Your Top 10 Favorite Writers

Started by Jaakko Keskinen, February 11, 2018, 08:55:16 AM

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Jaakko Keskinen

February 11, 2018, 08:55:16 AM
Victor Hugo
Wilkie Collins
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Charles Dickens
Alexandre Dumas, pére
Thomas Mann
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Arthur Conan Doyle
William Shakespeare

Leaving one person unmentioned because of certain reasons.

"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

North Star

#1
February 11, 2018, 08:59:14 AM
Quote from: Alberich on February 11, 2018, 08:55:16 AM
Leaving one person unmentioned because of certain reasons.
Homer?
"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius

My photographs on Flickr

Jaakko Keskinen

#2
February 11, 2018, 09:07:46 AM
Quote from: North Star on February 11, 2018, 08:59:14 AM
Homer?

Well, Homer definitely had considerable influence upon him, at any rate.
"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

North Star

#3
February 11, 2018, 09:13:38 AM
Quote from: Alberich on February 11, 2018, 09:07:46 AM
Well, Homer definitely had considerable influence upon him, at any rate.
That really narrows it down..
"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius

My photographs on Flickr

Jaakko Keskinen

#4
February 11, 2018, 09:18:40 AM
Quote from: North Star on February 11, 2018, 09:13:38 AM
That really narrows it down..

Well, at least you know that the person in question is male.  0:)
"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

Florestan

#5
February 11, 2018, 09:19:52 AM
Nietzsche?
"Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory." — Thomas Beecham

North Star

#6
February 11, 2018, 09:41:05 AM
Wagner?
"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius

My photographs on Flickr

Jo498

#7
February 11, 2018, 09:42:43 AM
James Joyce would have been my guess for the Homer-influenced writer - but why not mention him?
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

bwv 1080

#8
February 11, 2018, 09:47:42 AM
Maybe too embarrassed to mention it's EL James, the 50 shades of Gray author  :D

Jo498

#9
February 11, 2018, 10:01:51 AM
Was she influenced by the scene that coined the phrase "Homeric laughter"?
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Christo

#10
February 11, 2018, 11:12:25 AM Last Edit: February 11, 2018, 11:40:17 AM by Christo
Ten writers (poets including), first attempt:

W.H. Auden
William Golding
Czesław Miłosz
George Orwell
Ismail Kadare
Jaan Kross
Konstantin Paustovsky
Lev Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
T.S. Elliot
Willem Elsschot
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Brian

#11
February 11, 2018, 11:20:09 AM
In random order, or rather, the order in which I remember their names:

David Foster Wallace
Alice Munro
John Williams (Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, Augustus)
William Shakespeare
P.D. James
Dorothy B. Hughes
Raymond Chandler
Nikolai Gogol
M.F.K. Fisher
Mel Brooks
Charles Dickens

...11, oh well. :)

My list is a little trashier than the lists so far.

San Antone

#12
February 11, 2018, 11:54:34 AM Last Edit: February 12, 2018, 02:00:28 AM by San Antone
Shakespeare
Faulkner
McCarthy (Cormac)

Don't have ten that qualify as "favorites", which are those writers of whom I have read all their books and re-read every year.  I almost put Kerouac, Burroughs, Bukowski and Raymond Carver on the list - but they are strong "likes" not "loves".

Ken B

#13
February 11, 2018, 12:00:34 PM
Now? Over the long haul?

Over the long haul there are a few standouts, in no particular order

Maupassant
Tolstoy
Stendhal
Fielding
Hammett
Chandler
Homer
Milton
Boccaccio
Cervantes

Some are present due to only one book. My favourite book is Decameron for example. DQ is top 5, as is Tom Jones. I haven't read Milton in 30 years, but he stunned and obsessed me for a while, should I still list him? Trollope is a close contender. Dickens might have made the list some days. So once would have Steinbeck, Faulkner, or Hemingway.
Notable absence: Shakespeare.

The writer I have read most of is Agatha Christie, who was my favorite in grades 7 to 9. There are quite a few I have read 20 or more books by, mostly mystery writers. Rex Stout in particular.

Draško

#14
February 11, 2018, 12:36:42 PM
Jorge Luis Borges
Marcel Proust
Anton Chekhov
Umberto Eco
Samuel Beckett
Borislav Pekic
Oscar Wilde
William Faulkner
PG Wodehouse

Then for No.10 spot there are writers I love but maybe haven't read comprehensively enough to make them a favorite, like Mikhail Bulgakov, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruno Schulz, Andrei Platonov, Andrei Bely, Michel Houellebecq, Viktor Pelevin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Venedikt Yerofeyev.

bwv 1080

#15
February 11, 2018, 12:46:09 PM
Rough chronological order as I think of them

Mark Twain
James Joyce
John Dos Passos
Jorge Luis Borges
Thomas Pynchon
Stanislaw Lem
Cormac McCarthy
WT Vollmann
WG Sebald
Alaistair Reynolds

Ken B

#16
February 11, 2018, 01:32:42 PM
Quote from: San Antone on February 11, 2018, 11:54:34 AM
Shakespeare
Faulkner
McCarthy (Cormac)

Don't have ten that qualify as favorites.

Where's Dylan?
;)

Christo

#17
February 11, 2018, 10:35:14 PM
Quote from: Brian on February 11, 2018, 11:20:09 AM
John Williams (Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, Augustus)
Found him a revelation; the only other American novelist (of the few I know) who writes with a similar intensity, is Philip Roth - he could be another favourite had I read more by him.
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Hollywood

#18
February 11, 2018, 10:49:29 PM
Edgar Allan Poe
Mark Twain
Bram Stoker
Ann Rice
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Jane Austen
William Shakespear
Charles Dickens
Rod Serling
Ray Bradbury (I actually got to meet him at an Equicon convention in Los Angeles back in 1973. He was such a nice man and I would have loved chatting with him all day).
"There are far worse things awaiting man than death."

A Hollywood born SoCal gal living in Beethoven's Heiligenstadt (Vienna, Austria).

San Antone

#19
February 12, 2018, 01:52:51 AM
Quote from: Brian on February 11, 2018, 11:20:09 AM
John Williams (Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, Augustus)

I just read Butcher's Crossing last month - excellent book. 
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