Who are your favorite authors and what are your favorite books.

-- Submitted Anonymously

OSC REPLIES: - May 12, 2000

Impossible to list all the authors that have written books that matter greatly to me. But let me list a few that were important to me prior to beginning my writing career:

Sci-fi
Heinlein
Norton
Asimov
Clarke
Bradbury
LeGuin
Ellison
Blish

Fantasy
Tolkien
Lewis
George Macdonald
Mary Stewart (the Merlin books)
T.H. White

Children's
E.B.White
Lawson (Rabbit Hill)
Altsheler (Civil War and French & Indian War novels)

Historical
Elswyth Thane (Williamsburg novels)
Mitchell
Nordhoff & Hall (Bounty trilogy)
Forrester (Hornblower)
Taylor Caldwell
Wallace (Ben-Hur)

Mystery
Christie
Wolfe
du Maurier
Ross MacDonald

Mainstream
Shakespeare (the plays)
Twain (Prince & the Pauper, Tom Sawyer)
Austen
Douglas (The Robe; Forgive Us Our Trespasses)
Albee (Virginia Woolf)
William Goldman (Boys & Girls Together)
Rand (Fountainhead)
Wilde (Ernest)
James Goldman (A Lion in Winter)
Arthur Miller (All My Sons; Crucible)
O'Neill
Michener (Source; Tales of the South Pacific)

Nonfiction
Joseph Smith (Book of Mormon)
Shirer (Rise & Fall of the Third Reich)
Plato
Bruce Catton (Army of the Potomac)
William Manchester

Poetry
Hopkins
Dickinson
Cummings
Shakespeare
Halleck
Jonson
Tennyson
Yeats
Auden

All these represent readings prior to my beginning to write seriously, and this list is by no means complete, especially in the nonfiction area, where I was rarely aware of authors and simply absorbed information.

Authors now working whose works I look forward to and buy instantly are:

Dave Wolverton / David Farland
Robin Hobb / Megan Lindholm
Robert Parker
Sue Grafton
Sharyn McCrumb
Lisa Goldstein
Octavia Butler
George R.R. Martin
Walter Mosley
Robert Caro
Stephen Pinker
Lehane
Burke
Crais
McBain
Connelly
Block
Cormier
Sleator

Again, this is far from exhausting the list.

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