Your Top 10 Favorite Writers

[Ken B]

I have tried to read all of Richardson's novels, but never finished any of them. But have them on my shelves if I ever want a re-try.
Read several by Scott,both as a kid and a grown-up. I think his best novel is Heart of Midlothian.

A good 18th century comic novel not by Henry Fielding is The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett.

Another c 1800 writer I generally enjoyed reading (once I got used to her sentimental effusions) was Anne Radcliffe. The Mysteries of Udolpho is her best known but I think The Italian would be easier for a modern reader.

I've read at least one book by Mika Waltari, many years ago.

A 20th century writer probably now headed to oblivion is Thomas Costain. I read a couple by him when I was a teen. The one I liked best was The Tontine, which was long enough to require two volumes, and takes place in 19th century England.

Costain was from my hometown, Guelph. I read some in high school, and especially liked his Plantagenet histories.

[Sergeant Rock]

The Riddle of the Traveling Skull is one of the most readable, one of the funniest...

Thanks. I ordered a copy.

Sarge

[Brian]

Thanks. I ordered a copy.

Sarge

Let me know how much you blame me for what ensues 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

What correlation is there between the musical periods you listen to and the periods of literature you read?

I am probably even more of a literary than musical modernist,  I listen to alot of early 19th century music, but you couldnt pay me to read the stodgy novels from the period. Nobody here listed Jean Paul, ETA Hoffman, Stendhal etc on their top ten, but the composers who were their contempories, and in many cases, inspirations, would be on most of our top ten composer lists

Well, I read Goethe and Tieck and like them both a lot! And not only their poems!

[André]

Ivo Andric
Jane Austen
William Faulkner
Herman Hesse
Naguib Mahfouz
Thomas Mann
Roger Martin du Gard
Guy de Maupassant
William Steinbeck
Anton Tchekhov

Honourable mention for Jules Verne, Ernst Jünger, John Galsworthy, J.K. Rowling

I'm not into theatre (must be seen and heard, not read) or poetry (except some of Walt Whitman's and Victor Hugo's, esp. La Légende des siècles).

I love mystery/suspense novels as much as any bloke.  I open a second category to include Agatha Christie, Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson, Philip Kerr, Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indridasson, Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, Michael Palmer, John Grisham...

[San Antone]

William Faulkner
Cormac McCarthy
J.D. Salinger
Eugene O'Neill
Flannery O'Connor
Eudora Welty
Raymond Carver
William Burroughs
Jack Kerouac
Shelby Foote

[Ken B]

William Faulkner
Cormac McCarthy
J.D. Salinger
Eugene O'Neill
Flannery O'Connor
Eudora Welty
Raymond Carver
William Burroughs
Jack Kerouac
Shelby Foote

No Dylan? 

[springrite]

Haven't read him enough to rank him in my top 10, but I met Ian McEwen on Saturday. A wonderful person on top of being a great writer!

[Jo498]

Another c 1800 writer I generally enjoyed reading (once I got used to her sentimental effusions) was Anne Radcliffe. The Mysteries of Udolpho is her best known but I think The Italian would be easier for a modern reader.

An extremely entertaining early 19th century novel that is a mix between early Gothic, swashbuckling cloak and dagger novel and pretty steamy Arabian Nights, is "The manuscript found in Saragossa" by Count Jan Potocki  (whose life was about as colorful as it gets, ending in suicide with a home-made silver bullet because he was apparently afraid of turning into some creature of the night). It takes the nested storytelling found in the oriental collections to an extreme and is also rather modern in its frequent confusion between dream/imagined sequences.

[Overtones]

I am not so sure except for the first one.

1) Fëdor Dostoevskij
2) Italo Calvino
3) Euripídēs
4) Ágota Kristóf
5) Luigi Pirandello
6) José Saramago
7) Franz Kafka
8 ) Nikolaj Gogol'
9) Paul Auster
10) Peter Esterházy