William Faulker - The Sound and the Fury brought me in to his trance...As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom! and his short stories including the spectacular "Two Soldiers" had me becoming a part of his "cult."

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories alone make him this great.

George Orwell - 1984. Can we all say...Wow?! Animal Farm. Can we all say...Woah?!

Hunter S. Thompson - Trip. I like to trip. And this man's book make me trip three times over. His autobiographical writings are always great and fun to re-read.

Stephen King - King has the trance that Faulkner has on me, but in a completely different manner. His books are no where as great pieces as Faulkner's, but his style for horror is always great. Even his suspense writings, including Apt Pupil are great.

Authors:
1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
2. Raymond E. Feist, (Fairy Tale, Magician)
3. Almost any translation of Beowulf, Seamus Heaney's is my favorite
4. John Steinbeck (Tortilla Flats, Of Mice and Men)
5. George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm)

Sorry, I don't think of poets as authors but I love these guys...
Poets:
1. William Blake (A Poison Tree, The Garden of Love, and anything else)
2. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters)
3. William Woordsworth (Ode, Resolution And Independence)
4. Edwin Arlington Robinson (Miniver Cheevy)
5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

...you said no screen-plays. what about playwrites?...
1. George Bernard Shaw (St. Joan, Man and Superman)
2. Shakespeare (Life and Death of King Richard III, Titus Andronicus)
3. Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound)
4. Aristophanes (The Birds)
5. Harold Pinter (The Birthday Party)

There you have it a mish mash of everything. I might have taken liberty with the rules, but everyone above deserves some recognition.

John Collier
Lois McMaster Bujold
Philip K Dick
Orson Scott Card
Octavia Butler
Harlan Ellison
Clive Barker
Connie Willis
Jane Austen

I'm sure I missed more than a few of my favorites, but these were the ones that immediately came to mind.

Next author I want to check out is Avram Davidson since I like John Collier so much and people compare the two a lot (it's a bonus that Davidson still has books in print--I had to hunt down an OOP copy of The Best of John Collier after reading some of his stories in anthologies.)

<small></small>I believe that what is available now is primarily down to the efforts of his ex-wife (who was also his collaborator and literary executor) since at the time of death he was sadly out of print and largely ignored. In recognition of this state of affairs - affecting a variety of authors - Grania Davis even postulated a best OOP novel award named after him. She also completed a last novel from his notes.

From what I read he died in poverty

John Steinbeck-East of Eden

Stephen King

Ken Follett-The Pillars of the Earth

Dean Koontz

(poets) Kahlil Gibran-The Prophet

Samuel Tayor Coleridge-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner- It was so awesome to have two of my English teachers reading this and playing Iron Maiden's song of the same name during class. I felt so cool being one of the only people who already knew it word for word. Metal baby, yeah!

Thanks for the links, Benedict. I'm sorry to see any author die broke, which is why I pretty much boycott my library. (Well, that and I always end up with huge fines anyway, so I might as well buy books.)

tasha

Roger Zelazny
Ernest Hemingway
DH Lawrence

I'm not sure whom to pick for my last two spots...I could pick William Gibson, but only his early works Neuromancer and Burning Chrome do anything for me. I could list Stanislaw Lem but I've only read ~3 of his books. I'll have to think about it.

in no particular order:

Tom Clancy

Robert Ludlum

Elmore Leonard

J.R.R. Tolkien

Clive Cussler

also like (fiction and nonfiction): Michel Foucault, Claudia Koonz, Carl Hiaasen, E.B. Sledge, Jack Higgins, Stephen Ambrose, Michael Crichton, John Grisham and George L. Mosse

No particular order:

Arthur Clarke
Robert Heinlein
Mark Twain
Isaac Asimov
Charles Dickens
Tom Clancy

Hard enough getting the list this short.

Literature:
F Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
Thomas Hardy
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fun:
Jim Thompson
James M Cain
JRR Tolkein

Would also agree strongly with Poe and Sir A C Doyle as excellent short reads.

Stephen King
Larry McMurtry
Win Blevins
Elmore Leonard
John Grisham

Robert Jordan
Tolkien
J.K. Rowling

1. Flannery O'Connor
2. Faulkner
3. Fitzgerald
4. Chabon
5. Heller

although i don't tend to read multiple books by individual authors (i've been in college since i've taken up pleasure reading again i haven't had the time to read as much as i'd like so i have to mix it up) but the authors i've gone back to numerous times are:

john irving (actually, 'prayer for owen meaney' stirred my interest in books again)

j.k. rowling (while a terrific writer of children's books, she also brings back fond memories of my dad reading the Narnia series to me)

david sedaris (hysterical short stories)

also i was blown away by the writing style of 'memoirs of a geisha' so i'll probably read anything arthur golden comes out with next (if he'd just hurry up!)

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Herman Hesse
C.S. Lewis
J.D. Salinger

I'm still thinking about the fifth...lots of contenders, right now I'd say Graham Greene.

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Neil Gaiman
• Michael Moorcock
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Anne Rice
• William Shakespeare

I know Vernor. Actually, he's one of my dad's oldest friends.

They wrote a short story together back in 1971 or so called "Just Peace." It was originally published in Analog magazine. It's been reprinted in collections of Vernor's short stories a couple of times since then.

IT's a VERY entertaining story. My dad and I are planning to write a sequel to it sometime. Hell, it might even get published - stranger things have happened.

Dave Barry
Steven Lawhead
Frank Peretti
John Grisham
Sue Grafton

Top 3

Tom Robbins
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nikos Kazantzakis

Others
Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Russell Banks, Nick Hornby

1) William Shakespeare

2) Stephen King

3) C.S. Lewis

4) Robert Jordan

5) R.A. Salvatore

1) Pat Conroy- Powerful, manly, fiction that just rings true with me. Maybe its because we're both southern, basketball-loving, romantic, wisecrackers. My only complaints are a) His slow output and b) The nightmare that is Beach Music.

2) John Irving- The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany are my favorite NCN's (non-Conroy Novels) .

3)Walter Mosley-I've been hooked on Easy Rawlins ever since I saw Devil in a Blue Dress. Love the 50's/60's LA settings.

4) Elmore Leonard- The dialog king.

5)Michael Chabon- I've only read a few, but I've enjoyed them all emensely. Kavalier and Clay is one of the few novel I've read that deserved the hype it received from the print media.

For those fans of Hesse, where do you rate "The Glass Bead Game" -- ie. "Magister Ludi"?

I consider it the best I've read -- out of two -- I think it far surpasses Siddhartha, but I haven't read Steppenwolf yet. ML is definitely Nobel caliber IMO, but what do you think about it -- think I need to read it again, its been too long.

Tuan Jim

In no real order...

Neil Gaiman - I've never read anything less than excellent from him

James Morrow - Here is a writer that loves words. Vowels, sentances nouns and verbs-his sentances seem crafted.

Chuck Palahnuik - The only writer that I've read who can channel energy though every sentance that he writes. No other writer makes it that easy to sit down and read the whole book at a time.

Stephen Donaldson - He taught me that the hero isn't always the good guy and that every story won't have a happy ending. As good with emotion as Gaiman, but where Neil will smile sweetly (but kinda sad too) throughout-Stephen just wears a scowl.

Phillip Pullman - Why the hell couldn't I have grown up reading children's books like this.


Honorable mentions...

Umberto Eco - Every one of his books has been great to read, made me think, though a bit dense. And every damn time, 2 months later I can remember only a tenth of what the hell happened. Keeps me going back though...

Matthew Woodbridge Stover - Every single word that he writes is passion in one form or another. This is the guy who beat you up being crushed by a manure truck. This is the girl of your dreams picking you. This is having the perfect comeback to humiliate that guy that teased you.

1. Nelson DeMille

2. Tom Clancy

3. Patricia Cornwell

4. Jeff Deaver

5. Tie between James Patterson and Robert K. Tannenbaum

1) Graham Greene
2) Harlan Ellison
3) John Grisham
4) Bram Stoker
5) Michael Connelly