Do you have a favourite author? Mine is...

[BumgrapesofWrath]

Margaret Atwood.

When I read her books I get whisked away. She has such a great imagination, and such a skill with words. And her books always make me "feel" something. Just got to the end of The Blind Assassin, and I feel like someone has winded me.

So who is your favourite author?

[FrostedFlakes]

mistymeanour I'm reading it again at the moment. Just read the passage when the main character falls from the roof, a pivotal scene in the book. I was expecting the description to go on for paragraphs but Zola used only one sentence. Absolute genius.
And in that sentence he compared the sound of the fall to that of a wet bag of laundry - and of course his wife runs a launderette...

[mistymeanour]

FrostedFlakes - L'Assomoir is my "desert island book". I absolutely love it.- funny, sexy and heart breaking. Glad to know there is another fan as most people have not heard of it and rate Germinal and Therese Raquin.

[Wailywailywaily]

Yrsa Sigurdardottir

If you like Nordic Noire she is great. I find her writing funny and dark at the same time and normally I haven't managed to guess the endings. Her books take me to Iceland - sometimes its a beautiful place, others quite frightening.

I have to admit, given my username, that I love Pratchet too.

[ZingOfSeven]

toss up between Steinbeck and Vonnegut

[aoife24]

'Wyld'

[aoife24]

A recent favourite of mine is Evie Wylde. Her books are very intense with damaged people but some hint of hope, perhaps. Tim Winton is also a favourite. I also would add Graham Greene and John Le Carre.

[DoctorTwo]

Like others I love Steinbeck. East Of Eden is just about perfect.

I also love John Connolly, especially the Charlie Parker books.

My favourite book is probably Rant by Chuck Pahlahniuk. It's sort of about time travel and is really hard to describe the plot and do it justice because it's such a strange premise.

I still love reading Douglas Adams.

[GeordieRose]

I have so many!

Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontë sisters, G.R.R. Martin, Tolkien, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Harris, Stephen King...and I've been very fond of the Marquis de Sade since I was about 16

[applecatchers36]

Kate Atkinson for family drama
Sophie Hannah for crime

[Postchildrenpregranny]

Love Edith Wharton-read The Squire if you are pregnant

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

FrostedFlakes Mr Biswas is really good, as long as you remember it's set in it's time. It's not at all politically correct for nowadays! But a good read, one of my favourites of Naipaul's fiction.

I haven't read L'Assommoir for years, but have it on the shelf. He is quite "earthy" as one of my college lecturers used to say

[FrostedFlakes]

MiddleAgeMiddleEngland I've just started reading V S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas

I recommend Zola's L'Assommoir if you haven't read it. His description of Gervaise's pleasure in washing her customers' laundry should be x-rated .And the banquet scenes will leave you reaching for an Alka-Seltzer.

[Lovelydiscusfish]

Yes, William Horwood's Duncton Wood series (about the moles) is wonderful. Quite unsettling books at times, but very absorbing. Loved them in my adolescence, and would love to re-read them now (think I have kept them - hurray!) Was mildly disappointed by the Stonor Eagles, but may be being unfair - may be a more adult novel I was reading as a naive teenager,

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

Squeakyheart I remember years ago reading Horwood's The Stonor Eagles on a wet cold weekend. Curled up in a big armchair and read it in 2 days. I don't know if I'd enjoy it so much now, but at the time I really wallowed.

[Squeakyheart]

As mentioned by previous posters

Christopher brookmyre, roll on January! Though if I am honest some of his later ones have been a bit of a slog
Mary Stewart

Others
Diana Gabaldon - cross stitch / outlander series. I am so in love with Jamie and a little with lord john too

Dick Francis always a good read, and often really informative

William horwood though haven't read recently as they are long! But amazing characters.

[AgentCooper]

Shirley Jackson. Her stories are really gripping and eerie, but always with this precise, very mid-century black humour running through them. Her short story The Lottery is her best known and it's incredible.

[GrouchyKiwi]

Oooh and Michel Faber.

[GrouchyKiwi]

Ishiguro, David Mitchell and Georgette Heyer.

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

John Updike and Emile Zola. Two authors I haven't read much of for years. (Adds to list)

I remember being so engrossed in Germinal as a teenager that I got really bad sunburn. Stupidly read it lying in the garden in a bikini. Those days are long gone!

Does anyone like VS Naipaul? He's another favourite of mine. Hmm, too many favourites I suspect.

[TheLovelyBoots]

That's the one FrostedFlakes.

I do love Philip Roth - his meticulous research can be wonderfully weird, like in the one set against a glove factory... ? I quite enjoyed the segues into stitching and tanning and so forth.

[FrostedFlakes]

A Word Child! Is this where someone goes on the Circle Line and spots a coffee booth in Sloane Square tube station? It doesn't exist any longer but I used to be obsessed with it for some reason. Loved that book.

Just adding to the list:
John Updike, Philip Roth, Carson McCullers, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Charles Bukowski, Anita Brookner, Emile Zola, Jules Valles

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

TheLovelyBoots. I agree about The Sea, The Sea. It's good but not my favourite. I haven't read A Word Child for ages, will dig it out and read it again. I hope you enjoy her biography

The trouble with this thread is that it adds even more books to my "to read soon" list.

[TheLovelyBoots]

There were parts of the Count of Monte Cristo that gripped me (his classical education in prison, the prison break, the diamond, De Villefort's affair and the buried baby, Valentine's murderous mother)- it is a really great story. But I thought the Count descended into silly by the end.

It might have been my impatience.

[QueenAnneofAustriaSpain]

Yes, Dumas is long. Even though there are lots of words and actually at times not much happens I really found this didn't bother me - I just couldn't put it down.

So many here I want to try. I don't read many more modern writers so there are some great ideas on this thread .