Your favourite authors, and why?

[Harbal]

Please do read anything by Tim Dorsey then, Harbal. Comedy is difficult to do in writing, and this guy is like a black belt at it. If you've got the right sense of humor, this guy will have u in stitches.

I'll check it out. Thanks.

[promethean75]

Well wait a minute. I shouldn't say 'anything by' becuz I've only read three of his novels, and there's the possibility that his later work isn't as good as his early stuff. Sometimes authors lose their steam after their prime period. The ones i read (and can't remember which ones they were) are the earlier ones. So sample from the early stuff.

[Harbal]

Well wait a minute. I shouldn't say 'anything by' becuz I've only read three of his novels, and there's the possibility that his later work isn't as good as his early stuff. Sometimes authors lose their steam after their prime period. The ones i read (and can't remember which ones they were) are the earlier ones. So sample from the early stuff.

I've downloaded the Kindle version of Florida roadkill, for £1.99. Yes, I know I'm an impetuous fool, but what the heck.

[promethean75]

That might be one that I read. I vaguely recall some of the scenes mentioned in the synopsis, it seems. The briefcase with five million rings a bell and the three bikers on the yacht. But then Coleman dies in this one, and I don't remember Coleman dying.

Let me know if there's a scene where somebody's on a boat out in the middle of a lake (forget who) and a fucking owl swoops down out of nowhere, grabs the gas can and flies away with it. That's the scene where i almost lost my life by laughing so hard.

[promethean75]

Also u may not like it, Harbal. You're a pretty stiff dude and u may find it all rather silly. If so, let me know and I'll reimburse u for the cost.

[Harbal]

Also u may not like it, Harbal. You're a pretty stiff dude and u may find it all rather silly. If so, let me know and I'll reimburse u for the cost.

Don't worry about it. My Kindle is full of books I've started and abandoned. I'm grateful for the suggestion.

[LuckyR]

Frederick Forsythe - very detailed writing...

-Imp

Agree, also le Carré.

[Walker]

John D. MacDonald

His character Travis McGee, who was in about 26 stories, inspired Lee Child's inner Jack Reacher. McGee lived on a houseboat in Florida that he named The Busted Flush because he won the boat on a bet. McGee said he was taking his retirement in installments, which meant that when he could afford it he took long vacations between jobs. He was a self-named Salvage Expert.

[Alexiev]

When the lands that lie under the sea are lifted once again, in the willow-meads of Tasarinan we will walk in the spring, Maia.

Of canonical authors, my favorites are Jane Austen (the funniest great author) and Leo Tolstoy (the most inciteful)

Of 21st century novelists I vote for Elena Ferrante and the Neapolitan quartet.

Austen revolutionized the novel. Her exact contemporary (and fanboy) Sir Walter Scott was the most popular English novelist ever (based on percentage of novels sold). But the novel didn't go his way, toward adventure and romance. Instead, it went the way of the parson's daughter, toward realism and domesticity.

Here's what Sir Walter (Scott, not Eliot) said about Austen:

‘Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow wow strain I can do myself like any now going but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early.’

[Alexiev]

Since the initial post asked for "authors", I'll continue.

My favorite American poets (I'll admit that Brits dominate English poetry) are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Whitman was more influential -- pioneering modern poetry. Dickinson was so unique and original that she was less' influential; nobody has ever written as she did.

Here's Algernon Swinburne imploring Whitman (Swinburne was not the greatest poet, but his magical rhyme schemes rule):

Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

My favorite newspaper columnist: GK Chesterton. Of course Chesterton was a novelist, a poet, and a short story writer. But I like his essays best. Books like Orthodoxy or What's Wrong with the World exemplify GK's polemical talents-- rich, funny, and wise. I have a book compiling three years of his newspaper columns, and they're great. It's fun to see Chesterton (a good-hearted man) tie himself into knots defending things we now know are wrong-headed (like opposing women's suffrage).

History: boring, I know, but I vote for Gibbon. The solemn moralizing and the sonorous, multi-claused sentences make him a must read.

[Maia]

Since the initial post asked for "authors", I'll continue.

My favorite American poets (I'll admit that Brits dominate English poetry) are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Whitman was more influential -- pioneering modern poetry. Dickinson was so unique and original that she was less' influential; nobody has ever written as she did.

Here's Algernon Swinburne imploring Whitman (Swinburne was not the greatest poet, but his magical rhyme schemes rule):

Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

My favorite newspaper columnist: GK Chesterton. Of course Chesterton was a novelist, a poet, and a short story writer. But I like his essays best. Books like Orthodoxy or What's Wrong with the World exemplify GK's polemical talents-- rich, funny, and wise. I have a book compiling three years of his newspaper columns, and they're great. It's fun to see Chesterton (a good-hearted man) tie himself into knots defending things we now know are wrong-headed (like opposing women's suffrage).

History: boring, I know, but I vote for Gibbon. The solemn moralizing and the sonorous, multi-claused sentences make him a must read.

That walk in Beleriand sounds lovely!

We did Emma at school for A-level, and for various reasons, I was unable to get into it, and since then, have never really fancied trying any more Jane Austen. Which is a great shame, and perhaps it will be rectified one day.

With regard to poems, I rather like A Tree Song by Kipling, from Puck of Pook's Hill, the first verse of which is:

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
(All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Staying on the subject of late Victorian and Edwardian writers, E. Nesbit (Edith Nesbit) definitely deserves a mention. I read quite a few of her children's fantasy stories when I was little.

With regard to historians, I think Malcolm Todd has a clear writing style, covering subjects and periods that I'm particularly interested in, such as Roman and Dark Age Britain.

[Alexiev]

That walk in Beleriand sounds lovely!

We did Emma at school for A-level, and for various reasons, I was unable to get into it, and since then, have never really fancied trying any more Jane Austen. Which is a great shame, and perhaps it will be rectified one day.

With regard to poems, I rather like A Tree Song by Kipling, from Puck of Pook's Hill, the first verse of which is:

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
(All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Staying on the subject of late Victorian and Edwardian writers, E. Nesbit (Edith Nesbit) definitely deserves a mention. I read quite a few of her children's fantasy stories when I was little.

With regard to historians, I think Malcolm Todd has a clear writing style, covering subjects and periods that I'm particularly interested in, such as Roman and Dark Age Britain.

Jane Austen aficionados love Emma but many young people think Emma is too snobbish, interfering and full of herself to make a proper heroine. Young women prefer Pride and Prejudice with its witty, sparkling heroine and rich, romantic hero. But the die-hard Austen fans like Emma and, perhaps, Persuasion best of all the novels. Pride and Prejudice has a bit too much farce in it (although I wouldn't part with Mr. Collins or Lady Catherine, they are almost slapstick characters). Emma is more subtle. Miss Bates, who is the foolish, comic relief, actually turns out to be right about everything she says, which is a good twist.

It's sometimes difficult to love Emma --but an aging gent like me can look back on her fondly as displaying the foibles of youth, while at the same time being witty, smart, and beautiful. Could you solve those word puzzles as quickly as Emma? I know I can't.

The more difficult novel is Mansfield Park, with a prudish, dull hero and heroine. I like it a lot, too.

I read LOTR as a child, and, because our first loves always hit us the hardest, it remains one of my very favorites. I did give up on the posthumous mythologies after The silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and a few more. I read that Tolkien's translation of Beowulf is now available, but I haven't read it. Can we call The Iliad and Odyssey "histories"? Maybe.

[Alexiev]

By the way, I like Edith Bland (aka Nesbit), too. But although I like her fantasies, I think The Treasure Seekers is her best novel. In The Magicians Nephew, CS Lewis gives it a shout (from memory), "This was back in the days when the Bastables were looking for treasure on Lewisham Road,"

[Maia]

By the way, I like Edith Bland (aka Nesbit), too. But although I like her fantasies, I think The Treasure Seekers is her best novel. In The Magicians Nephew, CS Lewis gives it a shout (from memory), "This was back in the days when the Bastables were looking for treasure on Lewisham Road,"

I'll keep in mind your suggestion about Persuasion being one of Jane Austen's best.

Tolkien's translation of Beowulf is, indeed, available, according to Amazon. I think the Iliad and Odyssey are good examples, along with Beowulf itself, of how real history can be woven into mythological settings. Another example, though not in epic form, is Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, from which the medieval legend of King Arthur derives, along with a whole lot more, such as stories of King Lear and Old King Cole. It even begins its story at the fall of Troy, as do a surprisingly large number of other European mythologies, including, for example, that of the Norse, as described in the Prose Edda. And coming full circle, the influence of the Prose Edda on the Silmarillion is very clear, as is the influence of Merlin, as found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, on the conception of Gandalf.

On the subject of Ancient Greek writings, though, I must include Plato, specifically, because of Atlantis. Was there any real history woven into this story? I think so, yes, because Atlantis has distinct similarities with the Minoan civilisation of Crete.

I'm not sure if I've read the Treasure Seekers, as I was at primary school when I read E. Nesbit. I don't think I've read anything by her since the age of about 9 or 10, which is another thing that probably needs to be rectified. The book that really left an impression on me when I was that age, or maybe even younger, however, was the one I mentioned earlier, Beneath the Hill by Jane Louise Curry. I kept ordering it from the Braille library over and over again, in part, at least, because it had a really cool embossed map at the beginning. I found out much later that it has a whole series of sequels, which I've since read.

[promethean75]

Where are we at in Florida Roadkill, Harbal? Are Serge and Coleman chasing after the briefcase yet?

If you stay with the series, you'll notice this particular fetish Serge has for Florida history and how he loves going into historian mode while on his escapades rampaging through the city. It's so funny. The contrast of personalities. One minute, he's plotting to murder someone, and in the next, he's got some unfortunate audience he's lecturing to about some stupid little historic detail that nobody cares about. He's got his glasses on, a cup of coffee, and he's pacing back and forth like a greek historian explaining the entire history of a tree or a port or some mundane shit.