Who is your favorite author?

Dougless Addams- Hitch Hicker's Guide to the Galexy: A Trilogy in five parts.
Enid Blyton- The Famous Five, The adventure series and Noddy Bocks\
Arthur Ransome- Swallows and Amazons
J.K. Rowling- Harry Potter and Philosopher's (sorcerer's) stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Only one? There are oh-so-many.

I have lots of favorite authors for very different reasons. I'm in the process of winnowing out my books, tho, so here's a sampling of who is left on the shelves: Charles de Lint, Phillip K. Dick, Umberto Eco, Carl Hiassen, James Morrow, Patrick O'Brien, Tim Powers, Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephenson, David Foster Wallace, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, William Least Heat-Moon, and Barry Lopez.

Guy Gavriel Kay.

David Foster Wallace (Girl With Curious Hair, The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter)
Lurlene McDaniel

I don't have one all-time favorite, but I'm currently enjoying the works of Troy Soos. He's writing this great series of mysteries set in the 'eens and twenties, featuring a major-league baseball player. I especially love the bits set in Boston, when Fenway Park was brand new, and the Boston Braves still played.

SueBue, I like J. A. Jance, too! Which series do you prefer?

Marge Piercy
-- Woman on the Edge of Time, Gone To Soldiers, Small Changes, Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep

Rita Mae Brown
-- Rubyfruit Jungle, Six of One, Bingo, In Her Day

Pat Califia
-- Macho Sluts, Doc and Fluff, Diesel Fuel

Robert Heinlein
-- Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough For Love

Spider Robinson
-- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon et al, Callahan's Lady et al

gilly - I started reading the J. P. Beaumont books at the recommendation of my sister. It has an extra appeal because it's set in Seattle - familiar territory. I'm reading them in chronological order (I'm anal about that) and I've read the first 9 in the series. Now I'm reading the 2nd Joanna Brady book, and I think I actually prefer that series. I guess I relate better to her. She even has a daughter the same age as ours.

Which series do you prefer? Have you read them all? I'm also looking forward to Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, her two books that aren't part of any series.

SueBee: I like them both, but I think I prefer the Beaumont series. Haven't read them all yet, and I didn't know about the others -- I'll have to check those out!

Another great book is Flood Tide by Clive Cussler. I haven't read any of his others yet, but that one was unforgetable. I never would have read it if it hadn't been recommended to me, because the subject matter didn't interest me, but I'm glad I slogged through the first few boring pages, because it really pulled me in after that.

James Thurber, Guy Gavriel Kay, W.T. Quick, Patricia K. McKillip, Ann McCaffrey, Annie Dillard, John Crowley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Zylpha Keatley Snyder.

Iain M Banks, James Herbert, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, Irvine Welsh, Terry Pratchett, even Lewis Carroll.

I don't know if I have one. Maybe Milan Kundera? I do like David Foster Wallace a lot but favorite? Probably not.

Oh... Kundera - the Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality.

I don't do a lot of reading anymore, but it would probably be Douglas Adams. We've talked enough about his works lately so I won't go into it.

Angela Carter (The Magic Toyshop and various fairy tale anthologies),
AS Byatt (Possession),
Dorothy Soelle (German theologian, peace activist, feminist - I can't remember the title of my favourite one).

I can't pick just one!
Jonathan Kellerman: Alex Delaware series
John D. Macdonald: Travis McGee series
Sue Grafton: Kinsey Millhone series
& current popular British fiction...

I don't have a favorite.

Hermann Hesse, Diana Gabaldon, Charles de Lint, Isabel Allende

Ooh yeah, Isabel Allende!

I am my favorite author

James Gleick again and again

mandy: Really? Where can we find your material? What kind of stuff have you published (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, what)?

I like (in no particular order):

Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, Lost Boys)
Lois McMaster Bujold (Ceteganda, Mirror Dance, The Vor Game)
Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku)
Hiroyuki Morioka (Seikai no Monshou)
Tom Clancy (Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games)
Christopher Stasheff (Her Majesty's Wizard)
Terry Pratchett (Discworld series)
Larry Niven (Ringworld, Mote in God's Eye)
Ann McCaffrey (Pern series, etc.)
Patricia Wrede (Enchanted Forest Chrinicles)
Patricia McKillip (Riddlemaster of Hed, etc)
Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis (Dragonlance series)

You can visit Alexlit to find out more about a lot of these authors. The site even gives recommendations based on your ratings of different books and stories.

anon....Who said I was published? You don't have to be published to be an author...
Actually, some of my poetry is self published, I guess, on my webpage.
My other stuff is either on my hard drive and on disc as works in progress, or in various notebooks hidden in my home.
I love my writing. I wish I was in the mood to write more often. I have no desire to be published anymore.........it is not what motivates me to create. Creation is more about self satisfaction for me at this point. That may change later, or not.

Richard Bachmann for one damn book, Swan Song. If you never read another book you have to read this one. Makes King's The Stand look like Bambi.

mandy, Oh. I just thought I would hunt it down and read some, no offense. Nevermind.

no offense taken, really...although I am curious why you felt the need to ask anonymously.
I always assume anon is coming from a place of cowardice as that seems to be the way that people with issues about me seek to express their silly inane vengeful retorts...
my bad. sorry...

Here is a link to some of my poetry if you're curious. This is a small sampling of stuff written over the last year or so...the last one, which appears first on the page, was written last Thanksgiving, and shows in it's appropriate insanity and darkness, my mindset at the time.
Thankfully, I've brightened up a bit of late. Life is a funny funny journey.

There is some good stuff in there, mandy. The first one is really good, I can see it in Poetry Motel or some such (Do I believe getting published is not what motivates you to write? Yes. Do I believe you don't have any desire to be published anymore? No.). Try to avoid rhyming poems unless you make each word count in itself and not just choose a word to rhyme with something else. Also, rhyming doesn't tend to work for serious subject matter, it's better for lighter stuff.

P.S. I don't have any "issues" with you, but you do appear to have some issues with a wide variety of people, including men.

**mandy: Thanks for the link...

anon...some men...not all men....
Thanx for the feedback.

daver, You are welcome...

Jan Wolkers
Bret Easton Ellis
Donna Tartt

STEPHEN KING

I'm between favorite authors right now but I'll throw out Iain Banks as a past favorite.

Oh Gosh... I have to name more than one or I will go insane.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park)www.jasna.org
J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye)
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
Jeffrey Archer (Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter, Honor Among Thieves)
Graeme Base (The Eleventh Hour, Animalia)

Louis Zukofsky: ALL the collected short poems, A , A Test of Poetry, Collected Fiction; For me, the best poet of the 20th century.

I have a few but I think that Belva Plain is one of the best. I like stories that are more realistic than fantasy

My favourite author's are Beatrix Potter, Margaret and H.A. Rey's for creating the wonderful stories of curious George and of course a favourite of everyone, I'm sure...Lloyd Munro for the Graphic introduction to chemical structure and intelligent application of modern and traditional engineering materials.

Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Dr. Seuss (and Chuck Palahniuk is pretty close to making the cut).

Milan Kundera, James Joyce, Czeslaw Milosz, Julio Cortazar, Katherine Mansfield, Frank McCourt, Dr. Seuss...

You might consider publishing your works on AlexLit. They have a lot of works published there and you can charge 50 cents or $1 per person (I guess you set the price...I've never submitted work).

Nihon, you have to be published before your work can appear on there.

j.d.salander
(the one who wrote the catcher in the rye)

Thanx..but I am not really interested in being published more than just sharing my words on my webpage. For now anyway.

Raymond E. Feist, Magician, Silverthorn, Darkness at Sethanon, Rise of a Merchant Price, Shards of a Broken Crown. http://www.crydee.com/feist/refindex.htm

Jade and Chiquita - I like Salinger too, especially his Glass family stories like "Franny and Zooey," "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters," and some of the 9 stories.

Wow. Favorite author? hmm, to name a few: Isabelle Allende, Gene Wolfe, Italo Calvino, Thich Nhat Hanh, Chih-Chung Tsai, Matt Wagner, V.S. Ramachandran, David Foster Wallace, A. A. Milne, Maya Angelou, David Brin... too hard to choose.

I just checked out the first in the Alex Delaware series because I like the other authors you mentioned as favorites. I haven't started it yet, but it looks good!

I'm about halfway through Hour of the Hunter and it's really good. There seems to be more sex and violence than in Jance's two series, which you may or may not like, but the story is good, as usual.

I just read it, and I don't like it as much as her other stuff. Maybe the Indian stuff feels too forced to me, I don't know.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I've been assuming all along that it's necessary for the plot later in the book, but so far the story would be better without a lot of it.

Larry Niven, Dean Ing, and Poul Anderson.

His Devine Grace A.c> Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

http://www.iskcon.org

Asimov, Bujold, Clarke, Hamilton, Heinlein, Hiassen.... I'd have to go to a library to make a full list! But Tom Clancy isn't on it, the pretentious second-rater.

Tolstoy

I just checked out Kiss of the Bees and realized it is a sequel to Hour of the Hunter. It takes place 20 years later, with the same characters, but doesn't appear to have those little Indian stories interspersed. That may be an improvement!

Read that one too, and it still didn't do much for me. Weird, considering how good the other series are.

Stephen King

Not Richard Bachman?

Well him as well

You as well?? Isn't he just the best!

Heh-heh...