FAVORITE AUTHORS!!! xD

[Eithne]

So I think I'll take up post as the resident meme-maniac of the joint *cracks knuckles*.

YOU HAVE HALF AN HOUR TO WRITE DOWN THE TEN AUTHORS THAT HAVE BEEN MOST INFLUENTIAL TO YOU (poets and playwrights and journalists count too).

OK GO.

[Kin/diablo]

YOU.

Okay, wait, let me go dig 'em up. xD LOOK you are distracting me from my post to you!

[Jun]

I only really have two authors that have really really struck me after reading their books:

Michael Crichton
Matthew Stover
(If I could write like the two of them combined I would be set for life)

Others that I enjoy:
Richard Preston
James Patterson
K.A. Applegate
Eoin Colfer
Brian Jacques
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Philip Pullman

And one journalist/article writer:
Walter Williams

[Kin/diablo]

Steven Moffat -- Screenwriter. I don't like him very much as a person, but he's done brilliant work with Doctor Who and Sherlock. He has a knack for storytelling, and while I've never really been into screenwriting, he makes me want to give it a shot. His dialogue is snappy and funny, and he's really good at seeing the creepy in the normal.

Neil Gaiman -- Particularly for his short stories (Murder Mysteries, Troll Bridge), as well as Coraline and Good Omens. I think his novels are brilliant, but there's something about his writing style that makes his prose feel more distanced to me, and I like it much better in shorter pieces of work.

Josh Lanyon -- Eh, he does mostly this gay romance/mystery hybrid. I wouldn't say that he's the best thing that ever happened to me, really, but he makes me laugh and cry and rage for his characters and his prose is just so simple and I just keep thinking, you know, this is what I want to be able to do.

Shirley Jackson -- I adore We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The narrator is great, the story is creepy, and the prose is a great example of how less can be more.

My childhood:
Margaret Weis
Roald Dahl
Shel Silverstein

Here, have some fanfic writers:

synecdochic -- She explores those themes like nobody's business. Freedom's Just Another Word is one of my all-time favorite pieces of fiction. She doesn't do funny (as far as I've seen), but her longer stories just have all these layers of meaning. I really like the thought she puts into her writing.

Pru -- Everything she writes is beautiful and hilarious.



YEAH, I KNOW THAT'S NOT TEN...

[Skylla]

I want to see Dema's list.

[Alecto]

No you really don't.

[Kin/diablo]

Yeah, Dema, stop cheating and show us your list.

[Skylla]

I kind of agree. It'll make us all feel dumb :-P

[Kin/diablo]

Well, there's no accounting for taste. ;DDD

KIDDING, OF COURSE. I still want to see it.





As you can see from mine, I'm a specfic sort of gal. D8 But, I mean, I'm taking a sci-fi class, what do you even expect...

[Cantrell]

Eric Fromm

Eric Nylund

C.S. Lewis

Leo Tolstoy

J.R.R. Tolkien

Kim Dae Jeoung

Karl Marx

Paul Ekman



I couldn't think of two more. lol

[Alecto]

Sigh. You asked for it.
In summary: I like Slavs, and Yeats.

From College:
Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is basically my manifesto.

W.B. Yeats - Goes without saying. He also has a really fascinating history, which just makes me more obsessed.

Wistlawa Szymborska - Polish poet, won the Nobel one year. I read her anthologies like they are novels.

Leo Tolstoy - I used to think War and Peace was the best novel ever written. Then I read Brothers K (by ol' Fyo, below) and then I read Anna Karenina. So Leo still wins.

Fyodr Dostoevsky - see above.

George Elliot (who is a woman.) - Middlemarch. My dear baby jesus.

Soren Kierkegaard (who is a BABE.) - can't describe without going all fangirly.



From Childhood:

C.S. Lewis - I continue to read Narnia once or twice a year. I think I could go all Book of Eli and wander through the deserts to transcribe it from memory, at this point.

Lois Lowry - The Giver is still amazing. I checked.

Patricia McKillip - Riddle Master Trilogy and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I loved them as a teenager but didn't really get them, and now I think they are genius.


I used to really like Nabokov, but I think I really only like his short stories. I thought Lolita was totally self-gratifying. In keeping with the slavic trend, Pushkin almost made it.

Anyway I feel bad making this list because I did a college program that was NOTHING but reading. I literally read hundreds of books there. And then I worked at their library one summer and read a bunch of other things. But trust me, I would never have picked up a 1200 page Russian novel if I had not been forced. Now on the other hand....

EDIT: I also taught highschool poetry. So I could probably make a ten-man list of poets, alone.

[Cantrell]

Ah yes, use it to your advantage.

"Les Miserables" "Crime and Punishment"



I am by far a better reader than I am a writer.

[Kin/diablo]

I thought about putting Lois Lowry, but it's been ages since I reread any of her books and I can't remember them very well anymore!


Apparently, middle-school me thought it would be a great idea to read Les Miserables, which I guess is a good thing because I'd never read it now. xD

[Alecto]

You know, it's funny, I have not read Crime and Punishment!

And for some reason Hugo and the other amazing French authors are not on my list. They are wonderful, though.

EDIT:

YOU.

Okay, wait, let me go dig 'em up. xD LOOK you are distracting me from my post to you!

I just saw this. FLATTERER. *blush*

[Kin/diablo]

Guys! Guys, look! I have a Goodreads account.

I know Fireclaw has one, but she hasn't updated in, like, two years. Icey updates all the time.