Your five favourite authors

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skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
Jonathan Maberry
Don Winslow
Joe Hill
Lee Child
Thomas Harris

Thought about George RR Martin, but he has 3 epic books & then...not so much...
I just discovered Maberry this summer--pure chance: looking for a book for my daughter and liked the cover of Rot & Ruin. I absolutely loved it, and read everything else by him that I could get my hands on, YA and adult :) What a fun, strong writer!
 

TanyaS

painterly painter!
Nov 18, 2014
406
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Auckland
I have tried so many new authors in my local library, and hardly any ever hit the spot. I always go back to the old favourites.

Agatha Christie is another fav. Jodie Picoult is ok too.
 

Van Blaricum

Deleted User
Oct 28, 2014
320
1,830
I can't pick five. That's like picking only five foods to eat for the rest of your life.

My favorite things to read are JD Salinger, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and Aldous Huxley. I really like short stories. If you don't write any I probably never heard of you.

I do sometimes read Dean Koontz, but all of his sick characters make the inside of my mind feel too greasy, I don't see how he lives in his head.
 

krwhiting

Well-Known Member
Jan 5, 2015
258
1,081
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For general fiction: Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Mark Twain, M.R. James, Ernest Hemingway

For nonfiction: Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, George Orwell, Victor Davis Hanson, David McCullough

For theology: H.A. Ironside, Dwight J. Pentecost, Sir Robert Anderson, J. Vernon McGee, Clarence Larkin

For short stories: Henry James, Hemingway, W. Somerset Maughum, M.R. James, Stephen King

For sermons (yes, I read sermons): G. Campbell Morgan, A.W. Tozier, Billy Sunday, E.M. Bounds, Charles Spurgeon

For poetry (I even like bad poetry, so this shouldn't be taken as a good quality endorsement - though these are all well-known as excellent poets so, whatever): Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, Seigfried Sassoon, William Butler Yeats
 

MadBoJangles

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2015
255
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Only 5?
Hmmmm, okay here goes...

1 - Clive Barker. I love Barker's work, The Great & Secret Show/Imajica/Weaveworld are among my favourite novels. I noticed a few in this thread had him in their list also, but not as many as I would have expected. Roll on Scarlet Gospels, need some new Barker in my life :)

2 - Dean Koontz. Face of Fear was the first full adult novel I ever read. He has such a catalogue to choose from too, granted some of the newer stuff is weaker (in my opinion) but still very, very good.

3 - J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is mind blowing the first time you read it. This effect may be dulled somewhat to newer readers, due to the films possibly.

4 - George R R Martin. A Song of Fire and Ice is epic, gripping and up there with LOTR in the Fantasy stakes for me. I am so so glad that I read the books before watching the TV series (for the same reason as I gave for LOTR above). I just wish he would hurry up and release Book 6. I may have to re-read 1-5 when we get closer to it landing.

5 - Frank Herbert. The DUNE saga has to be one of the best sci-fi series ever created. Really want to get back to reading these again.

Honorable mention to Golding for Lord of the Flies, still one of my fave books of all time.
 

Grandpa

Well-Known Member
Mar 2, 2014
9,724
53,642
Colorado
I feel illiterate among you guys. As I've gotten older, and with the job that i have of going through thousands of words all...the...time, and with diminishing eyesight and glasses being uncomfortable, and finally with working a lot of hours and not having all that much "just sitting" free time, I've just gotten out of the habit of reading books except now and then I do, and I miss it. I do read lots of articles. Not the same, not at all.

Anyway.

1. John Steinbeck. I just haven't read anyone else where the vividness jumps off the page at me and grabs my eyeballs. His words explode, and like the best fireworks show, they don't diminish. They just keep coming. I like to write, and every time I read Steinbeck, I think, "[deleted][deleted] it all, I can never write like this."

2. Mark Twain. Where Steinbeck crushes my hope, Twain rebuilds it. Not because I could ever write like him - I can't. But he said something to the effect, "The words of the great authors are like wine. My words are like water. But everyone drinks water." Yeah. I can leave the wine with Steinbeck, and maybe I can pump a little water.

3. Evan Hunter. As Ed McBain in his 87th Precinct books, and as himself with such things as Sons and Every Little Crook and Nanny, he gave me many, many hours of reading pleasure.

4. Dave Barry. He makes me laugh.

5. Maybe James Clavell or James Michener. They write in Epic, but if I get bored, I can skip some chapters and still not lose much. And I get a sense of place for the places they write about. Besides, Michener gives me hope because he was kinda old when he started getting published.
 

muskrat

Dis-Member
Nov 8, 2010
4,518
19,564
Under your bed
1. Raymond Chandler
2. Jack Kerouac
3. Earl Thompson (all but forgotten--check out Garden of Sand and it's two sequels; this is some gritty, trashy, seventies gold, cats).
4. Mary Shelley--OH, I've got the biggest crush on Godwin's wayward daughter.
5. This new kid Steve King. I think he'll go places.

Not to mention Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, Anais Nin, William Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, Dan Simmons, Laurence Block, Nabokov, Lord Byron, crazy ol Anne Rice (the early stuff, anyhow) and about a thousand others.