Who is your Favourite Author?
 

It's the first Friday in the new year and things seem slow today.

We generally get a lot of talk about music, movies, and television, but today I think it is time for a little change. Even if it is only for a few hours.

Who is your favourite author?

Mine is Hunter S. Thompson for obvious reasons.

A more contemporary favourite of mine is Max Barry.

Robert Parker is one, Joe R Landsdale is another. have several. I'm a reader

Kilgore Trout

Oh man... That is such a hard question.
I read a lot of Stephen King, Peter Straub and Kim Newman. I also like Anne Rice's Vampire chronicles up until Memnoch the Devil. Robert R. McCammon is another author I really like.
Guess there are to many for me to come up with a favorite.

dean r koontz

I read alot, but I always go back to Ludlum & Clancy.

Robert Parker

Philip K Dick
Kurt Vonnegut
Neil Stevenson

I'm not sure who writes it, but I'm a fan of whoever writes up the side of cereal boxes. I read that all breakfast long.

HST also. I have a great collection of HST artwork. many pieces by Ralph steadman

Probably Stephen King...

From the classics I would probably have to say Oscar Wilde - probablythe most talented author in the history.

I am still saving some time for the old Russian school such as Dostojevskij or Cechov.

From the 20th century authors - that's tough, I could rather mention lots of novels but it's tough to name someone I would buy regularly.

Probably George Orwell would get my vote.

Hubert Selby Jr. would be my favourite contemporary author.

Then Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins - but they are more like very exciting personalities, although they sure are talented.

I was also always a huge fan of Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler - they always crossed the border of the "crimi" genre and Chandler came up with the most incredible blurbs in the modern history.

Cormac McCarthy, John Sandford, Tess Gerritsen, Nicholas Evans, Patricia Cornwell.

I'm always waiting for Iain Banks to come out with a new novel. I regularly cruise through the new fiction and the sci fi for his books. And there hadn't been a book in a long long time, when I spotted him in the mystery section! That bastard thought he'd tricked me... :P

No author specifically but I do enjoy Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Literary masterpiece no but movement for social changes yes. Reading is the shiznit.

Have to agree, HST delivered the goods; can't wait for Rum Diary 2009!

have several, but i gotta say Frank Herbert

Yeah that was a good novel - actually, this was also always also an "obligatory" read in the school in all the countries of the eastern block in the pre 89 era to showcase the "capitalistic" manners . :2 cents:

Dostoevsky definetively...

i didn't know there were so many HST readers here. i just started reading 'The jokes over' by ralph steadman...it's a good read so far.

another classic favorite is Henry Miller. if anyone is a fan of HST and/or Henry Miller and wants to read someone contemporary, check out McCutcheon's 'Burnt Roof of Mouth' or 'Sex, Drugs, and Rocknroll'.

Tolkien...

Good input. Thanks everyone, let's keep them coming. Just goes to show that gfy isn't full of haters and meat heads, lol.

Lots of good recommendations here!!!

I don't really have one, all i read is technical books though

H S Thompson is a favorite of mine as well. I have every published book of his to date, and I have yet to find one I do not enjoy reading time and again.

Aldous Huxley is another favorite, as well as George Orwell, Tom Robbins, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut. It's difficult to narrow it down to just one favorite, but I enjoy anybody who can add a little bit of humor to every day life, and also anybody who can consistently put out a good book... as in, if I pick up a book by that specific author, I have no doubt that it will be good.

Named some great ones,

Huxley's "End of the civilisation" is something I like to applicate to the everyday's social contact - like those artificial yoppies to be the beta and white trash to be the delta etc. :)

Orwell - besides the eternal "Animal Farm" and "1984" I would also like to mention the, oh damn how was the book called, it was from the civil war in Spain and had Catalunia in title. Anyway - a great book showcasing his total disillusion and the mess he came through as well as the background of the conflict.

"Homage To Catalonia"? Also a good read. The last one I read of his was "Keep the Aspidistra Flying". A bit slow at times, but an excellent application to every day life and the emphasis put on material possessions. So true! Of course, that book was written over 50 years ago, and it only keeps getting worse with time (the concept, not the book).

Stephen King, great books, and many many great movies based off his work.

Depends on my mood.

Overall? Probably Douglas Adams. :1orglaugh

I bought a copy of "The Key West Reader" with stories by HST on Ebay just a few days ago. Still waiting on it. Here are the names of the stories.

The Gonzo Salvage Co. Salvage is Not Looting, & Dawn at the Boca Chica Bar.

You'll have to give an update once you've read it. Looks like a pretty diverse range of authors and publications, so that should be interesting.

Will do. i'll bump this thread once i get it.

I love John Le Carre

Its a toss-up between Carl Sagan, Dean Koontz and Stephen King.

Off the top of my head...

Henry Miller.
Kurt Vonnegut.
Chuck Palahniuk.
Douglas Adams.
Alex Garland.

John Sandford - he writes the "Prey" novels. Really creepy stuff and yet I've grown to really be attached to his lead character Lucas.

And you can't beat Raymond Chandler for a great old noir mystery.

Sidney Sheldon

Kilgore Trout :)

Hubert Selby
Don Delillo

"Master of the Game" and "If Tomorrow Comes" are two of my favorite books ever, especially "Master of the Game". But I've tried to read other books of his and I just couldn't get into them. I think he's a good author, but I find his books to be very hit-and-miss.

I like "The other side of midnight" and "memories of midnight". Those are the only 2 books of him I've read recently. I read one book in one night, I couldn't put it down. It dealt with my favorite topic : revenge.

One of the characters (Noelle) was so consumed to revenge on a man because he betrayed her and left her that everything she did in her life was to revenge on him, she became a famous actress in the hope that he would see on the screen. She was also mental and ate to grow his baby and then killed it with a coathanger. She was consumed by revenge and hate, kind of like me. I love it.

Many times I thought like that too. I wanted to achieve and become successful to revenge on people in my past... Those 2 books I mentioned are pretty good...

J.K. Rowling

.

Great to see some Chandler readers around here, I recently bought some of his stuff in original and I have to give an incredible credit to the translators, because it ain't an easy thing, they actually have to be authors themselves to be able to translate this stuff..

Once I see Hubert Selby Jr. there I will definitely be checking out the Don Delillo.. :pimp:thumbsup

I actually have "Memories of Midnight", but for some reason I couldn't get into it. Also "Rage of Angels" was another one I bought but never finished. Maybe I just have to be in the right mood?

I noticed a lot of his books are based around revenge... he must have some anger issues himself that he needs to get out through his writing... lol. "If Tomorrow Comes" is also about revenge (but turns into more of a con game later); if you haven't read that one yet, you should.

I read Last Exit To Brooklyn when I was 15... it was one of the things (believe it or not) that made me want to come to America.

My favorite US author is James Baldwin. I'm also a big James Joyce fan, and have read Ulysses twice. I tried reading Finnegan's Wake, but only managed a page and a half before I gave up. I think it's some kind of literary joke.

not in any particular order

Bret Easton Ellis
Hunter S. Thompson
Karl Marx

Stephen King and then whatever catches my eye.

I remember seeing a play in New York in the 80's when I lived there (can't remember what it was called) where one of the characters described a book he'd read as being "only half as long as Das Kapital, but twice as funny" or something like that. For those of you you don't know about Das Kapital, it was Karl Marx's meisterwerk.

The interesting and significant thing about Karl Marx's Capital is that it doesn't have any structure at all, you could start to read from the middle, leave out a couple of pages and finish up with the start and it won't make much difference.

Of course Marx and Engels were both wealthy aristocrats that never had to work :winkwink:

Stephen King, for sure.

I use to live a mile down the road from King. Every now and then I'd drive by his house/mansion and be like, "cool."

That's kinda' creepy in retrospect.