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I was wondering, who is your favourite writer? People tend to prefer their own countrymen, hence the Russians love Tolstoy, the French get excited by Maupassant, Hugo and Rousseau, the English have Rowling, Tolkein, Lewis and many others and the Americans have EndMaster :D I get stuck reading American and English authors a lot, of whom my favourite at the moment is the travel writer Bill Bryson because his books are laugh-out-loud funny. I need to try to read more widely, including non-English authors when there are good translations of their works available, so I am interested to see what people would recommend :)

So, who are your favourite authors and why?

Does this need to be a question?   Tough choice, but I think I can honestly say EndMaster.  In addition to being most of the reason I never forgot this site, I have probably spent more time reading his work than I have any other, excluding the Bible.  More than even Dickens.  Not only that, but I have never been at all disappointed after rereading one of his works and often like it even more than I did before. 

Plus he answers even the dumber questions I have about his stuff seriously.  

 

I have probably spent more time reading his work than I have any other,

More than even Dickens.

More than even Dickens.

More than even Dickens.

VICTORY IS MINE YOU BORING DEAD FAGGOT LOLZ

XD 

I feel as if we should tear down a statue or something.  Probably not though, as it's better to show off those you've defeated sometimes.

Really had to rub it in the poor man's skull, didn't you? 

If someone published this conversation then it would be my new favorite writing! XD

But for author, I've only read a few of his books, but Brandon Sanderson is my dad's favorite author and might be mine too. He writes fantasy, and is author of The Reckoners series, Warbreaker, and like a million others.

Brandon Sanderson is my favorite author as well. I love fantasy, and the mistborn and stormlight archive books might be my two favorite series.

Darn you, Cricket, you stole mine! My other favorite author would have to be Dostoevsky. I never got the chance to read his work in school and now I’m playing catch up. Actually, I got assigned Notes from Underground in a Philosophy class, but never even opened the book lol. Finally got around to finishing it last year and it was amazing. Since then, I’ve finished Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, The Landlady, and working through The Idiot now. Dostoevsky is incredible at making the ordinary extraordinary and going deep into human psychology. The amount of action in his writing is extremely low and you’d think that’d make it boring, but it’s incredibly engaging if you can get past the page long paragraphs. His writing is also darkly comical… you think the character's conditions couldn’t be more miserable. Then it get worse. It’s great.

If I had to pick one author's body of work and had no other books to read for the rest of my life, it would be Dickens.

That's the best criteria I can come up with for selecting a favorite, as usual these questions just kind of paralyze me because I like many things for many different reasons and it'd be impossible to narrow down. (I like Ray Bradbury as much as Dickens I'm sure, I just don't consider his stuff to invite as many rereads and most of them aren't exactly cozy feel good things.)

Hell, there are a couple of web comic authors I'd put pretty high on any list, and for that matter I'd start to question why writers of movie scripts couldn't be included.

Author whose books I've read the most of I guess would be Louis L'amour. Because he wrote a *lot* of fuckin books and most of them can be burned through in a sitting.

As a follow up question, do you find that your favorite author influences your writing? 

TBH yes, I'm into Edutainment so I get most of my story ideas after reading a good Non-Fiction book and then seeing how I can turn it into a choose your own story, murder mystery stories by Agatha Christie are a pretty big influence atm. It is an interesting point about movie script writers and online authors or even what is meant by "favourite" as different authors appeal at different times. I think to be a good author it helps to read a great deal as "research" (or "creative plagiarism") to get ideas, turns of phrases and situations for your own writing :)

For me? Piers Anthony. A celebrated fantasy author, Piers Anthony is most well known for the Xanth novel series he writes. The sheer amount of creativity in his works captivates me, and his ability to create a solid plot from all the chaos in his world amazes me. In fact, I'd say a lot of my inspiration in writing came from reading his works.

I really love all the works of Dickens myself. But, at the same time, I haven’t read nearly enough of his works to base that judgment on. Mark Twain is one of my all time favourite writers period. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn is just so entertaining and serious at the same time. He manages to achieve this balance between the two that’s just right for his works, and it’s very engaging to read.

If you’re looking for non-English authors I would suggest you the works of Chetan Bhagat, since all of his novels are primarily published in English itself, so there’s no issue of translation. If you’re into romance and romedy, then you’ll absolutely love his works. This one I feel is his best book to date: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_States:_The_Story_of_My_Marriage

And this one was extremely relatable to me, as a student. It’s not like his usual works and is pretty unique in my opinion,(due to the subtle blend of fiction and non-fiction, since the book features actual real-life places); but still very good: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Point_Someone. 

(Though keep in mind that it’s a little badly written, and contains sentences like 

“The living room was where lived Alok's father, entertaining himself with one of the two TV channels, close to unconscious by the time we reached.”

Which is just...unacceptable.)

Uhuhuhuhu! I love this! Let's see.

  I reaaaaaaally like Herman Hesse, I've read anything of his I can get my hands on! All of his work feels like romantic, sparkling 1970's shoujo...Every sentence drips with this delightfully rich glittery questionably queer soul tripping sentiment that I have a weird affection for. I looove Demian so much. It's so strange and pretty, like a painting with a million shifting faces.

  John Steinbeck is super cute too. I know he's known for The Grapes Of Wrath and whatnot, but I'm talking about Cannery Row an Sweet Thursday. Everyone is so adorable and quaint and yeehaw, I can hardly take it. The back of Cannery Row says "The doctor falls in love" but the closest thing to falling in love that happens in that book is when the doctor finds a dead body. That doesn't really scream romance, but I appreciate the effort.

  I was really into Kurt Vonnegut for a hot second, and Richard Yancey. There's nothing quite like the Monstrumologist. Oh, Andrew Smith (Alex Crow, Grasshopper Jungle etc) is like Kurt Vonnegut, but even more gay and also for younger people. I learned a lot of euphanisms for jacking off from his books.

  Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai are wonderful, too. Opening up their stories and feeling the words, ya know, it hits me in some kinda way. The images captured, the dry feeling of loneliness, I love it all. No Longer Human is very special to me!

  ( /*u*)/+.*

EDIT NOTE: I really liked reading Sent's insanity back in the day. I wonder if he still exists.

We keep Sentinel in a special locked room on the Discord and slip him a sardine or a piece of squid sometimes, in exchange for long rants on obscure foreign movies or explaining weird fetishes on demand.

i like tom clancy

Can’t decide who I like more: J.K Rowling or Rick Riordan

Can you name a book by anyone else?

Dr. Seuss?

Rick Riordan is a chad. Rowling is a beta cuck who needs to shut up already.

Did you know Harry Potter is into watersports?

Why did he never causally swam in the lake?

Not that kind of watersports.

To be honest, although I adored the story of the Harry Potter series, I found the magic system inconsistent in a few too many ways. I love the themes and characters, but I am the type of person that needs a good magic system to back up the story. For the many of you who can ignore that: Great! I just don't see why she is so popular.

Orson Scott Card, I could read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Ender's Shadow in an infinite loop until I die probably.  Some of the later books in the series get dull and weird though.  

Same, and yes.

Or at least that was a phase I went through several years ago. I used to have all three and read through them at least once a year, then unfortunately I started branching out into his other books and realized that they were less good and also the guy was a little weird.

The original Ender's Game is still the best though and always seemed pretty ahead of its time.

Yeah OSC is a strange guy, outside of those books his other works that I've read have been pretty shit.  I could only get up to about halfway though "Children of the Mind" before checking out completely, and the one time I tried to depart from the Ender Saga into his other works, I read some weird Christopher Columbus sci-fi alt history of his that made me want to jump off a balcony.

Plus we'd certainly not get along if I were to ever meet the guy.  Obviously.

Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and a few others in the Ender/Hegemon saga are great. Quite a few of his other series start of fantastic as well.

 

But, and I'm not sure if this is due to him using ghostwriters or no one editing his stuff, including him, a lot of his series end up devolving and the writing quality taking a steep dive in later books. Homecoming? I think it was one of the worst for this.  Great first book, but by the last book every minor side character had been promoted to a main character, so the book flipped to a new character every three pages it seemed.

 

And then he also got wierd and creepily obsessed with the anatomy and sexuality of young boys in a few books. Songmaster, especially.

 

So I no longer count him as one of my overall favorites.

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The sixth book was written by Eoin Colfer, who did a moderately good job at it. I also have a preference for Douglas Adams but my fanboy-ness is kind of obvious.

Just a bit.

Right now Brandon Sanderson, but that's only because I'm reading his series of series right now. I haven't read a lot recently but I'm getting back into it. Any suggestions?

Nabokov, Tolkien, Spenser, Ishiguro, Shakespeare are probably my top five.

I'd change my answer from day-to-day:

Today, I'll highlight Andre Norton. Her portrayal of the Huntsman is my all-time favorite.

Of the classics, F. Scott Fitzgerald will be today's flavor. Daisy is such a great role model ... a paragon of ideals and virtue.

i mean if you had asked me a few years ago, i would've said J.K. Rowling. not now lol, she's a terrible person and a transphobe. i was so disappointed seeing her support this trans and homophobic shit, because as a gay and trans nerd, she was my hero. :/

So you say you wouldn't separate an author from his or her work?

She sucks as a writer but she's become a lot more entertaining as a person recently. Seeing as previously I never had reason to pay any attention to her at all, and now she's constantly enraging half the internet.

yes, i love her work, but she couldn’t be my favorite author ever again because of the awful things she’s said and done and supported.

Didn't she randomly make Dumbledore gay a while after the release? When did this go full circle?

It didn't. The hysterical just like to call people they don't like bigots and add meaningless "phobe" at the end of words to the point where they lose all meaning.

In any case JK was overrated as a writer but I have a whole new respect for her trolling level.

Did you read anything by Joe Abercrombie? You would like him.

He's replying to Endmaster.

You fool, what have you done?

Since this is a book thread, I would particularly recommend Abercrombie's "The Blade itself" (...incites to violence). It is set in a fantasy world, but has none of the chivalry and more black and whites that you would expect in fantasy. In a sense it even has it, but only to be ridiculed. The knights who ride out in gleaming armor make such nice targets of themselves that they are shot to pieces by (primitive) artillery before the actual battle begins. The insult here being not only that everybody else thinks they are fools, but also that they ultimately irrelevant. Oh and the most likable character is actually an inquisitor who spends most of his time torturing people. Nevertheless, these books really fun because Abercrombie shares really deep insights into human psyche, the hubris of the powerful, the power (and weakness) of superstitions, and the social dynamics in large organizations.

The inquisitor sounds like a fun character.

EndMaster 

Why? Because I've been reading his stories forever and ever. I also like that there's always different paths that you can take, and how certain characters might change and react to you depending on a specific path. It's like one of those RPG games, but without any of the object/attire clipping, dropped frames, or the game breaking bugs to sour the experience. 

Wow, this Endmaster fella sounds real swell. Where can I read such stories?

Here. 

Truly I am blessed to have such dedicated daughters.