Who are your favorite writers of fiction?

[Jenn! 918]

Ken of Ken Y Onelis

My favorite author is Steinbeck. Though I find myself reading a lot of Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson - my mind is too full of very important things for any heavy reading.

[Mina76 0]

Dayum reading people. Books put me to sleep.

Actually I DO like Anne Rice, although she's a bit too historian for me.

Anne Rice is one of my favorites too!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Michael Moorcock

Robert E Howard

Alexandre Dumas

Rafael Sabatini

Clark Ashton Smith

Hunter S. Thompson

Raymond Chandler

Trevanian

...and here someone thought you only read comics.

Oh I read comics too Different medium, same idea.

[Mary Lou 681]

Ken of Ken Y Onelis

[Kathryn41 3,205]

hmm, I've read 57 of the top 100 - gave me some ideas for the next ones to read (I've read more in the top 50 than the 2nd 50).

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Michael Moorcock

Robert E Howard

Alexandre Dumas

Rafael Sabatini

Clark Ashton Smith

Hunter S. Thompson

Raymond Chandler

Trevanian

do you consider HST to be a fiction writer? (I know he wrote fictional stories, but they are not his best work!)

Anyway - I recommend you see the documentary Gonzo that just came out, from the guy who did Taxi To the Dark Side and Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room. Excellent stuff and worth seeing for the moment Pat Buchanan gets choked up in his remembrances.

I didn't pay attention to the fiction part when I read the thread. I do quite like The Rum Diary though - I think there's a movie coming out next year with Mr Depp.

Thompson had a way with words - writing as performance basically. He's the only writer I've found laugh out loud funny - its impossible not to when you read a piece that starts with "why is the staff so f*cking stupid?".

I also find a lot of humour in Chandler's hardboiled Philip Marlowe stories (though there is a degree of racism in Chandler, as in many other 30's pulp writers) - mainly for his insane metaphors which more or less defined the whole Private Eye genre "she was a cute as a washtub", or "I felt nasty, as if I had picked a poor man's pocket".

The rest of the authors are pretty self-explanatory if you're into that sort of fiction. Moorcock has written in almost any genre or narrative mode you can think of and has been successful in both (given that the majority of NYT bestseller fiction peeps just invent a brand and spend 20 years milking the same plot - that's pretty remarkable, though Moorcock grew up in a period where he had to invent most of the stuff himself and the publishing industry in the 60's wasn't as it is today).

Dumas and Sabatini are pretty good storytellers for anyone who want to know the nuts and bolts of how to write a story. Very simple, episodic structures - plus they're a lot of fun (Count of Monte Cristo really doesn't feel like 1000+ pages), and Sabatini writes epic stories in half the amount of words that Dumas does.

Howard created Conan the Barbarian (as well as some other well-known characters) and is a very underrated writer to anyone not familiar with him, or who writes off D&D fantasy as hopeless clicheed (it is of course) but Howard was an exceptionally gifted writer - even more remarkable because he wrote all his stories between the ages of 18 and 30 (he blew his head off at 30).

Clark Ashton Smith wrote for the same pulp magazine as Howard, but had an exceptionally strange vocabulary and a waking imagination like a mushroom trip.

Trevanian wrote spy stories in the 70's - not particularly complex plots but made sarcasm into an art form.

These are all *fun* writers for me though - I do like a lot of literary stuff (Orwell, Huxley, Dostoeyevski etc) and I enjoy that stuff but there's an element of "work" to them. That and some literature courses I took made me rebel against texts set by snobbish English teachers.

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

#### no.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I should also add Iain M Banks to my list.

Great SF writer.

And Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars)

Edited July 23, 2008 by Number 6

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

#### no.

lol...you don't like Joyce?

[Mina76 0]

Ken of Ken Y Onelis

That was such great reading, it kept me in suspense of the outcome!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

#### no.

lol...you don't like Joyce?

I only really do conventional narratives and conventional modes of storytelling. Stuff that messes with form and structure doesn't really appeal me all that much.

I couldn't get on with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting as I found it near impossible to figure out who was speaking. Also didn't much care for Virginia Woolf, although I understand the general idea behind her approach to narrative structures.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Ken of Ken Y Onelis

My favorite author is Steinbeck. Though I find myself reading a lot of Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson - my mind is too full of very important things for any heavy reading.

Its a fairly poorly kept secret that he doesn't write his own books.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

#### no.

lol...you don't like Joyce?

I only really do conventional narratives and conventional modes of storytelling. Stuff that messes with form and structure doesn't really appeal me all that much.

I couldn't get on with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting as I found it near impossible to figure out who was speaking. Also didn't much care for Virginia Woolf, although I understand the general idea behind her approach to narrative structures.

Hmmm...interesting. I took a contemporary lit class back in college that really exposed me to writers like Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner. The evolution of literature is much the same as what was happening in art. Although I appreciate the greatness of Victor Hugo like I do with a Da Vinci, I much prefer Joyce as I do Van Gogh.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Has anyone here read or tried to read, Joyce's Ulysses?

#### no.

lol...you don't like Joyce?

I only really do conventional narratives and conventional modes of storytelling. Stuff that messes with form and structure doesn't really appeal me all that much.

I couldn't get on with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting as I found it near impossible to figure out who was speaking. Also didn't much care for Virginia Woolf, although I understand the general idea behind her approach to narrative structures.

Hmmm...interesting. I took a contemporary lit class back in college that really exposed me to writers like Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner. The evolution of literature is much the same as what was happening in art. Although I appreciate the greatness of Victor Hugo like I do with a Da Vinci, I much prefer Joyce as I do Van Gogh.

Its not that I don't understand the idea behind writing non-standard styles. Just that I don't find it very interesting to read. Often I find the ideas more interesting than the books.

[*JG* 2]

Stephen King

Laurell K. Hamilton

James Michener

Alice Sebold

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Sue Grafton

Anne Rice

John Grisham

Patricia Cornwell

Michael Crichton

Christopher Moore

Ken Follett