Five favourite authors

[T soprano]

David morrel
stephen king
tony parsons
katie price/jordon
shakespear

 

[SeagullinExile]

David morrel
stephen king
tony parsons
katie price/jordon
shakespear

Brilliant! I never thought I'd see that name on this thread!

 

[Mad as my Mother]

1) Raymond E. Feist ---- Rift War Saga (Starting with Magician)
2) David Gemmell (RIP) ---- Troy series
3) Tad Williams ----- Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn saga
4) Jeff Noon ----- Falling Out of Cars
5) Stephen King ----- Insomnia

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

David morrel
stephen king
tony parsons
katie price/jordon
shakespear

KP yes, but who the heck is Shakespear?

 

[Scampi]

Five contenders for my favourite author;

Hilary Mantel
James Ellroy
Haruki Murakmi
Pat Barker
Michael Chabon

 

[Surf's Up]

Charles Dickens
Laurence Sterne
Tobias Smollet
Daphne du Maurier
John Le Carre

 

[LargeHadronZugzwang]

1. Terry Pratchett
2. PC Doherty (Historical whodunnits with an element of truth thrown in)
3. Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast was inspired by Arundel Castle)
4. Italo Calvino who wrote imaginative bonkers stuff like The Cloven Viscount (about a knight who gets cut in half; one side goes on to live a good life, the other bad)
5. Anybody who makes me laugh whilst I'm armchair travelling i.e Bill Bryson etc

 

[Pevenseagull]

Graham Greene
Evelyn Waugh
Ian McEwan
P G Wodehouse
Raymond Chandler

John Keneddy Toole would have got a look in if he'd written more (and it had been any good)
Philip K Dick would have been in the list up until I re-read a couple last year after a ten year break

 

[Mutts Nuts]

Who are your favourite scribes? Mine are:

1. Joe R. Lansdale
2. John Steinbeck
3. Richard Stark
4. James Crumley
5. Andrew Vachss

1/Rudyard Kipling

2/Tolkien

3/Ken Follet

4/Frederick Forsyth

5/P J Tracy

 

[Postman Pat]

I've just started Game of Thrones and it's surprisingly very un-Hobbity and a great yarn. So George R. Martin;

Me too, but I wish he would stop spending so much time describing meals, if he did the book would be half as long.

Used to be Lee Child till he sold out and let Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher in the film.

Harlan Coben
Michael Connelly
Bernard Cornwell

 

[Ninja Elephant]

Author (Best work)

John Grisham (The Runaway Jury)
Philip Pullman (Northern Lights)
Robert Ludlum (The Bourne Identity)
Eric Van Lustbader (The Bourne Betrayal)
Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse)

 

[Leekbrookgull]

Tom Sharpe,Enid Blyton (yep) John Wyndham.

 

[vegster]

1, Arthur Pendragon
2, Arthur Daley
3, Arthur Dent
4, Arthur Lowe
5, Arthur Gilligan


hang on, have I read this wrong ?

 

[tinycowboy]

John Keneddy Toole would have got a look in if he'd written more (and it had been any good)
Philip K Dick would have been in the list up until I re-read a couple last year after a ten year break

I love Confederacy of Dunces - have you read Modern Baptists by James Wilcox?

 

[tinycowboy]

Italo Calvino who wrote imaginative bonkers stuff like The Cloven Viscount (about a knight who gets cut in half; one side goes on to live a good life, the other bad)

this writer is a menace. Took me four attempts to read If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. There's one about knights reading tarot cards that's just too much - could not face more than a few pages of knights each interpreting tarot cards in a different way. Life is too short.

 

[tinycowboy]

Tobias Smollet

I also love a bit of picaresque.

 

[wunt be druv]

1. Anton Chekhov
2. Leo Tolstoy
3. Haruki Murakami
4. Orhan Pamuk
5. Ivan Turganev

 

[Bob!]

John Wyndham
J R R Tolkein
Bernard Cornwell
George RR Martin
Dr Seuss

 

[brakespear]

Tove Jansson
T H White
Bill Bryson
Jaime Hernandez (if we're including comics)
Terry Pratchett

 

[LargeHadronZugzwang]

this writer is a menace. Took me four attempts to read If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. There's one about knights reading tarot cards that's just too much - could not face more than a few pages of knights each interpreting tarot cards in a different way. Life is too short.

As I recall, think at the start of the book the author reminds us to stop watching the telly and just enjoy the zany story, maybe you looked into it too deeply? This part of the message no? Who knows, I enjoyed it anyhow.
As for Woolf and some of the naval gazing in her novels...not to mention her elitist comments on the worthlessness of the Working Classes which are somewhat unsavoury, no matter how many literary types try to dress it up. We'll agree to differ, can't argue with Dickens however, he has got many votes, unsurprisingly. His humour and storytelling still put him as a justified favourite.