Who are your favorite authors?

[Dreamer_D]

George RR Martin. I like fantasy as I don''t like to think very hard when I read for pleasure

 

[pennquaker09]

John Grisham
James Patterson
Anne Rice
Ayn Rand
Toni Morrison
Richard Wright
Alice Walker
Lois Lowry (She wrote The Giver, which is my favorite book and has been since I was young)
J.K. Rowling

Of course there are more . . .

 

[Black Jade]

I like Dickens and Austen and Shakespeare and Trollope and the Brontes and George Eliot.
Henry Fielding is a favorite--I love authors that make me laugh. all of the above do, except the Brontes (a pretty humorless bunch) and Eliot.
that''s probably why I love Pushkin a little better than Tolstoy (though I''ve read War and Peace probably 7 times) and I don''t like Dostoevsky at all.
My favorite novel in the whole world though was written in the 18th century i n China and is called i n Chinese Hong Lou Meng--it''s been translated to English as The Story of the Stone or as A Dream of Red Mansions and comes across really pretty well i n translation though you miss a lot of the puns and wordplays and poems. It''s hard to sum up but is sort of a tragic love story as the hero is tricked into marrying the girl he doesn''t love (and the girl he loves dies) but its a lot more than that. There are various things going on as this very wealthy (and quite dysfunctional) family goes from prosperity into decline and a lot of the characters come to tragic ends but its just very lovely--this group of girls, who are mostly cousins, and their maids and one boy, who is very sensitive and interesting live in the garden of a mansion and have literary clubs and paint and do other things that are very Chinese and cultivated,and they''re very realistic--they all seem like real people. It''s very Buddhist--they have their various fates to work in this pre-ordained kind of way (the book actually starts with some of them in a previous incarnation and this keeps being referred to in dreams and other ways) and so it''s strange in some ways for a foreig ner to read but it''s very interesting--I''m a Christian and don''t believe in things of that sort, but just as a story, it''s amazingly well done.
I like things with a good story and interesting characters,and when the book is well put together, its a plus. But its doesn''t have to be ''high-brow''. I love Agatha Christie. I love many children''s books, like the windin the willows and the real Peter Pan and the original Winnie the Pooh (which is nothi g like the Disney version). and anythi g by Beatrix Potter.
I love fairy tales. I keep readi ng Grim m''s Fairy Tales fro m cover to cover--not jsut the usual ones, there are several hu ndred of them.
Btu I also love realistic books. True to life--this is probably why I do like Tolstoy so much. I hate and detest however, what are called ''realistic'' books nowadays--dwelling on and exagerrating the seamy side of life with everything ending in gloom and disillusionment. Really realistic books are like life--its a mix and bad thi gs happe n and good does too--not everybody is a drug addict with abusive parents living a life of victimhood without hope--with all the violece dscribed in excruciati ng detail. Or at least, that is ''t more real than anythi g else--and I should know--I lived ten years of my childhood in a inner city slum.

I have to type thu mbless for the moment--I fractured it last week, which is why my typing is so stran ge, missing letters and with odd spacing, sorry.

 

[Black Jade]

I named myself after the main female character in my favorite novel, Lin Dai Yu. Dai Yu means ''black jade''--or more sort of like ''mascara jade''-- the black is a sort of ancie nt Chi nese eye makeup.
she''s a fascinating girl but dies young--sort of weeps herself to death actually, not like me at all.(She does have tuberculosis also) I''m also not a super-talented poetess and a lot of other thi gs that she is.

 

[akmiss]

Sherman Alexie, Carson McCullers, Anne Rice, Tom Robbins, JRR Tolkien, and Amy Tan are just a few. I am sure there are others