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My favorite author is Bertrand Russell; I love his literary style. He didn't win the Nobel prize in 1950 for literature for nothing. And his predecessors: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. And Gertrude Stein, Germaine Greer.
Novels: Henry Miller, Samuel Butler, Virginia Wolf,
Poetry: Whitman, Eliot, Pound, Rimbaud, just untold numbers of poets.
I recently read all of Malcolm Gladstone's books (Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers), and the (related) one by Geoff Colvin (Talent is Overrated), and two of President Obama's books. I love Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat, Hot, Flat and Crowded).
Some of my favorites:
Russell's Understanding History The Way of all Flesh, Samuel Butler The Jungle Books, Kipling Leaves of Grass, Whitman The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg
Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring, The Air Conditioned Nightmare
I recently got the 11 volume set of Will Durant's histories. I love the Alvin Toffler books. I love the Thomas Craven books (Men of Art). D.H. Lawrence. Thomas Wolf. Doestoevski. Tolstoi. Proust.
I cannot say that John Irving is 'My Favorite Author' at times he does provoke thought--I will give him that.
He was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992. IIRC, he came from a 'circus family'. If need be--to avoid what is offered by TLC --I will pull out John Irving and probably have troubling dreams.
For a variety of reasons, including the writing of John Irving I don't think I could/should ever live in New Hampshire/Vermont. I thought well of New England for years--maple sugar, etc, thank you Laura Ingalls Wilder, but now marvel that the inhabitants can stay sane.
This is a tough question for me because I catagorize my authors by genre. For mystery?thriller fiction it would be Dean Koontz for me. I don't think I disliked any of his novels although I have favorites,
H.L. Mencken: By reading Mencken, one not only realizes what a bunch of intellectually impoverished hacks that most of what passes for columnists today are, but they are less and less able to write with any discernable style. For example, Mencken's eulogy for William Jennings Bryan is arguably the greatest hatchet job in American letters ever (well, perhaps after what Twain did to James Fenimore Cooper), but is also an artful piece of writing.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Funny and often eerily prescient (he may have been the first man to lampoon political correctness before anyone really knew what it was), his work was also informed by a kind of weird sadness. "Breakfast of Champions" is a howl and Slaughterhouse Five is rightfully called a classic.
Daniel Boorstin: Has produced numerous elegant and insightful history books and is one of the deans of the American historical community. His "The Americans" series should be mandatory reading for every college student and his "The Discoverers" is just a beautifully laid out tome concerning innovation and its effects through time.
Yasunari Kawabata: the translations on the market currently are unsatisfying when compared to the Japanese originals. But his ability to capture the contradictions in human nature in such a rich way is what made me a fan.
Odd fact: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was very much like a character out of the Kawabata novel, "Yukiguni" (Snow Country). Kind of ironic in that Kawabata once worked for the far right rag the Mainichi Shimbun while he himself was apolitical and Yamamoto often hated the top dogs in the Japanese military establishment who were enabled, in part, by press organs such as the Mainichi.
Ron Hansen, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Long title, great book.
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