Who's your favorite author?

[jterrell]

Herman Melville. Moby Dick is my all time favorite book. I am currently reading ti for the 7th time.


Mark Twain. "Cannibalism on the Cars" is one of my favorite short stories. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are great books. I have never read anything by him that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.


Robert Ludlum. The Bourne Identity. The others in the series are good. That one if great. An underrated Ludlum book that is very funny IMO is Road to Gandolfo.


Louis L'Amour. I have read every book he ever wrote. That's right, all 180+ of them. My favorite is Down the Long Hills.


Shakespeare. In particular I like "Much Ado About Nothing" and "The Taming of the Shrew." "Othello" and MacBeth are also very good.


Joseph Conrad. "Heart of Darkness" is such a great read.


Rudyard Kipling. More for his poetry than his prose. In particular I like "If" and "Gunga Din."


Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Slave is a great book.


Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God is very good.


Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.


Edgar Allen Poe. Anything he wrote, poetry or prose.

That's a strong list.
I went to Mark Twain Elementary so have read his fine work of course. He was a comedic genius. If you read the short stories before the novels you can get his crazy sense of humor.

Poe was another of those guys who was genius. Almost on a different level of thought entirely. My sister did her thesis on religious undercurrents in Poe. I only read part of her thesis but she was more depressing than Poe was dark

Heart of Darkness is very good.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

Heart of Darkness is the setting for Apocalyspe Now right? I read that book, it was pretty good, I had to do an essay on it, I think mine was what black and white represented in the book

 

[bbgun]

David McCullough's The Great Bridge was great for those airport delays.

 

[PosterChild]

David McCullough's The Great Bridge was great for those airport delays.

His latest, I think. (?) I thoroughly enjoy his style as mentioned but don't have sufficient interest in the subject to pick it up. However, I bet if I read 10 pages I'd more than likely be hooked.

 

[Wimbo]

Oh, wait... nevermind.

 

[PosterChild]

Oh, wait... nevermind.

Ah yes, The Classics. I enjoy them too but with complex compositions like this I find I need a some formal instruction.

Was Arthur truly a metaphor for our spoiled society? Do we squander are riches thusly? Can we find true happiness only when we abandon material pursuits and seek love? These and other questions have confounded the scholars down through the ages...It's beyond my depth.

 

[Bach]

Dr. Seuss

 

[bbgun]

Dr. Seuss

Howard Stern. Loved those two paperbacks he put out.

 

[jem88]

I read a lot and have read a lot of the authors above.

I actually really like Ayn Rand's work even if her philosophy at the end of the day leaves me wanting. Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead are very good.

Ralph Ellison's the invisible Man is probably the best overall novel I have read(even though almost every lit class in the country just excerpts it).

I took a few Great Works classes.

I particularly enjoy classics by Aristotle for content, Cicero, St. Thomas.

Shakespeare, Chaucer for entertainment.

I have read all of Grisham's works and his non-legal thrillers are the best imho.

I enjoyed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and R. E. Howards Conan. Kull works.

I have read all of Kellerman and Patterson in the short reads novel area. Those usually last me two nights.

But if I only get one author it has to be James Joyce.

I got through about 200 pages of Ulysses and gave up. I don't doubt his genius, but that's a hard slog.

 

[vta]

Different authors for different reasons and I reread my books frequently.

I love Anthony Burgess. For some reason he's not known for much beyond A Clockwork Orange, but the guy has to be one of the most clever word play talents I've ever read. And a nasty sense of humor.

John Irving is another one, clever with words and a nasty sense of humor. I love World According to Garp and Cider House Rules.

I like Tolstoy. I never read War and Peace, but I have a few short stories collections and love his writing.

I love Dante's Divine Comedy. I read Inferno pretty young and thought that was just incredible.

I love horror too; I like Stephen King's old work, from the '70's and early '80's, my favorite being The Shining, but actually found Peter Straub to be a better writer. Pretty intense subjects that would make for great movies.

Thomas Harris' novels have been made into some good movies (and some lemons), but his first three novels were really good reads.

 

[Shady12]

George R.R. Martin, Jack McDevitt.

 

[Nors]

Dean Koontz

 

[VietCowboy]

my favorite book of all time is called Flatland by A. Square (aka Edwin Abbott). It was written in the late 1800s and alluded a lot to victorian society (women are lines, and the higher your rank/position in society, the more edges you have, until you are practically a circle). It was basically about a square who met a sphere, and the sphere took him to different dimensions. Really opened me to be more accepting of things I cannot fathom or explain.

But, as authors go, I enjoy Shakespeare and break it apart for psychopathologies (I'm studying to be a clinical psychologist)

 

[jem88]

Different authors for different reasons and I reread my books frequently.

I love Anthony Burgess. For some reason he's not known for much beyond A Clockwork Orange, but the guy has to be one of the most clever word play talents I've ever read. And a nasty sense of humor.

John Irving is another one, clever with words and a nasty sense of humor. I love World According to Garp and Cider House Rules.

I like Tolstoy. I never read War and Peace, but I have a few short stories collections and love his writing.

I love Dante's Divine Comedy. I read Inferno pretty young and thought that was just incredible.

I love horror too; I like Stephen King's old work, from the '70's and early '80's, my favorite being The Shining, but actually found Peter Straub to be a better writer. Pretty intense subjects that would make for great movies.

Thomas Harris' novels have been made into some good movies (and some lemons), but his first three novels were really good reads.

John Irving is great. I reread Owen Meany recently. Powerful book.

 

[silverbear]

Vladimir Nabokov holds the top spot on my list of favorite authors.

Of all his works, I most enjoyed Lolita and Invitation to a Beheading.

Who's your favorite author and which works by that author do you find most enjoyable and engaging?

Shoot me, I've always been a fan of John McDonald, and his Travis McGee series... I also liked Dan Jenkins a lot... James Clavell novels, while they tend to run VERY long, are also a favorite... and James Michener, for a while there I thought he was writing about my life, with books like "Texas", "Alaska" and "Chesapeake"... a good part of my life has revolved around those three locales...

I was turned into a reader by a wise great-aunt who taught junior high for 47 years... every birthday, every Christmas, one of my gifts would be books by the likes of Edgar Allen Poe (collections of short stories, obviously), Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson... she had a good instinct for what kind of stories would appeal to a 10 year old...

I used to like Steven King a lot, but seem to have lost my taste for horror novels later in life...

I see that Jimmy Buffett has a new novel out, I'm gonna want to look into that... his collection of short stories was quite good, his two novels have been disappointments...

 

[silverbear]

I love short stories with a twist, so I've always enjoyed O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe

"No man strikes me with impunity"...

 

[silverbear]

Dr. Seuss

That's a little too intellectual for me...

 

[PosterChild]

my favorite book of all time is called Flatland by A. Square (aka Edwin Abbott). It was written in the late 1800s and alluded a lot to victorian society (women are lines, and the higher your rank/position in society, the more edges you have, until you are practically a circle). It was basically about a square who met a sphere, and the sphere took him to different dimensions. Really opened me to be more accepting of things I cannot fathom or explain.

But, as authors go, I enjoy Shakespeare and break it apart for psychopathologies (I'm studying to be a clinical psychologist)

You are needed in the political forum.

 

[Chief]

Redball express

Classic.



:laugh2:

 

[Chief]

For you guys that like Westerns, give Elmer Kelton a shot if you haven't already.

He's probably my favorite author, very underrated and I think he's better than the others of that genre (L'Amour, Zane Grey and Max Evans).

Kelton's "Good Ol' Boys" was made into a movie, starring Tommy Lee Jones. But my favorite of his books is "The Time it Never Rained."

I got to meet him about four years ago. A very nice gentleman who is very down to earth (lives in San Angelo).

Another author I met last year is Michael Blake, who wrote Dance With Wolves. Great guy, who like me, attended Eastern New Mexico University.

I don't like autographs, but I do like to get books signed.

My favorite Grisham book is "A Painted House."

The best novel I've ever read is "Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry. I've tried to get into his other works, but I can't.

The books I enjoy most are biographies and the two that really stand out were Leigh Montville's book on Babe Ruth and Evan Thomas' book on Bobby Kennedy.