Don Reba said:
Carnagath said:
I was looking for good literature in Spanish. Can you recommend anyone else?
Number 3 on my list is something you should definitely look into if you haven't already.
RedEyesBlackGamer said:
Yay, I'm getting a visitor!
1. Robert Jordan (I love the WoT. Sue me.)
2. Anne McCaffrey (She got me into reading in general. That deserves some recognition)
3. Michael Chabon (Just a great writer)
I enjoy literary classics too, but I grew up with Jordan and McCaffrey and Chabon is just amazing.
There's a difference between having a favourite novel and a favourite author. I also love
The Wheel of Time to death but Robert Jordan was not a particularly great writer. As the series went on, Jordan's prose became more clunky and his sentence structure would occasionally go to complete and utter shit.
My favourite novel is probably
Catch-22 but I wouldn't consider Joseph Heller to be one of the greatest writers just because of my love for his first book. I also wouldn't consider him to be one of my favourite authors because I've only read one of his books...I also hear that his second book was a bit of a flop.
Catch-22 is a fucking masterpiece though, and everyone should read it at least once in their life.
I'm currently reading
Crime and Punishment and, although I'm absolutely hooked, I wouldn't consider Dostoyevksy one of the greatest writers... Maybe I'll change my view once I've finished the book.
In my opinion, some of the greatest writers to date are:
1. Paul Auster. He continually ignores narrative conventions with his novels, constantly pushing the boundaries of what we believe a novel to be. And that's no easy thing to do in a career that spans about 25 years. Sure, Palahniuk does the same -
Haunted and
Choke are exceptional - but not with the same amount of skill. Palahniuk relies mainly on shock-tactics and nauseating styles (
Pygmy and
Rant are the main culprits) and is not always exciting despite his love of grotesque and "exciting" plots/themes. For me, Auster always produces exciting novels even when their subject-matter is distinctly unexciting. I highly recommend
Leviathan,
The New York Trilogy and
Man in the Dark.
2. Franz Kafka. A genius of his time. I probably have Kafka to thank for a lot of the authors that I read now, and having read quite a few of his short stories (and one unfinished novel) I can see why he is considered one of the best writers of the twentieth century. Kafka pretty much revolutionised literature with his use of surreal distortion. Although I'm not a fan of his most critically acclaimed piece,
Metamorphosis, I'd definitely recommend picking up a collection of his short stories that includes it.
The Castle is also an incredible read, although it was unfinished and therefore abruptly ends mid-sentence.
3. Miguel de Cervantes. The author of the famous
Don Quixote, Cervantes was a mastermind. Often considered the father of 'modern' literature, he was well ahead of his time (by about 250 years) in the way that he used dialogue and narrative structure. I'll admit, the first part of the gargantuan
Don Quixote can be a huuuuuge chore but it's worth it for the almost flawless genius of part 2. It's difficult to explain why
Don Quixote is so incredible but if you're interested, I'd definitely recommend it. It's absolutely massive though, so make sure you have a good amount of time to read it lol.
4. Ian McEwan. Although I, personally, don't like much of his work, McEwan is a undoubtedly a genius at what he does. His range of ideas are pretty impressive, and his prose is definitely some of the best I've seen. I can recommend
The Comfort of Strangers and
Saturday.
Ok, so I don't have a number 5 but I think that's a good a list as I can think of off the top of my head. I'll likely go off and do something else now, only to think of a load of other writers who should have been on the list instead of the ones I picked. Oh well.
