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 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. |