OSC Help Desk - Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Who are your favorite authors and what are your favorite books?
Answer:
Impossible to list all the authors that have written books that matter greatly to me.
But let me list a few that were important to me prior to beginning my writing
career:
Sci-fi
- Heinlein
- Norton
- Asimov
- Clarke
- Bradbury
- LeGuin
- Ellison
- Blish
Fantasy
- Tolkien
- Lewis
- George Macdonald
- Mary Stewart (the Merlin books)
- T.H. White
Children's
- E.B.White
- Lawson (Rabbit Hill)
- Altsheler (Civil War and French&Indian War novels)
Historical
- Elswyth Thane (Williamsburg novels)
- Mitchell
- Nordhoff & Hall (Bounty trilogy)
- Forrester (Hornblower)
- Taylor Caldwell
- Wallace (Ben-Hur)
Mystery
- Christie
- Wolfe
- du Maurier
- Ross MacDonald
Mainstream
- Joseph Smith (Book of Mormon)
- Shakespeare (the plays)
- Twain (Prince & the Pauper, Tom Sawyer)
- Austen
- Douglas (The Robe; Forgive Us Our Trespasses)
- Albee (Virginia Woolf)
- William Goldman (Boys & Girls Together)
- Rand (Fountainhead)
- Wilde (Ernest)
- James Goldman (A Lion in Winter)
- Arthur Miller (All My Sons; Crucible)
- O'Neill
- Michener (Source; Tales of the South Pacific)
Nonfiction
- Shirer (Rise & Fall of the Third Reich)
- Plato
- Bruce Catton (Army of the Potomac)
- William Manchester
Poetry
- Hopkins
- Dickinson
- Cummings
- Shakespeare
- Halleck
- Jonson
- Tennyson
- Yeats
- Auden
All these represent readings prior to my beginning to write seriously, and this list
is by no means complete, especially in the nonfiction area, where I was rarely
aware of authors and simply absorbed information.
Authors now working whose works I look forward to and buy instantly are:
- Dave Wolverton / David Farland
- Robin Hobb / Megan Lindholm
- Robert Parker
- Sue Grafton
- Sharyn McCrumb
- Lisa Goldstein
- Octavia Butler
- George R.R. Martin
- Walter Mosley
- Robert Caro
- Stephen Pinker
- Lehane
- Burke
- Crais
- McBain
- Connelly
- Block
- Cormier
- Sleator
Again, this is far from exhausting the list.
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