As far as contemporary crime fiction mystery I like Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks Series.
As far as modern international fiction I enjoy Heinrich Böll.
Too many excellent authors to mention individually...
As far as contemporary crime fiction mystery I like Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks Series.
As far as modern international fiction I enjoy Heinrich Böll.
Too many excellent authors to mention individually...
J.J. has definitely eclipsed the competition in the last year.
Honorable mentions go to Proust, Faulkner, and Beckett.
My all time favorite writer would have to be Hunter S. Thompson, I love the way he writes, it's so unique. He keeps it real
In terms of numbers of books read then my favourite author is George MacDonald Fraser. He wrote the Flashman series of historical novels. Not all of these were great, but added to those were many fine books outside that series. My favourite books of his were Black Ajax and Mr American. Black Ajax was about a black prize fighter who came to England from America to fight Tom Cribb, who was the champion prize fighter at the time. Mr American was about another American, this time a wild west outlaw, who came to England and married into the upper classes. Fraser wrote three books based on his army experiences about a particularly dirty, stupid, ill-disciplined soldier called Private McAuslen. Those books were different in tone to his other books and I found them very funny. Another book, which was different in tone again was called The Candlemass Road (I think). This was about Scottish and English borderers, constantly raiding, cattle-rustling, kidnapping, extorting and robbing each other. The only book of Fraser's I did not like was The Pyrates. It seemed like an experimental book, which tried to be funny, but failed badly. Come to think of it, I think I tried reading one of his non-fiction books about the border reivers, but did not get on with it.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
becket- best book is his trilogy, novels, far above all his other work
my fav writers are Sophocles , Dante , the bard, the 3 Russians , Chaucer
Joyce's the dead is best short story in English methinks
here he is both Flaubert n Tolstoy
the shame is he went off the road in Ulysseus about pg 555, instead of toward those two writers he went into the obscure
path toward pure language- which is never pure since it is the embodiment of experience
As of today it's John Fowles. He's like a painter of words, descriptions are so vivid.
... Just remembered William Faulkner. Enjoy his prose for another reasons, remember being slightly shocked by the rawness of "As I Lay Dying".
Also Jose Saramago is one of the major figures in modern literature. His ideas are quite deep, although I'm not completely satisfied with translations of his novels (unfortunately I can't speak Portuguese).
Rafael Sabatini for his conversations between characters. Rider Haggard for his Allan Quaterman series and John Mortimer for his Rumpole of the Bailey and finally Dashiell Hammett for his Continental Op stories.
I've enjoyed a lot of works by a very heterogeneous mass of authors, but lately (let's say... twenty to twenty-five years) I've taken a fancy to the tormentors of language, so, naturally, I'll say: Mallarmé, Joyce, Celan.
Special mention to Heidegger and Céline, mainly due to the same reason.
Currently enjoying Mary Doria Russell. First fell in love with The Sparrow and its sequel many years ago and then was alerted to the existence of other books (I think by someone on a thread here) and having the impression confirmed. Lovely insights into the nature of being human.
I have to say Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I'm a fan of postcolonial literature, and she's a goldmine for that.
Without any form of punctuation, our language would not say "I'm perfect"; it would say "imperfect".
"Access to works of art cannot be defined solely in terms of physical accessibility, since works of art exist only for those who have the means of understanding them."
I like my prose to be simple and effective, the subject and ideas can be huge and detailed and complex and as subtle as you like, as long as the writer can get them across sucessfully. I don't want flowery overblown prose or padding or any awkwardness, I'm not here to admire a person's use of a thesaurus. A good author knows what to leave out.
I can say all this because I'm reading a self-published book at the moment and it is hopeless. Splattered with inappropiate adjectives, characters that act out of character, emotions that need to be explained rather than felt - explanations of exactly the wrong thing - hopeless. Sometimes you have to read something bad to know what's good.
So anyway;-
Jane Austin - every word chosen for effect, and not a single one wasted.
Marquez.
Tolstoy.
Tolkien.
Last edited by prendrelemick; 06-17-2016 at 08:10 AM.
ay up
Last edited by EmptySeraph; 06-17-2016 at 07:53 PM.
Oh gawd! I have some friends called Austin - I'm always doing that.
Hemingway is - but there are so many (and they change from month to month)
Yep, Kafka too, and Von Arnim at the moment. (only read one Flaubert) and Patchett and Joyce can be when he wants and so-on and so-on.
But Austen is the greatest, If she does become verbose she's done it on purpose and for a very good reason.
Last edited by prendrelemick; 06-18-2016 at 02:32 PM.
ay up