Who are your favourite writers?

And why?

Well, go on then..........

Aphra Behn, LM Montgomery, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem and Herman Hesse. i tend to feel awkward when asked why i like people or things so i won't say why.

i s'pose i'd have to say Siddhartha as it was the first book by Hesse that i read. i've only read three books by him. The other two were Demian and Strange News From Another Star.

No, i didn't name Herman after him; it was the fiancé who came up with the name because Herman is a Hermann's tortoise.

Who are your favourite writers, anyroad?

Quote: Rayanne Graff, Mar 2011

i s'pose i'd have to say Siddhartha as it was the first book by Hesse that i read. i've only read three books by him. The other two were Demian and Strange News From Another Star.

No, i didn't name Herman after him; it was the fiancé who came up with the name because Herman is a Hermann's tortoise.

Who are your favourite writers, anyroad?

Man, I've got loads...........

James Joyce was a super-genius and I don't think there can be much dispute about that one. Norman Mailer is a long-standing favourite of mine, ditto Henry Miller although both of them wrote some proper knackers in amongst their masterpieces. Most of mine are American men, as it happens, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, Kerouac.......

Love Sylvia Plath, William Blake, Emily Bronte, Shakespeare, Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Hanif Kureshi. Too many to name, really. Willy Vlautin's well on his way too, although he's only done three books so far. They're all brilliant though and I've got high hopes for him. Probably my favourite contemporary writer, with the exception of Cormac McCarthy who no one else even comes close to at the moment.

Just a quick word on Angela Carter as well - twisted fairy tales for grown ups told in unapologetically self-indulgent prose of the purplest hues. She was a wonderful writer.

Christopher Hitchens, I love for his snobbish sniping, the burning intelligent vitriol that pours from his pen. I generally don't care for people who think a lot of themselves, who are so assured in their opinions, but he's got the stylish elan to pull it off. I recommend: his book on Thomas Jefferson, Paine's Rights of Man, and my favourite, God is Not Great. I'm going to miss him when he goes.

Brendan Behan. Ex-IRA man who drank himself to death after writing some of the most fetchingly charismatic works in the English language. Behan's got that Hunter Thompson/Jack Kerouac factor (both of whom are favourites of mine) where after you read some of his work, you want to run out of the room and have some great experiences in your life.

Terry Pratchett. The funniest tragedy writer the world's ever seen. Pratchett believes in people, and shaped much of my worldview. Things get extremely sh*tty, but there'll be good people to try and fix the confused mess that those less able to hide their fear leave. The Sam Vimes books in particular.

Other comic writers: My avatar, Marky Mark Twain. PG Wodehouse. Douglas Adams. Oscar Wilde could be pretty funny. The fag on the crag's plays were his poetry.

James Clarence Mangan. A drunken wastrel smackhead Irish poet capable of bringing home the brutal reality of life while simultaneously composing word symphonies on the simple redemption of love/obsession. Extremely underrated prose writer who got me reading old German stuff.

Graham Greene. The quintessential British writer after D*ckens, as far as I'm concerned. All human life is there.

Bukowski, Burroughs, Baudelaire, Blake.

Lorca, Rimbaud, Shakespeare.

Bill Bryson's science book opened my eyes to the awe of the natural world in a witty way.

I like Stephen King as well.

David McCullogh's one of my favourite histtory writers. I think everyone should read his biography of John Adams.

Mark Z Daniewlski, I read House of Leaves and was smitten, while I normally get quite deep into books, nothing has sucked me in to the point where I've been too scared to walk down hallways or do anything that happens to the main protagonists in this book. While a lot of it's approach simply relies on clever use of texts, footnotes and other various devices, its still completely enthralling, since all these serve to do is heighten the feeling of losing ourself while reading.

Isaac Asimov. One of the greatest SF writers of his generation, he is in part what got me into robotics I used to love the Positronic Robot series when I was growing up, his basis for robotics, laying down the widely known three laws or robotics, though to his thoughts of ho robots would react within the confines of these laws have spurred a generation of people to get into the industry and have shaped its very future decades before we were even close enough to perfecting even the most simple of devices in this area. This is even before we touch on the Foundation series.

Arthur C Clarke. I'm a science/sci-fi nerd. He is another one of the greatest SF writers of his time. Not only that but the dude is credited for being the father of Satellites. Yes, his work is a bit on the heavy side, yes it can be mired in science fact and yes; at times it can be a slog because of it, but every last letter is worth it. Much like Asimov, his work has helped shape the way modern science has progressed in many ways, be it the orbiting satellite or the inevitable 'Space Elevator' as its generally known. The vision behind all this came from a man whose ideas predated many of the devices that follow them by years.

This said, both of these authors are pretty heavy in terms of their approach. I love a lot of lighter SF reads too, but I can't pick one or two particular favourites without struggling to find one in favour of another. Check out people like Poul Anderson, one of my favourites by him being The Corridors of Time. A novel about a war waged by people from our future, using our own history as its weapons, a book which is littered with many interesting historical factoids about human migration patterns, genetics, breeding and various other things that shaped the people we are today. Brian Aldiss and his utterly woderful Helliconia trilogy. A series which spans around a thousand years and countless hundreds of lightyears of space while yet keeping a very central set of locations, that almost become bigger than the characters themselves.
Harlen Ellison and his shorts, such as I have no mouth and I must Scream a story of the last survivors of humanity, kept alive and tortured forever by the insane and highly angry AM; a supercomputer constructed by the three main factions in the last world war to run the war more efficiently for them. Plus countless more (Sadly my book collection is currently all boxed up under my bed so I am struggling to remember much more off the top of my head.)

William Blake. One of the few poets I've ever actually 'got'

Terry Pratchett. You need to ask why?

Clive Barker, though for books like Imajica more than anything else.. Imajica is possibly the most all encompassing, clever, well thought out piece of literature I have encountered in a long, long time.

Many more I'm likely forgetting.


Edit.

William F*cking Gibson!

How did he miss my first list?

Neuromancer is often cited as inspiring the way the internet developed. The man is responsible for several terms which are fairly commonplace now, such as Cyberspace (Sadly falling into misuse) or ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) I absolutely fell in love with his vision for what the internet could be and was fully and firmly introduced to Cyberpunk, a genre I have ever since loved dearly.

Oh, and Tolstoy.

Quote:

My avatar, Marky Mark Twain

The first part of his official autobiography has just been published (he stipulated that it was not to be done until a hundred years after his death) if you're interested. I've got it on order at work, very much looking forward to reading it. He was a funny, funny man.