Your 3 Favourite Authors,and why?

RepublicanEagle

Victor Hugo - His skill for bringing characters and enviroment to life is remarkable.Read Les Miserables.

Raymond Feist - The lore,characters and world in his books is beautiful and rich.Not to mention he is a master storyteller.

Stephen King - The tension and atmosphere in his books are incredible,read Salem's Lot,then you will know what I mean.

Paddy Samurai

At this moment it would be...........


David Gemmell for writing amazing stories with fantastic characters,while also inspiring people to "do the right thing" .

Brian Lumley for writing the Necroscope series , a unique imaginative take on the tired old vampire tales.

Wallace Breem for writing one book ...................Eagle in the snow.


Tomorrow who knows,but breem will always be there for that one book.

Corkfeen

Stephen King as Listed above
Hunter S Thompson- The man was a nutjob and a genius at the same time
And to sound refined will lob Charles Dickens in there.:p

buck65

This changes every few years for me. I suppose the authors whose work I always come back to would be.

Raymond Carver. Superb short story writer, decent poet too. There is something about his work that I love.

Franz Kafka.

Charles Bukowski.

Honourable mention to
Michael Collins. Irish writer now living in the US. Read Emerald Underground years ago and have read all his novels since. Writes about crime in small US towns. Has Americans off to a tee.

Eliot Rosewater

Its hard to pick 3, but these are at least authors who Ive read more than one book by

Ernest Hemingway - for the excellent economical style of writing and for all the brilliance that exists in his novels besides, such as his combination of the literal and allegorical.

John McGahern - the Irish identity literally leaps off the pages in the novels of his Ive read.

J.D. Salinger - for superb characters and dialogue.

Bodhidharma

Haruki Murakami - surreal, atmospheric and gives my brain a nice sense of calm when I read him
John Irving - great stories, very descriptive,quite odd at times but always readable
Douglas Coupland - funny, modern, witty

Cormac McCarthy comes close but his books are a lot more effort

buck65

Murakami is good, I loved Kafka on the shore. Not mad about Norwegian Wood though but easy enough to read.

Denerick

Aldous Huxley - for satirising social interactions and convention in such a brilliant way.

Umberto Eco - for making me think so hard that I thought my brain would explode.

Walter Scott - for reminding me of how beautiful the English language can be.

DazMarz

Irvine Welsh - Quirky and brilliant; he has crafted some truly tremendous books in his time and left some excellent characters permanently in my memory. The use of phoenetic language of the Scots adds to the atmosphere and the sense of setting of his novels.

Dennis Lehane - Simply cannot stop reading his novels; classic and thought-inspiring pieces they may not be, but that doesn't mean they aren't brilliant and thrilling reads!

Stephen King - If only for The Green Mile and Different Seasons... But then again, a true master of the horror craft too. Capable of creating such an atmosphere from the written word, you can almost smell the environment he describes.

Honourable mentions: Michael Crichton, Chuck Palahniuk, Hubert Selby Jnr., David Peace, Tess Gerritsen, Cormac McCarthy.

Sleepy

Douglas Coupland - love his writing style

George RR Martin - For a Song of Ice and Fire, I haven't been as engrossed by a series since Anne Rice's vampire chronicles when I was a teenager.

Nick Hornby - Almost a guarantee of a funny book that will make you think a little...

bullpost

William Kennedy - Albany trilogy (Ironweed etc.). Fantastic bunch of Irish-Americans characters based in upstate New York.
James Lee Burke - Books based on Cajun,alcoholic, ex Vietnam Vet maverick working as detective in Louisiana.
Philip Marsden - Writer of some brilliant books on Ethiopa's culture and history.

Hon. mentions: Dickens, Poe, Nick Hornby, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien.

One_Armed_Dwarf

Irvine Welsh - DazMarz put it better than I ever could!

Bret Easton Ellis - I love the sence of despair in his writing and I feel his writing is alot more layered than he is givin credit for. Cannot wait for "Imperial Bedrooms"

Chuck Palahniuk - Quick and entertaining stories about strange and interesting characters, although his new titles fail to grab me as much as his older ones

Hermy

Without thinking too much about it...

John MacGahern because That They May Face The Rising Sun is one of the most beautiful books I am ever likely to read.

John Updike because every book he writes has at least one phrase that makes the whole book worthwhile.

Samuel Beckett for Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable which I find endlessly fascinating.

Other authors I might have mentioned include Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Pat MCabe, William Kennedy, Chip Kidd.

Kaizer Sosa

Mine are probably:

1. Phillip Roth - I love the intelligent dialogue between his characters and The Human Stain is one of my favourite books.

2. Cormac McCarthy - Love nearly every book I've ever read from this genius.

3. David Mitchell/Haruki Murakami - These two are tied. Funny because Murakami was a major influence on Mitchell. Cloud Atlas and The Winding Bird Chronicles are two of my favourite books.

funlovintapir

This is a good thread.

1. Flannery O'Connor. She wrote in the southern gothic style and her characters are brilliantly unlikeable and grotesque. She also explores philosophical and religious ideas in an interesting way. I would recommend her to people who like Cormac McCarthy. She is the writer I read and thought, this is the book I have been always been looking for.

2. H.P. Lovecraft. I think the best horror/supernatural writer after Poe. He generally writes about the helplessness and ignorance of humans in a vast and unknowable universe. So entertaining, camp, wonderful phrasing. My copies of his books are in bits from being carried just about everywhere with me.

3. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Modernist, but lovely, lyrical and simple.

Dades

Arthur C. Clarke - For some of the greatest Sci-Fi ever.

George RR Martin - Not just for Ice & Fire, but for his amazing anthology of novellas and short stories.

Clive Cussler - Yep - my guilty pleasure. Can't beat getting stuck into one of his adventures when you mind can't take anything more taxing.

HalloweenJack

James Ellroy - His LA Quartet is the pinnacle of crime fiction. His plot development, use of settings and red herrings are amazing. I don't know how he manages to keep track of it all cos by the time you finish the book, you're thinking: "I didn't see that coming".

Hunter S. Thompson - Purely for the fact that it just seems to flow out of him (if you're reading Fear and Loathing...) but even in the Rum Diary there's an edgy, nervousness about it which is enthralling.

Third is a tough one, maybe Brett Easton Ellis or Stephen King. Both are good storytellers and two of my favourite books were written by them (American Psycho, The Shining).

blacon

Raymond E. Feist - Haven't read much but am really looking forward to continueing, because his fantasy writing is by far the best I've seen.

J.K Rowling - Harry Potter series is simply amazing in every way.

Christopher Paolini - So much respect for this guy. Fantastic fantasy books (Inheritance Trilogy), and he started writing the first one at 15 years old.

steve_r

Coupland - his books are very hit and miss tho - Gen.X, hey Nostradameus, Elanor Rigby, GIAC and Miss Wyoming are my favorites, but I found the techie ones like Micro-serfs and J-Pod inpenetrable.

Palahniuk - Choke, Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Rant, are imo, the books where his voice comes through most strongly. Allthough books like "Diary" can sometimes miss the point.

Thompson - I still think that "Fear and Loathing...Campaign Trail" has a lot to say on politics even 30+ years later. Las Vegas has one of the great monologues of all time. I highly recomend looking up "Johnny Depp" and "Fear and Loathing" on YouTube to see a great live reading of that extract.

Hon. mentions; hornby, doyle, flaubhert, camus, gemmell

evil_seed

gemmell - for writing epic and heroic stories.

iceberg slim - simply because the stories have such an edge to them and you know there is more than a hint of truth in them

indough

philip k dick - because i love scifi and he was quite visionary in the way he saw the future
stephen king - because he writes great characters and i like the tone of his writing
lovecraft - i like his use of old style language and the stories anre genuinely quite unnerving, although his skill (or lack thereof) in writing dialogue is fairly despicable

FruitLover

I suppose my top 3 change depending on time and what I've read recently, but off the top of my head:

Terry Pratchett - the guy has created an entire world, how's that for storytelling. Exactly my style of humour too.

Haruki Murakami - for the sheer surreality of the fantasies he concocts. I'm also glad to have such an entertaining author for my Japanese reading practice.

Irvine Welsh - unique writing style, gripping and memorable (yet generally realistic / believable) stories and characters.