My new favourte author has to be Thomas Pynchon now. H.P. Lovecraft is now a respectable 2nd place behind this genius.
I bet no one has heard of my favorite author....-shrug- Her name is Kate Horsley She rights historical fiction. I've read 5 of the 6 books she has published. She is local author here in Albuquerque.
Heh, I live in the Albuqurque area also, she is an okay writer, but I'm not into historical fiction, at least, not really. I love H.P.Lovecraft and J.R.R, even named my new cat after him.
Jack Kerouac, Steinbeck, Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Ian Fleming, Sir Arthur Connan Doyle...Arthur C. Clarke... and many many more...
Dan Abnett, hands down. He is an amazing Warhammer 40k future sci-fi author, completely blew my mind with both the entire Gaunt's Ghost series (I literally have a library shelfs worth of his books) and his aerial combat book Double Eagle, and hopefully he'll add Intercepter City to my menagerie of plane combat novel's! Too good
Hunter S. Thompson, Cormac McCarthy, Mick Foley, Mark Kriegal, Tucker Max, Tom Callahan, and Bill Simmons.
Hard to pick one, but if I had to, then probably Robert Heinlein, with maybe Harry Harrison and William Shakespeare, battling to topple him from that spot. Al
Without questioning, Vladimir Nabokov takes it for me. I was surprised as I skimmed through this topic without seeing his named mentioned once. In my mind no one writes prose quite like he does. When school is out for summer break I will pick up "A Crime and Punishment" again, but this time to finish it. I am sure I will love Dostoevsky as well; I have a thing for the Ruskies.
My favorite authors would have to be: Marion Zimmer Bradley (Mists of Avalon) and Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth series)
I'm having an affair with Peter Carey's novels at the moment, loved 'The Tax Inspector' and I'm giggling my way through 'Theft' at the moment. Also loved Yann Martel's, 'The life of Pi' plus novels by Patrick White, Thomas Hardy and Somerset Maughan.
Neil Gaiman ought to be on this list way more often- not to mention Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. C'mon, Britain! Do you know what you're missing? My list: -Neil Gaiman -Douglas Adams -Terry Pratchett -Christopher Moore -Gregory Maguire -Philip Reeve -Eoin Colfer -Adrienne Kress -Robert Rankin The list, of course, goes on.
I've just finished one David Gemmell book, Sword in the Storm, and nearing the end of another one, Dark Moon, and am thoroughly enjoying his work. I think the plots are great and the way his writing flows makes it hard to put the books down. I recommend it to anybody who is interested in that particular genre and even those who aren't. Other writers that I enjoy reading are J.R.R.Tolkein and J.K.Rowling.
I cannot say only one favourite author, but these are my favourites: 1. Terry Pratchett 2. Neil Gaiman (I loved Good Omens with these two writing together *squees*) 3. J.R.R. Tolkien 4. Jane Austen 5. Mika Waltari 6. Stephen King (I think Rose Madder is my favourite) 7. William Blake 8. David Gemmell (I was so sad when he died; I think he's one of the most underrated authors of our time... I adored Dark Moon and it's still one of my all time favourites ever) 9. Philip Pullman 10. Sarah Rees Brennan
As a child I would have said Jack London and Albert Payson Terhune. As a teenager I would have said William Faulkner, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Today my favourite writers are William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and James Joyce.
I don't really know that I really have a list of favorites or anything. When I look for books, I pretty much walk in the store and either look for something that sounds interesting or look for something that I'd previously heard about that sounded interesting. I will say that Stephen King probably does stand out for me, though. I've probably read more of his books than anyone else's (mostly because I started out with the Dark Tower series, which kind of forced me to branch out into his other works). I don't know that I'd say he's full of originality. He himself will admit that he's a student of horror, and his work shows it. You can tell how much writers like Poe and Lovecraft influence his ideas. I, personally, have always liked him for his characterization. My favorite example of this is The Stand, a novel which goes largely unnoticed amidst many of his other works due to a bad taste left by an extremely substandard film. I've always thought his novels fit more into a supernatural suspense genre than the horror genre because I've never really been scared of anything in them. But that's just me.
You have really good taste My favorite author is Bernard Cornwell, creator of the awesome Sharpe series!
Although he only wrote two complete books, my favorite author is Christopher Reeve, he was very good with sharing insights about life and obstacles.
