Who is your favorite writer?

[Steggsaurus]

I have a few.
Terry Pratchett is someone I love to read.
HP Lovecraft wrote stuff that had a big impact on me in terms of art and my own attempts at writing.
Reading Jack Kerouac as a teenager made me want to read "like a grown up".
James Ellroy got me reading crime fiction and loving it.

[Kismet]

I also love Kerouac. And Mark Twain. And Tolkien.

How about some writers no one has ever heard of.... Hmmmm. Just looking at my shelf I see the novel Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop. A rather unusual retelling of Frankenstein.

Bon Apetit

[Cabding]

Hemingway all the way. Mostly because he was a total badass in every sense of the word. Someone told me once he wrote books too?

[tolkienfan86]

Tolkien and CS Lewis for me, as far as fiction goes. But I don't read much fiction normally.

[katia]

I use to have a favourite writer for each mod...
Anyway, my "must" are: Ernest Hemingway (how never read anything of him, try to read some of his descriptions of context...it's unbelievable, you can close the eyes and see it!) and in other moment Stephen King...mostly in his thriller books.

When I wish to feel above, I read Dante Alighieri, he was sacring each night before literature tests in my high school, but now I revalued it...I don't know if abroad it's so common.

[egonspengleruk]

The early Tom Clancy books are unputadownable (loving the new word there). I seem to remember picking up Patriot Games and reading it throughout my sisters birthday....which didnt go down well!

[mcibear]

nice to know im not the only Pratchett fan here.

[horatio]

Well, let's see:

James Joyce, Hermann Hesse, Virginia Wolf, Thomas Mann (classics); Amin Maalouf, Carlos Ruiz Zafón (contemporaries)...

There are certainly more of them, these have ones come up spontaneously...:-)

[DiElle]

I love Dostoevsky, Pessoa and Cioran above all...
I recommended to all of you to read some poetry of the Portuguese Pessoa, I really like it. Try "O Guardador de Rebanhos"...

[Jossalin]

I'd have to say John Updike, Ernest Hemingway, and f scott fitzgerald.Keepin it old school haha :p

[Cabding]

Score one for hemingway. I just recently learned he made sweet sweet love to a mafioso's girlfriend while in a secret bar during prohibition...i'd like to see updike do that and live.

[Dave]

I am happy there are Asimov fans here.  He is definatly one of my favorite Authors.  I also like Aurthur C Clarke, and Tolken.  I though am sucker for classics, nothing beats Mark Twain, Jules Verne or HG Wells

Nothing beats the classics in some cases, though I do count Asimov (or at least his earlier works) as classics.  In fact, screw it.  I hereby redefine "classic" as something I like at least ten years old or so.  How about that?

[Lisa2408]

My favorite writers are
1. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - with his novelles Terre des hommes – „Wind, Sand und Sterne”; Lettre a un otage – „Bekenntnis einer Freundschaft”, Pilote de guerre – „Flug nach Arras”, Le petit prince – „Der kleine Prinz”; L'aviateur – „Der Flieger”. I had read all books from him in both languages, the Frensh novelles are better then the German translation.

2. Jules Verne - I have from this writer all books as paperback (128 Books)

3. James A. Michener - he was an American  author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which were sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating historical facts into the stories

4. Thomas Mann - he was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the anti-fascist Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the most known exponents of the so called Exilliteratur.

5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - he was a German writer and polymath. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science. His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, his influential ideas on plant and animal morphology and homology were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin. He also served at length as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar.
Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work on colour.

[Dave]

Wait a second.  Mann was the guy who brought us the infamous Death In Venice.  I don't know what else he wrote, but they would have to be pretty good to make up for Death In Venice.

[Lisa2408]

Mann´s favorite and best book is "Die Buddenbrooks".
Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany.

It portrays the downfall (already announced in the subtitle, Decline of a Family) of a wealthy mercantile family of Lübeck over four generations. The book is generally understood as a portrait of the German bourgeois society throughout several decades of the 19th century. The book displays Mann's characteristic detailed style, and it was this novel which won Mann the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, although according to Mann's wife this achievement would not have occurred without the publication of The Magic Mountain.

In 1959 and 1960, German filmmaker Alfred Weidenmann directed two film adaptions of Buddenbrooks. Buddenbrooks - 1. Teil was released in 1959 and featured actors Liselotte Pulver, Nadja Tiller, Hansjörg Felmy, Hanns Lothar, Lil Dagover and Werner Hinz. The following year, Buddenbrooks - 2. Teil was released in theaters and featured the same cast.
Franz Peter Wirth directed a 10-hour TV version that premiered in 1979 and was filmed in less-damaged Gdansk.

Mann´s other worldwide bestseller books were: Confessions of Felix Krull (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull),  Death in Venice, Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann novel),The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte),  Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder (Tetralogie)), Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg), Mario and the Magician (Königliche Hoheit) , Tonio Kröger and  Tristan (novella)