.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 11:06 AM

Amergin: You're right, it's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Mea culpa, mea culpa!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 11:30 AM

It's been a while since I read any Heinlein. I swore off of him because of his cutesy smart-assed trying-to-be-funny comments that often had no relevance to what was going on in the book. It's like someone told him he should inject a little humour into his writing and he never got the hang of how to do it gracefully.

And I loved Moby Dick! Of course it may just be that the professor who taught the course in which I read it really made the book come alive. Whether I would have ever slogged through it on my own is another matter. The same is true for The Brothers Karamazov.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,Catarina - at work and not working very much
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 11:41 AM

W. Somerset Maugham - most people seem to prefer The Razor's Edge. I have always prefered Cakes and Ale or Of Human Bondage, and I believe Maugham was the perfect storyteller. His short stories are amazing. All in all, he is my favourite author.
P.S. - Unforgivable! I forgot to put E. M. Forster on my list.
P. P. S - Is there anyone out there who actually likes Proust? One of the "holes" in my reading culture is that I never got to read the whole À la recherche du temps perdu. It bores me beyond description by the middle of the fith volume or so... And since Luchino Visconti died before ever putting it to film I guess I'll never know the story!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: *daylia*
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 12:15 PM

Margaret Laurence - for "The Diviners"
Jean Vanier - for "Tears of Silence"
Charles Dickens - for "Oliver Twist"
Ruth Beebe Hill - for "Hanta Yo - an American Saga"
Mark Twain - for all those joyous childhood moments we spent together
Lloyd C. Douglas - for "The Robe" and "The Big Fisherman"
Starhawk - for "The Fifth Sacred Thing"
James Mitchener - for "The Source"
Ted Andrews - for "Animal Speak" and "Psychic Protection"
John Steinbeck - for "The Pearl"
Noam Chomsky - but I really have to be 'in the mood'...
Richard Bach - for "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

I'll leave it at 12 - that's a good round number!

But I do love Shakespeare ...

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Kim C
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 03:13 PM

I'll tell you a story I read in college that I really liked: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. (at least I think it was Kafka, this has been a day or two ago) Anyway poor Gregor wakes up one morning and finds he's been turned into a giant cockroach. He's still the same Gregor except for that, but everyone treats him like vermin.

I forgot to mention that I enjoy Stephen King and Louis L'amour. Good old-fashioned fun fiction. Not that I get a chance to read much fiction anymore...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Amergin
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 03:42 PM

yeha that was kafka...wonderful story....

i also like gogol...love the story about the nose....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cllr
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 04:14 PM

In no particular order

Terry Pratchet( iwas reading strata before colour of magic came out
Fritz lieber Fafhrd and the gray mouser
Jack Vance Mainly dying earth series
Raymond Feist empire novels good
David Gemmel probably my favourite
Neil Gamon sand man series and good omens
David eddings first dozen books were very good
Tolkien but only hobbit and LOTR
Poul Anderson 3 hearts 3 lions one of my alltime favourites
roger Zelazny Choas series
Jack L chalker midnight well of souls
Asimov Hero, first sci fi I ever read = I Robot
Heinlen Ive got nearly everything in paperback but glory rd tops
Iain M Banks ( even if he is a socialist)
Laurell K hamilton best vampire series i have ever read
George RR Martin Fevre Dream particularly good
David Brin good grief I could go on and on Cllr

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 05:24 PM

Caterina, I actually like Proust, but agree it sags after a while. The real story is in the first two volumes, for me, the rest resists being remembered. Never could figure out what E.M. Forster was writing about though.

a question for those who love Gregor Samsa. What becomes of his hollowed, starved carcass? The housekeeper wants to say what she did witth it, but the family doesn't want to know.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: GUEST,fiddler
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 05:36 PM

Anyone read Lick Creek by Brad Kessler? (not sure on the spellin')
McCarthy, Twain, Louis Owens, Burke, Shakespeare, Sam Watkins, and Headley. Also, James Horan, his Confederate Spy is a great, great book.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Art Thieme
Date: 20 Dec 02 - 09:25 PM

I doubt it was intentional, but compare Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to Woody Guthrie's song "East Texas Red" !

(Wow, it takes thread creep to bring us back to music these days.) ***BIG SMILE***

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 01:06 AM

Sneaky, Art. ;)

Well, if we're talking poetry, I gotta go with W.B. Yeats every time.

Cluin (who still don't know what Robert Bly was blethering about in Iron John. Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly, OTOH...)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Pushkin
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 03:41 AM

Forgot a few!

H Rider Haggard
Steinbeck for the two Cannary Row books
Edgar Rice Burroughs for his martian chronicles, not Tarzan
Richard Bach for Illusions
Agatha Christie
Raymond E Feist
Robin Jarvis
Anne Rice
Reginald Hill
Phil Rickman
Julian May
E M Forster
Emily and Anne Bronte - not Charlotte

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Grab
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 07:23 PM

Art, by mentioning his brother, you reminded me:-

Gerald Durrell - stories that can make you laugh until you drop the book!

On other books, I've got an old sci-fi paperback by a bloke called Laurence M Janifer - never seen anything else by him, which is a shame bcos it's good. Think he's maybe one of the "Golden Age" authors who are now out of print.

Another name that's not come up yet - William Horwood. His early Duncton Wood books were pretty good (later ones sucked), but Skallagrigg is outstanding.

Tom Sharpe as well - Vintage Stuff is his best, but there's any number of others to choose from. Not the kind of thing you'd give your granny to read, but bloody funny all the same!

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 08:06 PM

Addendum:

George McDonald Fraser
Colette
Anatole France

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Haruo
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 09:24 PM

Rapaire wrote "Poddy, I never would have guessed Heinlein! 8-)"

I wonder, Poddy, are you named for Heinlein's Poddy?

Haruo
authorized Esperanto translator of Podkayne of Mars

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Cluin
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 09:27 PM

Grab,

I really liked Horwood's "The Stonor Eagles". Time to reread that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Haruo
Date: 21 Dec 02 - 09:29 PM

I never read any Terry Pratchett until about four months ago; since then I've read at least a dozen, probably 15 of his magna opera (most recently, speaking of opera, Maskerade, his takeoff on The Phantom of the). I think he's fantastic (or at least clever). ;-) (Even if he does kinda diss folk singing now and then.)

Julio Baghy
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Sándor Szathmári
Endō Syūsaku
Ursula K. Le Guin
Herman Melville

to name a few.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 Dec 02 - 09:26 PM

I left off Antoine de St. Exupery. His Wind, Sand and Stars is a masterpiece. The Little Prince is pretty fine too.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Your Favorite Authors
From: *daylia*
Date: 25 Dec 02 - 12:49 PM

I love "The Little Prince"! 'The eyes are blind ... one must look with the heart...'

Do cartoonists count as "authors"? I'd really like to include Charles Shultz for 'Peanuts'! And Jim Davis for 'Garfield'!

They've brightened up my life for a very long time! :-)

daylia