Favorite fiction authors?

I'm a fan of historical fiction, so I'd go with:

Herman Wouk

James Michener

Jane Auel

Doug Niles, Richard A. Knaack. Just to name a few.

that didn't make me run screaming was the original Dragonlance trilogy. Everything else has bored me to tears and I'm not even sure why. My wife likes a LOT more of their stuff than I do and she's a LOT pickier than I am.

But hey, everyone likes what they like. I enjoy their work. I like Salvatore and Kemp better than them now but I grew up on the Dragonlance series.

It's been years and years, so I don't remember.

Some Salvatore I like, but I have more an eye for his humorous stuff because I think his dark and gloomy gothic stuff is WAY overdone.

Anything focused on Raistlin is just the sort of thing I'm looking for. He's probably my favorite fantasy character ever. I'm a big fan of Salvatore's Drizzt stuff but I like the Jarlaxle/Entreri stuff even more. I tend to like the evil characters.

He's not completely evil. Drzzt, near as I can tell, isn't evil at all.

In fact, to be honest, I don't think most of Salvatore's villains are particularly convincing, but that just me.

Being nice to one gully dwarf doesn't really balance out the heinous crimes he committed. And yes, Drizzt is not evil at all, an exception to my usual rule. I find the drow society to be pretty convincing, particularly the matron mothers.

as much as comprehending the inequities involved in how everyone else treats gully dwarfs. That's not evil.

Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Tom Robbins

are t he ones I can recall right now .I am sure there are more. I really like PK Dick

Cormack McCarthy.

He's wonderful - really good writing, and good hard science-fiction in the old Asimovian mold while adding in some of the new.

Reynolds is a physicist (or some kind of scientist, anyway).

John Irving
Ernest Hemingway
Alistair MacLean (pre 1973)
Kim Stanley Robinson

I am so excited that I put a reminder on my calendar for the release date.:bounce:

October 27, 2009

Glen Cook(Annals of the Black Company), RA Salvatore, Troy Denning, Tolkein(of course), Stephen King, Anne Rice...

never stop reading !

who wrote a Canticle For Leibowitz , one of my all time favorite books

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Arthur Conan Doyle

Hemingway

Steinbeck

Ernest Gann

and I'm pretty sure the rumors about her being a wingnut are exaggerated...

:rofl:


Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Seriously, though, my favorite fiction authors include a lot of the classics -- Hemingway, Faulkner Fitzgerald, whatnot. On that note, when people talk about writing the great American novel, I tell them that it's already been written -- it was titled The Great Gatsby.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is almost peerless. 100 Years of Solitude should be on everyone's must-read list. They should hand that book out to everyone at birth. People should keep family trees in copies of it instead of the Bible.

I like a lot of the guys from the Beat Generation -- Kerouac, Burroughs, etc. As my avatar suggests, Hunter Thompson should be on the list too, as his stuff is far more fiction than nonfiction.

Some of the WWII generation guys are great too. I like Philip Roth and Norman Mailer.

I like some modern Florida fiction too, probably because I live here. Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey are some of my favorites from the genre.

That's kind of the tip of the iceberg, though. I'm a pretty heavy reader. Any good writer should be.

:spank:


Add Ginsberg to that list of the Beat Generation. I love HOWL

I look at Ginsberg's poetry more as a historical relic than a body of work that has relevance today. (I know that might get me some angry responses, but, hey, just one man's opinion.)

Charles Dickens
Anthony Trollope
Wilkie Collins

Kurt Vonnegut
Martin Amis
Tobias Wolff

Also rans: Nelson Algren, Thomas Pynchon.

He's a terrific writer and I love the way he interlaces his mystery stories with an element of the supernatural. He's a top notch writer and his characters are memorable.

His writing just transports me to another world and once there I don't want to leave.

Sharon Shinn
Lois McMaster Bujold
Spider Robinson
Frank Herbert
Diane Duane

She's not an historical author though.

I am having a wonderful time right now. I am moving back to Austin in a couple of weeks and am going to try to vconvince my SO to to move to Anhk- Morpork
Also Orson Scott Card (duh)
Spider Robinson
Neil Gaiman
Robert Heinlein
Alan Moore
Frank Miller
Aristophanes
Voltaire
Homer
Dr. Seuss

It'll be my first.

As for McCrumb, I've inhaled nearly everything she's written. For a while I even had an email correspondence going with her!

edit: spelling

I can just to prolong the experience. It's difficult though because she's so good that you just want to race right through her books. Same with Harris and Gabaldon. If you haven't read Gabaldon yet, start with Outlander. You'll be hooked for life.

I am taken by his descriptive style. I first found him difficult to read. Now I keep rereading House of Seven Gables for enjoyment

Stephen Lawhead
Asimov
Bruce Sterling
S.M. Stirling
Connie Willis
Ben Bova
Philip K. Dick
Robert Silverberg
Ray Bradbury
Nancy Kress
Samuel R. Delaney


um - that's enough for now, I suppose.

Khaled Hosseini is awesome. Both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns moved me. I think China Mieville is brilliant--{i]The Scar is imaginative and fierce. I like Neal Stephenson. But for the most part, I'm a fiend for genre fiction--give me sf and fantasy. I guess my faves are Charles Stross and David Weber.

For fiction books though that I have reread the most--The Illuminatus Trilogy by Wilson & Shea and Good Omens by Pratchett & Gaiman. I think I've honestly read each at minimum ten times. Just because they don't get old, to me.

Barbara Pym
Mark Twain
Barbara Kingsolver
Anne George
John Mortimer
Dorothy Sayers
P.D. James

Iain Banks (with or without the M)
Gene Wolfe
Michael Chabon
Jonathan Lethem