Here's One For You. Favorite Fiction Writer!

For me, the first among several equals is Anne Tyler.

I am probably one of the few men who thinks so highly of her, but I consider her to be an amazing writer. She has a gift of using very plain and simple language to paint mental pictures of great beauty. She has a great gift of understanding, and conveying, human emotion that turns the every day lives of her ordinary (and usually somewhat odd) people heroes and heroines into real people. She has no villains in her books. Her books are about people leading their lives and she draws you into "ordinary" stories and gives you a sense of page-turning urgency.

I haven't loved every book she's written. Some, I haven't liked at all. Overall however, the publication of a new Tyler book is an event. In 1996, after my younger sister's suicide, I found reading "Saint Maybe" a very healing experience. I look forward to her latest, "Digging To America", because it concerns 2 adoptive couples. I read an 8 page excerpt and was almost in tears.

Where can you read a passage, like in "The Accidental Tourist", where a man tells his estranged wife of 19 years that he is leaving their attempt to reconcile, going to another woman, have his wife hug and wish him well and for it to be TOTALLY BELIEVABLE AND PLAUSIBLE?

I can go on, but I would be using more words to say the same things. I know that she's an acquired taste. People who think that Jean Claude Van Damm has been ripped off for never having won an Oscar would probably not be be making a good decision to pick up a Tyler.

If you treasure stories about people you could know in situations that might just have happened or could happen to you, she's just right!

How about you?

Intelligent, funny, provocative, innovative, deep, subtle, ingenious. I've enjoyed all his novels as well as the Sandman series of graphic novels which were just marvelous. Gaiman writes about gods as if they're people you might meet on the street (which in his novels they are).

Sounds interesting. Thanx.

I'm excited to start it! I loved Good Omens. :)

I think I liked it even better than American Gods. It seemed...deeper in a way without trying as hard to be deep, if that makes any sense.

Good Omens should be given as a liberation present to every Bible-Belt escapee. I read it first back in college when I was fresh out of the hills. Bwee! The only drawback is that now, every time I have a big epic life-changing moral decision to make, the metaphorical demon and angel on my shoulder sound exactly like Crowley and Aziraphale--when they're drunk.

I love the whole Sandman series, and his work on Books of Magic and Black Orchid is quite good, too. But his efforts in the non-graphic format leave me cold.

YMMV, of course.

My Favorites were "Tales of the South Pacific", "Space" & "Kent State: What Happened & Why".

Painstaking researcher.

South Pacific is just about my favorite musical.

It's so hard to pick one of his books over another. I really liked The Covenant. It paints a very clear picture of how the problems in South Africa came to be. My first and all time favorite is definitely The Source. I liked Space very much, too. :hi:

I'm Not Familiar.

Thanx.

He's very inventive, exploring many ways of using different voices (writing from a child's perspective, or that of a disembodied soul) and playing with chronology.

I enjoy a traditional novel as much as anyone, and I'm growing to appreciate historical fiction especially. But from the perspective of really appreciating talent and writing form, I think Mitchell is at the top of my list right now.

"Ghostwritten," which might be one of his first novels, has become my default recommendation for anyone looking for a new book to start. The whole novel is... well, I won't spoil it. But it's quite entertaining, very enlightening to anyone with an open mind, and damn fine writing.

Everything I've read by him has been simply amazing.

I'm always willing to discover a new talent.

Thanx.

She writes about the intrigues and loves of a very educated group of people. Makes one feel like they are in fact part of the intelligencia in England..which is nice for those of use who are curious but will never ever make into those very educated social sets. That's pretty much all I can say about why I like her.

Thanx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett

He writes humorous fantasy novels. If you like funny-fantasy, check out a book or two from your local library.

I'd recommend "Good Omens", co-written with Neil Gaiman. If you like that, check out the "Discworld" books. His "Johnny Maxwell" trilogy was written mostly for kids, but is still OK for an airline/train/bus commute. (If you like that sort of thing)

EDIT: Crap. This reply was meant for MarianJack, and I replied to the wrong post. Shit happens.

I'm going through a lot of job-related stress and a very painful relationship-change which involves moving to a smaller crappier apartment alone.

So when I need to decompress, he is the MAN. Snarky, smart, satirical, fantastically imaginative, and with a whole lot of heart underneath it all. Thank the Small Gods there's a whole lotta Discworld to read, 'cause I'm gonna need it all!

Others (for various reasons):

Phillip Jose Farmer (I used to drink coffee with him in Peoria and talk about books BEFORE he let me know that he was someone other than just "Phil")

Dan Simmons (That man can spin a good yarn in ANY genre)

Harlan Ellison (Liberal bulldog. Great writer. Discovered Dan Simmons)

Mike Resnick (Friend of the family. Writes swashbuckling scifi that is fun to read. Not "literature", just fun!)

Sean McMullen (Aussie renaissance man. Complex plots that are better than "strange man in strange land" sort of dreck)

Andre Norton (The QUEEN of speculative fiction. Grand Master)

......

I could do this all day.


PS. Michael Ondaatje wrote "The English Patient" which was a much better book than the shitty boring movie. I recommend "Coming Through Slaughter", however. It's one of the best books I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

That is SO. CUTE. :loveya:

Love his older "immature" stuff particularly...

In college, I recall running across him by chance in the libary and reading "The Rachel Papers." I thought I'd discovered something no one else had ever read. I gratefully read whatever I could find of his for a couple years, but with "London Fields" it seemed that things had changed. It was about then I first discovered his lineage, and I wonder if I respected his writing less knowing that, or if his style changed.

Regardless of my opinion, he's still a writer of literature above and beyond the vast majority of any other contemporary writers. His will be classics for a future generation, and thus he's worth reading now.

I liked "London Fields" but will admit I cheated and listened to the audiobook first.

He goes into a lot of details, which may seem unnecessary at first, but as the story goes on, the details are clear and the story unfolds in the mind. He writes about current events and does so very well. This selection is subject to change.

Cliché picks? Eh, maybe. But I love 'em. Vidal because he's such a fantastic storyteller and can write something epic like Lincoln and something completely weird like Live from Golgotha and they're both so engrossing. Vonnegut because his books are so initmate and human and funny and sad and still hopeful despite any logical reason to be hopeful. (I know, Man without a country isn't exactly "hopeful" in the least, but even that doesn't seem to be completely devoid of it either.) Cat's Cradle is my all-time favorite book. I could read it forever. And Salinger because I love that his stories have a stark, detached quality but the details and the pace, and the dialogue are so precise that these stark stories become anything but that and it just kills me.

to their verbs. :)

No explaination needed.

I love Anne Tyler! "Back When We Were Grownups" is one of my favorites! And Amy Tan takes it to another level and into another culture. I have an extremely codependent and complicated relationship with my mother (it would be worthy of its own novel, perhaps when the major players are "gone"). I'm reading Amy Tan's memoir now, "The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings".

I recently got "Saving Fish from Drowning", and will be reading it shortly.

Opposite of Fate was very interesting.

Not to cast aspersions on the newer talent.
I like the solid science and engineering.
Clarke is the first one to point out the synchronous satellite orbit named after him.
The Fountains of Paradise space elevator concept positively kicks ass.
And it was he that gave us "2001".
I particularly like Heinlein's 1940s and 1950s speculations about just how things
like atomic reactors and futuristic transportation might work.
One of Heinlein's stories is about a revolution against a North American Theocracy.
And Stranger in a Strange Land is a masterpiece not to be missed.

I need some new tastes since I've read all I have by them.
But I have to get through all the plague books I'm reading first! My Black-Death-a-thon :headbang:

She's simply magnificent. One of Canada's greatest gifts to the world. Her writing is sheer brilliance.

I expect the Nobel Prize Committee to give Ms. Atwood a much overdue Literature Prize.

What can I say? I'm an alternate history fan.

I also like S.M. Stirling, Ben Bova, David Weber, Ray Bradbury, David Brin, Isaac Asimov, and many others.

Some other interesting questions might be:

Is there an author you like despite yourself?

For me, it's Richard K. Morgan. He paints extremely violent, bleak worlds, which I normally don't like reading, and I wouldn't consider picking them up if I had heard the themes first. With that said, I really like his books!

Is there an author you like whom you really didn't want to like?

J.K. Rowling. I was sick and tired of hearing about Harry Potter. I finally picked up the first book so that I could understand the 1 in 3 words my niece said that involved Harry Potter. And damn it, I really liked it. I've got the whole series.

Is there an author whom you really used to like and don't any more?

I've got three here. Orson Scott Card, Tom Clancy, and Michael Crichton. I started with Card's short stories and read "Ender's Game." Liked them. However, I was educated on how offensive he is to any number of people and stopped reading him. I despise Tom Clancy. He is a neocon bastard and I can't decide whether I hate more, his politics or the way he injects them into his books. Michael Crichton earned my wrath with "State of Fear." I will never purchase another Crichton book unless it's missing the front cover, in which case I'm costing him and his publisher money by doing so.

I'm sure there are others. I love to read, although I don't read as much fiction as I used to or should.

I keep hoping he had some unpublished manuscripts sitting in a drawer before hs stroke, and later death.

James Lee Burke
Bernard Cornwell

Richard Russo, Jonathan Franzen.

and Vonnegut

Great stuff.

Although he's a little bit too relentlessly grim to be a true favorite. He is one hell of a great writer though.

But then the next paragraph will be so god-awful, achingly beautiful that you just have to keep reading in spite of the horror.

:hi:

Two very different writers stylistically (Borges never wrote novels; Crowley's epically long-winded), but they're both very cerebral, evocative fantasists with gorgeous use of language.

Redstone

Tracy Chevalier (Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Virgin Blue) writes in a literary style that is still easy, without being light. Her novels center around an historical period and involve visual art. "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" is a fictional imagining of the creation of the famous Vermeer portrait. She has written novels centered around a medieval tapestry, an Elizabethan English grave sculpture, a medieval peasant church's stained glass window. Her stories are imaginative and her characters realistic, usually from a woman's perspective (in the context of the era in which the story is set). You will never forget the ending of "The Virgin Blue."

Gene Wolfe is nothing like her. :) He writes fantasy/sci-fi based stories with a literary bent. His writing is difficult and complex, from the vocabulary to the sentence structure to the plot to the entire story. He envisions impossible worlds full of anti-heroes who walk amongst gods who are only slightly more powerful and often more human than the characters around them. His worlds are meshes of post-apocolyptic sci-fi settings in universes that never existed, though a couple have been more traditional fantasy settings. His creations have included a torturer's apprentice who sets out on a journey with his dead lover's soul co-habiting his mind, a priest of computer gods in a failing ship which has evolved into a world of corropt politicians and dangerous criminals, and an Arthurian-style legend of a knight in a world that seems a cross between Arthur and Norse mythology. None of those summaries do justice to the originality of characters and settings, nor to the element of the human spirit in each of his works. He is often compared to Melville.

Those are my pathetic attempts at writing about writing. Not my strong suit. :)

That would have to be Douglas Feith (a Google candidate).

writes dirty little short stories which coyly hint at meaning beneath all the sex. Never sex for the sake of sex, but as a stand-in for missing parts, the things that people really lack. Tragic and funny characters who make you feel their emptiness and you want for them.

I think he's probably one of the best writers that nobody has heard of.

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Raymonds (Carver and Chandler), the Russians (Checkhov, Tolstoy and Nabokov), Proust, Melville and, of course, me.

Some of the language is dated (being a bit more sexist/racist than we'd tolerate today) but damn, Fleming could totally capture the feel of whatever the setting was.

John Sandford (I love his "Prey" series of books)
I also like a lot of Rumer Godden's stuff, particularly "In This House of Brede"

Pat Conroy, if only for Beach Music - a beautiful novel that invites you in, embraces you and holds you through the last page.

Nelson DeMille for everything he's written, but especially for John Corey.

Alice Hoffman. Her prose skirts on poetry. A pleasure to read.

Neil Gaiman (looking forward to picking up a copy of the new one)

John Sandford, and his sweet, brilliant, hunky alter-ego - Lucus Davenport.

Anne Rivers Siddons, for sentimental reasons.

John Grisham, for A Painted House

Gore Vidal (old favorite)

Stephen Dobyns, for The Church of Dead Girls

Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Flannery O'Conner, Eudora Welty, and of course, Harper Lee...Now here I am in my 40s, and I'm finally enjoying the classics I should have read in H.S and college. I've got so much reading to do and so little time!

even though he's turning into a fuddy-duddy in his old age.

He is a staunch liberal though.

Am currently re-reading The Shockwave Rider. Next up is Stand On Zanzibar and then The Sheep Look Up.

All written many years ago, and all extremely relevant to today.

Did you know that he "invented" the computer virus as a plot point in Shockwave Rider? He named it a "tapeworm", a name that was taken over by the geek community before computers were household items.

:thumbsup:

especially her stories.

and a host of other writers of suspense and horror.

That guy can absolutely paint with words. I like James Joyce for that reason too. I enjoy sitting down with Finnegans Wake -- I really don't know what the hell is going on, but the language is so musical it's intoxicating.

Other faves: Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley.