Your five favourite fiction authors......

[peter]

...... and the work you like best.

(SRD taken as read, so he can be considered honourary no.1)

(In no particular order)

1. Milorad Pavik; The Dictionary of the Khazars.

2. Kenneth Graham; The Wind in the Wllows

3. Elizabeth Kostova; The Historian

4. Wilkie Collins; The Woman in White

5. W E Bowman; The Ascent of the Rum Doodle

(Already I find I have broken my intention and simply gone for five of my favourite books. I'm going to cheat and give you five authors without whom my life would have been so much the poorer. Frank Richards for his Billy Bunter stories; Enid Blyton who I read voraciously as a child and is responsible for my love of reading; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for both the Holms and Challenger books. Alan Moore for his graphic novels.... and....... (thinking)...... Shakespeare or Michael Bond for the Paddington books. Can't make my mind up - you decide.)

[sgt.null]

Stephen King - the Mist

Robert E Howard : Black Collosus

HP Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness

Richard Adams - wrote my favorite novel, Watership Down

Joe Hill : Heart-Shaped Box

[peter]

Excellent Sarge! Only one I've actually read is your favourite, Watership Down. Howard of course I know from his Conan stories and King from The Standing. Lovecraft's reputation precedes him a Joe Hill is a new one on me.

Thanks for partaking.

(How's the lockdown going in your place of work Sarge? Must be a very difficult additional burden on top of an already hard ask, I'd guess!)

[Damelon]

Robert Graves - I, Claudius

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle - Hound of the Baskervilles being representative but many more as well

Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

Gore Vidal - Creation

Ivan Doig - The Sea Runners

[Savor Dam]

Dorothy Sayers - Murder Must Advertise

Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Tom Clancy - Executive Orders is an interesting read in these times; Clancy is eerily prescient yet again

James Clavell - Noble House

Lynne Cantwell - Seasons of the Fool

[peter]

Thanks guys. Not my original intention with this, but I wonder how much of ourselves we reveal in our lists?

[Linna Heartbooger]

C.S. Lewis - "Till We Have Faces"
Amy Tan - "The Joy Luck Club"
Flannery O'Connor - "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (short story)
Donaldson - "The Mirror of her Dreams"
Modessit - "Imager"*

SD, I see you listed ali!

* I'm not sure what was my favorite of his.

(Also, I considered swapping Donaldson out for George Macdonald... I found him so hard to put down... And his books were also filed with beauty; for awhile I was reading them by the ream!)

[aliantha]

Lynne Cantwell - Seasons of the Fool

Gosh. Thanks, SD! (Might have to give it a re-read to see what I wrote...)

Oh, and Damelon, I noticed you mentioned Ivan Doig. I haven't read that one, but he has a loose trilogy that I liked a lot. The first book in the trilogy is called English Creek. The characters and time periods change, but they're all set in the same town.

So let's see. What are my faves, if I can't list the Chrons? And to make it tougher, I'm going to try to do this without running to either the bookshelf or the Kindle.

Graham Joyce - The Tooth Fairy
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar

Honorable mention goes to Melissa Bowersock, who's writing a mystery series that I'm gobbling up these days. The main characters are a former LAPD detective and a Navajo medium. Together, they release ghosts from this plane of existence and send them on their way.

[peter]

The Eyre Affair was a fun book Ali. And Jane Eyre has been on my 'to read' list for ever! It's really time I got to work on those Bronte girls (if you'll pardon the expression).

[Skyweir]

Wow this is soooo hard

All time fave ... ever ... of all. I love a lot of Aussie authors Garth Nix, Fiona Macintosh, Sara Douglas, Trudi Canavan, Isobel Camody, Kate Forsyth .. I love Robin Hobb, Raymond Feist, David Zindell, Janny Wurts, Terry Goodkind, and so on .. and I keep all my faves. But all time classic faves from my entire lifeline must be ...

Lord of the Rings JRR
The TC Chrons SRD
Lewis Carol LWntW
Game of Thrones GRR
Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide

[peter]

Damn yes - why is Tolkien not on my list? I've read TLOTR a number of times over the years and every time seems better than the last! He should be there instead of..........?........

Oh dear!

[Skyweir]

[wayfriend]

During the current hour:

(In no particular order)

+ SRD
+ SRD (Samuel R Delany)
+ Neil Stephenson
+ Gene Wolfe
+ A A Attanasio (cuz Radix)

[peter]

During the current hour is so right Wayfriend! Ask me again tomorrow and I'll give you a different list from my today's, or yesterday's.......

Little rider to the above list; given the current situation I'm in need of some cheering up and am looking towards books that could make me laugh. I mean out loud, holding my sides, down to the floor funny!

I've got a couple of candidates - Tom Sharp's book Wilt has to be one of the funniest books I've ever read....... that and W E Bowman's The Ascent of the Rum Doodle .

[Skyweir]

Oooh good to know ... Ive read neither.

I love a good laugh and will be on the look out for your recommendations

[peter]

(Now watch me backtrack Sky! )

I think recommending books is a pursuit fraught with peril. No matter how well you know someone, their taste in reading will forever remain a closed book to you (get that ). Well - no. Not their taste, so much as individual books that they will like or dislike. A bit like my wife; I know what sort of clothes or films she likes - but if I try to get specific on actually buying them (as presents or whatever) I'll fall flat every time.

So when you put out a list of books, it is more in the nature of saying what has worked for you - and worked especially well - so that other people can(if you like) have a pointer and as you have said, keep an eye out for them to judge for themselves if the book might do it for them as well.

Which all went absolutely without saying in your post anyway Sky - but rely on me to drag the unnecessary kicking and screaming into the light anyway. It's just who I am!

[Skyweir]

Nevertheless, I invest a significant degree of confidence in you and your opinion/recommendations :p

lol very funny

[wayfriend]

+ Neil Stephenson

Apropos of almost nothing: Reading (in an audio way) Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and early in the first book I came upon the chapters that occur during The Plague in London c. 1665. Included are descriptions of empty streets, self-quarantining, denial of visitors, people wearing masks, arguments on the effectiveness of masks, risk assessment of simple errands, and the like. All very eerie.

(Those three books a heartily recommend to anyone, but particularly peter, who seems fond of the long winded ruminations that go along with being English.)

[Skyweir]

How absolutely fascinating Wayfriend we have been here before. Guess it was similar in the US around the 1920s

Its kind of comforting to me that its not sooo far out of the realm of normality or expectability what we are going through.

[lucimay]

in no particular order and as Way put it, in the current hour...

steven erikson the Malazan book of the Fallen

Stephen king The Stand and The Dark Tower Series, cause hard to pick an SK favorite

Michael Connelly Two Kinds of Truth, The Wrong Side of Goodbye, and Dark Sacred Night....again...really hard to choose a favorite

Shirley Jackson the haunting of hill house

and of course, Tolkien which I read (the hobbit and the trilogy) once a year since I was 15 or 16 UNTIL I started reading the Malazan series. I've only read all 4 books once since becoming a Malazan fan. I don't know what that means but...yeah. there it is.