James Joyce is my favorite author, I honestly can't think of anyone who comes close. I own and have read Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, Finnegans Wake, and Chamber Music.
However, my favorite book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. If I could only read one book for the rest of my life, it would be that one.
Posted Jan 24, 2011, 3:09 PM UTC
My favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut, but my favorite book is Dune by Frank Herbert. Vonnegut consistently writes funny, insightful, and weird fiction, but no book I have read in my short life has ever captured my imagination like Dune.
I just read Dune, I loved how cloak and dagger it was. Faint within a faint within a faint.
My favorite author is probably Hunter S. Thompson. I just love the way he writes. I really don't think any of his books are that great though.
I agree, but I can't stop reading "The Rum Diary". It feels so different than the rest of Thompson's books. Compared to his other novels, the booze soaked debauchery seems quite tame. I can't really decide why I love that book, but I really do. Give it a shot if you haven't read it already.
I actually just read it last month. I have to say it was my favorite of his so far. Keep an eye out for the movie coming out this year (it's in post production).
My favorite book is probably The Crying of Lot 49 and Pynchon comes close to being my favorite author, but I have to be honest with myself and say that Steinbeck is my favorite author.
I'm a big fan of Ian McEwan but I feel he has a problem writing endings. His books (at least the ones I've read) start out excellent but things tend to fizzle out as the story progresses.
Reading Hitchens' memoir inspired me to read something of McEwan's, so I picked up On Chesil Beach and liked it. What would you recommend I read next from him?
Black Dogs would perhaps be my favourite, partly because it has got a more complete ending than some of his other books. Atonement, The Child in Time and Enduring Love are all excellent but suffer towards the end.
Enduring Love is especially bad for this. The first hundred pages or so are sheer bliss, some of the most fantastic and engaging prose I have ever read. After that things slow down a bit and then the ending is not particularly good (or so I felt).
Saturday is also worth a look, but at times it feels like he's trying to ram two different stories together and it doesn't fully work.
Chesil Beach is one I haven't read. I must check it out now.
Hesse did not write A Confederacy of Dunces.
I think Joyce is my favorite author as well, but my favorite book is by far and away Catch-22. Heller's book perfectly captures my sense of humor, and it such an emotional read every time. But in terms of literary merit - depth of theme and quality of writing - I think Joyce takes the cake.