Favorite Authors
 

I read my first Ayn Rand while in the USMC waiting to go to Vietnam. It was The Fountainhead, really liked it, then I found Atlas Shrugged and loved it. I think those books helped shape me/my thinking as I am today. I then read some shorts and Anthem, another great book. I have read Atlas Shrugged twice now and I am sure will read it again. It seems that only the names change.
My other favorite author is Hemmingway, I think I have read everything he published. Most were just great.

Hemingway wrote the same thing over and over again, it just goes to show U that if you write the same thing over and over sooner or later you will be considered to be great.

Is that what you are doing here, tabs?;)

I really liked "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" by Robert Pirsig - although it is rather surreal and has three story lines going on concurrently... it's more about a father and son taking a road trip across America on a motorcycle and less to do with Zen or motorcycle maintenance, lent it to a friend and he hated it but it is considered a classic.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda is also... uh... interesting.

You might be able to find them at a public library.

I read mostly philosophy and theology so I have somewhat odd taste in books.

The onley "Zen" book I have read is "Zen Golf", Mastering the Mental Game, By J. Parent. Still reading it, may have keep on reading it.

Rand is a fad, but not a thinker. You want Rand? Just read Nietzsche. Superman. Rand and Nietzsche appeal to people who prefer to believe that things (the world. universe. society, spirituality, etc) are very simple, and who tend to idolize people with power. Hemmingway too, actually. Rand's books are decent enough, as plain ol' novels. Nobody really thinks she's a philosopher, except folks who haven't read much except her stuff.

There are lots of very entertaining authors out there. I recently read Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Pretty good. I've enjoyed several of Michener's books. Ludlum is can't-put-it-down stuff. Lots of great authors to choose from.

Raymond Chandler....

Have you checked out Pirsig's sequel, LILA? If you liked the discussion on Quality/Value, LILA is a great read.

My favorite authors are Orwell (although after just finishing my Master's Thesis, I am a little sick of him), Thomas Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Mark Twain, Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Macaulay, William Manchester and lately John Steinbeck. Twain is THE American. And some of Fitzgerald's phrases still give me chills (Last Tycoon - just a draft but wow!)

Read Pirsig twice and it is the best link between mechanical things and thought.

Have never read Rand.

Enjoy the thought of Hemingway as a way of life more than his writing. Similar life was Teddy Roosevelt, and his autobiography is quite good.

Sitting on a Grant biography that Mark Twain had a hand in but haven't read it yet.

hunter s. thompson.....after all, he is the doctor :)

David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Joseph Conrad, David Sedaris, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Bill Waterson (anything by him is worth reading), and C.S. Lewis.

RKC, that Grant biography is worth reading.

Oh, and I reccomend, anything by Lubemaster or Moses on this board.

Fun thread.

John Kennedy Toole and Peter Straub wrote my two favorite books, "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "The Throat". However, Alexandre Dumas and Arthur Conan Doyle are my favorite authors if I consider an entire collection of work.

On a lighter note, how about B.S. Levy, author of the great "Last Open Road" series books?

They can be very funny, & they paint a great portait of the early days of road-racing. For someone who is 48, I really enjoyed the "history lessons". You learn along with the narrator, young Buddy Palumbo.

I highly recommend the 4 books (so far -- I think there will eventually be 6): "The Last Open Road", "Montezuma's Ferrari", "The Fabulous Trashwagon" & "Toly's Ghost".

Check them out.

well i'll be the unsophisticated one who admits to enjoying Clancy and Crichton. old stephen king stuff was entertaining in a way.

Wilbur Smith. Great stuff.

Wayne Dempsey (Porsche books), Douglas Adams (all 4 of the trilogy), Kurt Vonnegut (everything), J.McMahon (poems), Michael Crichton (old stuff), Michael Holloway (all stuff).

Wow....Too many to mention. I like fiction, but I also have a number of science books (mostly physics and astronomy), and some history, particulary of the two world wars. Fascinated by the technology of Nazi Germany as compared with the ROW at the time.

Fiction:

Time wasters but fun: Dean R. Koontz, occasional Stephen King, some S-F writers like Brin, Greg Bear, Asimov (also his science books as well)

More serious fiction: Umberto Eco, C.S. Lewis, Tolkein, Caleb Carr, Dickens, Philip K. Dick

Science: Hawking, Brian Greene, Arthur Clarke (a combo of science..look up the things he predicted like satellite communication systems), James P. Hogan, James Gleick, Alan Guth to name just a few....

Other: Dalai Lama, other philosophers.

Edmund Spenser, James Patterson, and ....... Holloway.:confused: :D

Matt,
You start Tuesday!

and dash hammet, and kinky friedman.

Ayn Rand--totally agree on this one. Her philosophy/fiction style is amazing--very heavy reading though. I think Atlas Shrugged one of the greatest books ever.

Re: Favorite Authors
 

+1 for Ayn Rand. James Mischner also comes to mind. I still read Atlas Shrugged every 5-10 years.

My favorites are the ones that make me look the smartest....those ones.

Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown and Patrick O'Brien

+1 Mandatory reading for any fan of sportscars. Especially great reading for a Sunday afternoon at Lime Rock.

Herman Wouk. Inside Outside is amazing. The Winds of War and War and Remembrance are much better than the miniseries.

Douglas Adams. Read him first in high school and college when my vocabulary was forming. Still can't shake the phrases I picked up reading those books. But I know where my towel is.

Robert Caro. His biography of Lyndon Johnson is like watching the man walk again. David McCullough. His biographies of Truman, et al have the same effect as Caro's.

William Penn Warren. Reading All The King's Men is like drinking single barrel bourbon drop by drop.

Alexander Dumas, A Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, William Chandler. And Len Deighton for his Bernard Sampson series.

I just read Hells Angles and I all can say is what an awesome life he lead.

If I haven't found something at the library after ten minutes I check if I've missed anything by Elmore Leonard. No TV, so 3 or 4 books every two weeks.
Jim

1. Cormac McCarthy. If you haven't read the Border Trilogy, you haven't read.

a very distant 2nd: Robertson Davies. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks is priceless.

tom wolfe

Neal Stephenson- Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are in my collection of "Books I will never sell or donate"

Ever read 'Don't Stop The Carnival'? I think that's my favorite and I've never seen a copy besides the one I own. Not sure it's still in print.

I enjoy Vonnegut, D. Adams, Asimov, Heinlein, Heller, some Rand, Alistair Maclean and Stephen Ambrose. I could go on forever . . .

Okay, no one has mentioned Terry Pratchett or Lee Child. Then, if you want to go back a bit, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker was just an incredible piece of work. Patrick O'Brian was one of the greats, as was Raymond Chandler, and Elmore Leonard may still be. Faulkner once said that Hemingway never went out on a limb, and he was probably right that time. ....I'm still making up my mind about Thomas Pynchon...

Good thread--may keep me from wandering around B@N for an hour with nothing purchased.

Rand, Bill Bryson, Dave Eggers. Would like to hear of similar writers - particularly Bryson.

TG

+1 for Vonnegut and Asimov. Also Ken Follett, Ludlum and le Carre.

This guy...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1282374184.jpg

I like Elmore Leonard. Check out the tv show "Justified" which is based on his characters and has a lot of the same attitude; combines two of his strengths - crime and westerns.

I like Chandler and Hammett as well, but my favorite modern is probably Lawrence Block, the Scudder and Rhodenbarr books. I also like Walter Moseley.

For action, I like Stephen Hunter's "Sniper" series with Bob Lee Swagger. The first book was recently made into the movie "Shooter" with Mark Wahlberg, which didn't do it justice.

For fun, nothing cracks me up like PG Wodehouse, but I've got a lot of SJ Perelman, too.

And while the first book I downloaded to my iPad was "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," what I re-read almost every year is "The Razor's Edge" by W Somerset Maugham. Trivia: BIll Murray only did the Ghostbusters sequel to do a(nother) movie version of it (which was awful, btw).

+1
I've been thinking of a way to characterize Rand since there has been so much said about her here lately. You hit it on the head. Thanks.
I like F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, and Joyce Carol Oates for their characters.
I love Mitchener and Larry McMurtry for their big stories - epics almost.
Lately I've been reading Mary Roach. "Stiff" and "Packing for Mars" are both funny and informative.

Absolutely. I don't read a lot of fiction, but I love his stuff.

Interesting thread...I know most of the authors posted above, not all.

I have been on a bit of a retro trip as of late, re-reading many of the books the Penguins insisted I become familiar with in HS, then the college mill.

Travels With Charlie was a huge disappointment. Of Mice and Men will make a strong man cry. East of Eden, amazing. Cannery Row. Rose of Sharon Jode...wow.

Islands in the Stream was great. The Sun Also Rises was riveting.

Willa Cather's three seminal books were all excellent...unsparing.

Faulkner scares me...I read Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and Requiem for a Nun under the covers.

Cormac is the best...every last word.

Twain...most of his stuff.

Pretty much it for the last year, with new folks sprinkled in.