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Your favorite authors and books...

post #1 of 26
10/13/07 at 5:01am
Thread Starter 
I noticed lately I've been reading a lot for whatever reason. I the last three weeks I read afew John Grisham books: The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Chamber, The King of Torts. Then I read Catch-22. I loved Catch-22. That is probably the best novel I've ever read as a young teenager. I think it was by Joseph Heller (He is a really funny guy lol)

Another few I read and liked:

48 laws of power

Magic Bullet

Venetian PUA

Speed Seduction

Why Men Love Bitches...


As for the last one it was a really stupid title.. The word Bitch simply refers to a women who knows what she wants in a man. Why they would call her a Bitch just because she seeks someone worthy of her love... I have little to know idea...so please ladies.. do not take it personal lol... I read it because my fiancee' suggested it would give me a laugh...Which it did.
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post #2 of 26
10/13/07 at 5:13am
I read very little fiction, if any. I'd probably have to go with popular historian Simon Schama as my personal fave.

I'm also a bit of an LDS/Utah history buff (although a committed heathen), and am currently re-reading both American Massacre and Under the Banner of Heaven, both of which deal with the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
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post #3 of 26
10/13/07 at 5:44am
I mostly read academic literature, though I'll say that Randolph Bourne's Trans-National America (1916), Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835/40) and Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country (1998), which I'm working on, are all great reading for American citizens, as well as worthy subjects of scholarly inquiry.

My favorite poet these days is Robinson Jeffers, and I have this timely gem pinned to my office door:

Shine, Perishing Republic
(Robinson Jeffers, 1926)

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he walked on earth.
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post #4 of 26
10/13/07 at 5:52am
Id say my fave author is TIM SEVERIN

He is an author and adventurer who likes to plan, execute and then write about journeys following the footsteps of mythological and historical figures.

He has followed the documented courses (both factual and fiction) of the Crusaders, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses, Sinbad the Sailor, Ghengis Kahn, Robinson Crusoe and the like. I am always amazed to read of his discoveries as he carries out these amazing excursions using only materials and tools from that given age.
The man is inspirational and his books are always fascinating.
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post #5 of 26
10/13/07 at 6:14am
Thread Starter 
I like Poetry too.. One of my Favorits is by Talib Kweli:


"Hell"

Every sunday waking up, catching gossip at its worst/ Couldn't see the difference between the catholic and the baptist church/ Caught in the rapture of the first chapters second verse/ If we're all God's children whats the word of the pastor worth?/ Taught early that faith is blind like justice when you facin time/ if we all made in God's image then his face is mine/ Wait it's the blasphemy it's logical it has to be/ Because if I dont look like ym father then the way I live is bastardly/ Naturally thats confusing to a youngin growing up tryin' to follow christ/ told if you live without Jesus then you lead a hollow life/ Never questioning the fact that Jesus was Jew and not a Christian/ Or that christianity was made law by politicians/ And who is King James? And why did he think it was so vital. to remove chapters and make his own version of the bible?/ They say that Hell is underground and Heaven is in the sky/ And thats where you go when you die/ But how do they know?/ I've Been to many churches quoted many verses/ I deal with my base self I control my many urges/ I used to study my lessons/ Thats a blessing not a curse/ I found out that Heaven and Hell exsist right here on Earth word/ I studied with Rostafarians and learned that hell is called Babylon/ and thats where the crazy bald heads dwell/ They have us thinkin muslims like to make bombs/ When real muslims believe in paradise and resist the shade of time/ So it all sounds the same to me/ so when one says one is right and one is wrong it just sounds like a game to me/ it is like God came past the church and came straight to me/ And no it is not vain to me/ it is just the particular way things came to be/ And also the way that I came to see the difference betweem those who claim to be/ Religious and being spiritual/ and recognizing that life itself is full of miracles/ SO can see my flow is devine/ I glow when I rhyme/ I know how to coninside with growing tide of people lookin for absolution/ Living in mass confusion/ The gas inducing a psychopath with a conlusion/ With his interpretation/ of what the words are sayin/ he may be looking for God but end up doing the work of Satan/ Religion creates division make the muslim hate the christian/ make the christian hate the Jew/ Make up fate and rules you can condition too...

-Talib Kweli


I am in no way religious but found the last few bars very true. I like poems sometimes. Another good poet to peep is Dahlak Braithewait. Young guy who is very talented...


My all time favorite though is Robert Frost... he is simple and still effective.
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post #6 of 26
10/13/07 at 6:52am
My favorite writers in prose are Nikos Kazantzakis, Leon Uris, Herman Hesse and Kahlil Gibran, in poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and in drama, Eugene Ionesco. I also like historical fiction, particularly by Irving Stone.

"In real life, one must look out of the window." The Bald Soprano, Ionesco
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post #7 of 26
10/13/07 at 6:58am
Favourite authors are many,but must mention: J.R.R Tolkien, Isabelle Allende, Andre Brink, Knut Hamsun and Edgar Allan Poe.
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post #8 of 26
10/13/07 at 7:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ineespenes View Post

Favourite authors are many,but must mention: J.R.R Tolkien, Isabelle Allende, Andre Brink, Knut Hamsun and Edgar Allan Poe.

How could I forget J.R.R. Tolkein? Silmarillion is on my "must read" list.
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post #9 of 26
10/13/07 at 12:54pm
Authors I love: Dickens, Poe, Hemingway, Austen, Faulkner, Woolf, O. Henry, and many more.

Books I love:

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
This Life She's Chosen by Kirsten Sundberg-Lunstrum
many more.
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post #10 of 26
10/13/07 at 12:56pm
I enjoy mostly anything that is psychological analysis... I always have a hard time listing favorites.
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post #11 of 26
10/13/07 at 1:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennard View Post

Authors I love: Dickens, Poe, Hemingway, Austen, Faulkner, Woolf, O. Henry, and many more.

Books I love:

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
This Life She's Chosen by Kirsten Sundberg-Lunstrum
many more.

I wore Wind Song when I was reading A Separate Peace and had a form psychological disorder known as "Beatlemania." It was contagious, lasted for years, and everyone in the class suffered from it.
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post #12 of 26
10/13/07 at 5:54pm
Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, Roald Dahl, O. Henry, the Brontë sisters, L. M. Montgomery, Amy Tan, e. e. cummings...

Recent fiction faves:
Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea
Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair and other "Thursday Next - literary detective" adventures, plus his Nursery Crimes series

Non-fiction: Jon Krakauer, Bill Bryson, Owen Chase (The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex, the story that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick)

Children's Lit:
Beverly Cleary, Louis Sachar, Robert Newton Peck, and a whole passel of other authors
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post #13 of 26
10/14/07 at 1:53am
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
Jaws - Peter Benchley
I'm also partial to a bit of Steven King. I'm half way through Insomnia at the moment.
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post #14 of 26
10/14/07 at 7:30am
**edited**
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post #15 of 26
10/14/07 at 7:33am
Andrei Bely: Petersburg
Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margarita
Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye
Agatha Christie
Joseph Conrad: Secret Agent
Fedor Dostoevsky: Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot
Marguerite Duras
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls, The Portrait, Nevsky Prospect, Diary of a Madman, The Nose
Hermann Hesse: Demian, Steppenwolf
James Joyce: Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Milan Kundera
Hanif Kureishi
Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada, Lolita, Nikolai Gogol
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, poems
Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time (my desert island novel!)
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
Sue Townsend: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray, many plays
Tennessee Williams
Émile Zola: Nana

(if no separate books are mentioned, I have read if not all, then almost all, or at least a big part of the works or simply cannot pick one or two examples...)

My fave Finnish writers:
Monika Fagerholm: Den amerikanska flickan
Mikko Rimminen: Pussikaljaromaani
Pirkko Saisio
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post #16 of 26
10/16/07 at 3:57pm
I'm reading Proust in between things that need doing. Proust requires a good deal of concentration with his sentences inside sentences.

My favorite book and a book that has turned readers of said to become cultish and follow all things David Foster Wallace. His book ' Infinite Jest' had to be one of the funniest, drug soaked, tennis academy backgrounded books that comes in over 1,000 pages, contains a footnote that is 8 pages long and I swear, it works.

from the wikipedia page devoted to the book.

Plot introduction

The book's plot centers on a lost film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest by its creator James Incandenza, and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so "entertaining" to its unwitting viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than endless viewings of the film. In the novel's future world, North America is one unified state composed of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Corporations purchase naming rights to each calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations; e.g., "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment," "The Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland." Much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a massive hazardous waste dumping site known as "The Great Concavity"/"The Great Convexity."

[edit] Explanation of the novel's title

The novel derives its name, at least in part, from a line in Hamlet, in which Hamlet refers to the skull of Yorick, the court jester: " Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"
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post #17 of 26
10/18/07 at 12:39am
I've been reading autobiographies lately:

Memories, Dreams and Reflections--Carl Jung
Waiting for Snow in Havana-----------Carlos Eire
My Life----------------------------Giacomo Casanova
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley---------A.C.

All 4 great reading, And all 4, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction!

------------------------------

Ok, on to my favorite novels!
In no particular order:

Emily Bronte--Wuthering Heights.

Dostoevsky--The Brothers Karamazov.

Oscar Wilde--The Picture of Dorian Grey.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez--Love in the Time of Cholera.

Graham Greene--The Power and the Glory.

Christopher Moore---Lamb.

Kurt Vonnegut---Cat's Cradle

Pearl S. Buck-- Pavillion of Women.

Ayn Rand--The Fountainhead.

Charles Bukowski---Ham on Rye

Herman Hesse---Narcissus and Goldmund.

Nikos Kazantzakis----The Last Temptation of Christ

Albert Camus----The Stranger

Vladimir Nabokov---Lolita

Anthony Burgess---The Kingdom of the Wicked

Mika Waltari-------The Egyptian

Robert Graves---I, Claudius

Arthur Conan Doyle----The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Alexander Dumas-----The Three Musketeers--and the sequels.

Henry Miller-------Quiet Days in Clichy

George Orwell--------1984

Cheers,

Mario
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post #18 of 26
10/18/07 at 6:10am
Mario, I love many of the same authors that you do.

The Idiot by Dostoevsky is one of my favorites, as well as Freedom of Death by Kazantzakis, D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers by Dumas, Siddhartha by Hesse, and Orwell's 1984 to name a few.
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post #19 of 26
10/18/07 at 10:57am
Oh, "Lolita" was such a good movie. Sad and strange... How'd the movie compare to the book?

I'd have to say that "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce is one of my all time favorites. To me, a strangely satisfying book, where you don't care as much about the relationships as much as you care WHY people did the things they did in said relationships. Kind of hard to visualize that, but it worked in my brain.

Brian Jacques. Fantasy children's books spanning over two centuries of rich woodland (and seaside) creature history. Fantastic saga.

Anyone who hasn't read "A Prayer for Owen Meany" probably should. It's a very entertaining read.

Quote:
Originally Posted by beachroses View Post

Mario, I love many of the same authors that you do.

The Idiot by Dostoevsky is one of my favorites, as well as Freedom of Death by Kazantzakis, D'Artagnon and the Three Musketeers by Dumas, Siddhartha by Hesse, and Orwell's 1984 to name a few.

"D-artag-non" I actually have heard that before. Kid's these days.
- Rich
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post #20 of 26
10/19/07 at 6:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by _R$_ View Post

Oh, "Lolita" was such a good movie. Sad and strange... How'd the movie compare to the book?

I'd have to say that "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce is one of my all time favorites. To me, a strangely satisfying book, where you don't care as much about the relationships as much as you care WHY people did the things they did in said relationships. Kind of hard to visualize that, but it worked in my brain.

Brian Jacques. Fantasy children's books spanning over two centuries of rich woodland (and seaside) creature history. Fantastic saga.

Anyone who hasn't read "A Prayer for Owen Meany" probably should. It's a very entertaining read.



"D-artag-non" I actually have heard that before. Kid's these days.
- Rich

Which version of Lolita?
Stanley Kubrick's film is superb, from the very first frame ( A pedicure??) --though Lolita is 14 rather than 12, and Peter Sellers as Claire Quilty either improvised or was given a bunch of lines and a bunch of business not in the book, On film, they work magnificently. -- And it doesn't hurt that Nabakov wrote the screenplay. James Mason as HH and Shirley Winters as her mom are perfect..

Jeremy Iron's (who directed it , anyway?) 1997 remake is a good adaptation, and Lolita's the right age but I could have done without the expostition.--Also her mother's part is cut to a tiny role, unlike Kubrick's and unlike the book.

I believe I'm trying to say that while I think the world of Jeremy Irons, Kubrick's version is far better. Both are faithfull enough to the book.

btw, Vanity Fair called the novel " The only convincing love story of our century."
I predict you'll love the novel, though it's fairly short for Nabokov, about 300 pages.

What the hell, I've got to read " A Portrait of the Artist . . ." I made the mistake of trying to read Ulysses, which I never finished--life's too short.
Hm . . .anybody read " The Good Soldier? " by Ford Maddox Ford? A classic, only 200 pages--and I gave up at page 30. Too British, perhaps?
-------------------------------------------------

Hey thanks, beachroses!

The Idiot is heartbreaking---well all of Dos is--and Crime and Punishment is my 2nd favorite after Brothers.

Maybe there's a way to make money on Dumas? Engage gamblers in conversation at the Las Vegas Public Library and bet them that in the sequels, Aramis conspires to become The Pope? How many would know?

Hesse was enormously popular during the late '60s--Wonder what went wrong with the world? Siddhartha, Demian, Steppenwolf . . .

*sigh*

Mario.

" Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive."

---Kazantzakis
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post #21 of 26
10/19/07 at 7:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by _R$_ View Post

"D-artag-non" I actually have heard that before. Kid's these days. - Rich

Should be D'Artagnan, sorry for the typo. I read it in French class, but it's been a while.
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post #22 of 26
10/20/07 at 5:59pm
I always overlook this forum My first post here.

I'm into horror BIG TIME

IMHO

Favourite author - It has to be Stephen King. I've read most of his books, own many, and the one I enjoy the most is 'salem's Lot. Regardless of it being a classic vampire story, after reading it 5 or more times, I'll always read it again. Fiction yes, but this book is like fragrance - read again and again to eventually get to the basenotes. Read it first in 1987 (I think), finished reading it again yesterday. He is, or rather used to be (after reading the final installment of the Dark Tower series...sad anticlimax) the master of horror (Poe, Lovecraft, Masterton, Barker - been there).

Non-fiction - Thom Hartman. Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight - explicit first and foremost, to the point, admirable in fighting for AND LIVING a cause and much more. Do read about on Amazon - enough said. It made me change my lifestyle in small ways.

These two authors are like Egoiste, A*men, Fahrenheit and Fleur du Male in my life
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post #23 of 26
10/31/07 at 4:21pm
I just started 'Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson
I've read some of his journalism and short storys and he may become my favorite author.
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post #24 of 26
10/31/07 at 7:39pm
In the past year, my highlights have been:

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
Mario Puzo's The Godfather
A. B. Guthrie's The Big Sky
Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End
Moore's From Genesis to Genetics
Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front
Falcon Guides' Mountain Biking Denver and Boulder & Tom Barnhart's Front Range Single Tracks 2

I have diverse taste in books I guess.
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post #25 of 26
11/18/07 at 5:54am
Wonderful thread - I see many favorites here

When you get to be sixty the list gets very long... this is not comprehensive but a broad spectrum of my tastes and have probably forgotten half :

Novelists/fiction writers:
Jane Austin
Alexandre Dumas, père
Eudora Welty
Jorge Amado
Langston Hughes
James Baldwin
Ishmael Reed
Isabel Allende
Toni Cade Bambara
Robert Graves
archy and mehitabel, Don Marquis

Favorite Poets/Poems:
Evangeline, Longfellow
The Prophet, Kahil Gibran
This is My Beloved, Walter Benton
Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
Jibaro, The Last Poets
The Revolution will not be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron
Puerto Rican Obituary, Pedro Pietri
For Colored Girls who have considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange

Science Fiction/ Fantasy:

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Darkover series and Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffrey
Native Tongue Trilogy, Suzette Haden Elgin
The Sprawl trilogy, (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), William Gibson
Kindred, Octavia Butler

Mystery /Crime

Lord Peter Wimsey series, Dorothy L. Sayers
Matthew Scudder series, Lawrence Block
Miss Marple books, Agatha Christie


Non Fiction authors:

Franz Fanon
Jean-Paul Sartre
Howard Zinn
W.E.B. DuBois
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post #26 of 26
11/18/07 at 6:23am
Wow... Hard to list everything... Let's see...

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
Eleven Minutes by Paul Coelho
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
Oscar Wilde collections
The Ripple Effect by Dominic Holland
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albon
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
The Analects by Confucius
Eragon by Christopher Paolini...

I could go on... but these are the ones I would go back to read over and over again...
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Basenotes › Basenotes Forums › General Discussion › Off topic › Your favorite authors and books...