Who is Your Current Favorite Writer?

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autumnfog

Lifer
Jul 22, 2018
1,129
2,465
Sweden
Impossible to pick just one writer.
But, among american writers, Charles Bukowski, John Williams and Cormac McCarthy.
Yet to read Harry Crews, his style seems interesting.
 
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jackets

Starting to Get Obsessed
Oct 11, 2017
109
299
If “current favorite writer” means one’s favorite writer, at the parent time, as opposed to favorite current writer, I’d pick Dostoyevsky, hands down.
I picked up Brothers Karamazov and the idiot recently but can’t decide which one to start with. Which one would you recommend to start out?
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Value per word, range and vision, William Shakespeare always. It's not easy to get into that gear, but once there, it is an incomparable ride. Right now I'm working on two contemporary poets, though one died fairly recently -- the late Robert Bly and the former U.S. poet laureate and Nobel Laureate Louise Gluck (umlaut over the U) who also writes eye-opening essays. For topical satire, I'm enjoying Andrew Berkowitz, who answers the call, if you can't say anything nice, come over here and sit by me. Hemingway, in is three best novels, was a master, as was Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. For history, I like Vernon Parrington and his American intellectual history, not an easy read by rich in content. I like James Joyce's short story The Dead, and Ulysses. Finnegan's Wake is too much like the Sunday puzzle for me, feels like a scholarly landfill. T.S. Eliot is a huge cultural influence; his narrative pastiche in poetry is echoed in every TV and online advertisement, with the quick cuts and dialogue fragments; few make that obvious association. Other greats, Fred Chappell, Tom Whalen, Tom McAfee, R.P. Dickey ... many. Melville, of course. The late great poet Anna Wooten-Hawkins.
 

pipingfool

Can't Leave
Sep 29, 2016
369
1,475
Seattle, WA
My "favorite" changes depending on what I'm reading, but I have loved the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown for the past couple of years. Five books so far in the series with two more on the way.

I'm also reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. He is very detailed oriented and it can seem like a slog to get through them, but great writing, nonetheless.

My other favorites would probably be considered mainstream by some, but I enjoy them a lot and reread them on a yearly basis:

Dan Simmons (Hyperion Series)
Frank Herbert (Dune)
Stephen King (The Dark Tower Series)
GRR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire; but I really enjoyed Tuf Voyaging; a complete departure from his GOT stuff).
Dennis E Taylor (We Are Legion; We Are Bob; insightful and humorous; very well written)
 
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Winnipeger

Lifer
Sep 9, 2022
1,288
9,667
Winnipeg
Jim Harrison. Started reading his works almost immediately after he died. Makes me laugh out loud and cry. About half way through his complete works. Makes me want to visit Nebraska some day. Drove through Michigan's upper peninsula once.
 
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brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,602
14,666
Karamazov may indeed be the greatest novel of all time, but Crime and Punishment is my personal favorite.
I would agree that BK is worthy of that designation, but all of his major novels are must reads imo...and I'd highly recommend Demons because it is particularly relevant to our current times...significant parallels with what was happening in his society then.
 
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