Now I’m retired, I’m going to indulge myself. The Massive has provided playlist enough, as well as movies.
But what about writers?
I like to think I read a lot, but based on the monthly roundups, there’s a lot I’m missing. Right now, my absolute favorite is Peter Temple.
Born South African, he moved to Australia, and no-one has captured Australia better. His piece in “Red Hand” on the fair go, which I think is the quintessential Australian concept, is wonderful.
I mean, how can you not love “Joe Mirvic made many marks on society, all of the kind that grew scar tissue” as an opener? It’s Banksian in its excellence.
His two books Truth and The Broken Shore are classics. Terse, dry, and incredibly evocative in every paragraph – he deserved every award and nomination he got.
I read him every year, and every year I drag out finishing the books because I enjoy them so much. I cannot recommend him enough.
Who do you not want to put down? Who makes the physical act of reading a pleasure?
It’s Stephen King for me. Far and away my favourite writer.
He has a knack of grabbing my attention from the first couple of pages, and then I must keep reading to find out what happens next. That is a sign of a good writer as far as I’m concerned.
Many people (generally those who have never read him, in my experience) pigeon-hole his books as horror, but he has a much broader range than that.
I can’t really pin down a favourite author – like music, it’s very mood dependent.
There are authors that I will generally read most stuff they put out – Iain Banks (non Sci-Fi), Ian McEwan, John O’Farrell and recently Mick Herron.
I like Peter Temple too.
If judged by the ones I’ve reread most often, it’s Raymond Chandler, followed by Evelyn Waugh.
As for the rest, how long have you got? Kurt Vonnegut, Muriel Spark, Philip Pullman, Flann O’Brien, NealStephenson, Geoff Nicholson, Iain Sinclair, Italo Calvino, Len Deighton, Saki, Damon Runyon, Derek Robinson, Michael Frayn, Derek Raymond, Albert Camus, Robert Rankin, Brian Aldiss, Eric Ambler…
Forgot P G Wodehouse.
Leo Tolstoy – no other writer has had me so regularly re-reading entire passages in head shaking bewilderment that a human being could actually produce such things. Opened the door to a slew of other great Russians.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr – the first novelist to truly win my childish heart. Book after book of the truly important things: warmth, humor, humanity and insight.
PG Wodehouse – generous enough to bestow upon us an entire library of the funniest books anyone will ever write. Turned a sentence like no one else. Taught me to love words.
Mark Twain – Vonnegut has heart. Wodehouse has style. Twain has both, and more besides. The only writer I know who simultaneously seems to beam insights from both ends of life’s spectrum.
George Saunders – beautiful, savage short stories that make you want to look away but hold you firm nonetheless. I reckon the masterpiece is yet to come.
They’re the big five, but there are a hundred others I won’t list. Currently burning my way through a load of Joe Abercrombie, which is proving to be vast amounts of fun, like some ungodly combination of Tolkien, Pratchett and King.
Dead: Evelyn Waugh or E.M. Forster.
Living: Ian McEwan
I think it was very wrong that Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel for literature and not McEwan. I’d agree that Ishiguro has written two truly excellent must-reads (Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go) but I wouldn’t recommend any of his other novels; I think they range from mediocre to rubbish. (I just recently watched the 2025 film adaptation of his debut, A Pale View of Hills: every bit as boring and inconsequential as the book). McEwan, on the other hand, has written just the one novel acclaimed as a masterpiece (Atonement) but many of his other novels, while maybe not essential, are very much worth reading (I especially like The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child In Time, Enduring Love, On Chesil Beach and Nutshell).
I don’t read as much as I used to and miss the immersion, but when I want to scratch the itch, it is generally to an unread Ann Tyler I turn to. Sad tales of nobody specials in the flyover states. Lovely evocative writer.
If you enjoy Anne Tyler Retro give the Canadian writer Mary Lawson some time. She has written four novels to date, all well worth reading.
Elizabeth Strout mines a similar vein of small town melancholy. The Burgess Brothers is particularly enjoyable, but all are worth a few hours of your time.
Seconded – I’ve recently read her ‘Olive Kitteridge’. What a fabulous yarn that is.
I read Crow Lake by her last summer, and thought it was outstanding. I have The Other Side Of The Bridge somewhere in my TBR pile
Crow Lake was the first of her four novels I read and I loved it. I’ve read another two since then with the remaining one being The Other Side of the Bridge. I’ll probably get around to that sometime this year.
Where does one start to answer this? Almost as many writers as favourite books. So off the top of my head and I just know I’ll have forgotten someone I’ll be kicking myself for excluding as soon as I post this but here goes. I’ll limit myself to three or I’ll be here all day.
The late great Robertson Davies comes to mind. I read The Deptford Trilogy first. I was dating a young woman from the IOW at the time and I bought the trilogy of books in paperback form from a small bookshop in Ryde. I started in on the first volume on my journey home after a fleeting visit to the island. I was immediately hooked. I went on to devour everything I could find in print.
For contemporary American crime fiction writers they don’t come better than James Lee Burke. I’ve been slowly reading my way through his Dave Robicheaux series of novels for a few years now, limiting myself to no more than a couple a year to eke them out. He writes beautifully and evocatively about people and place without ignoring plot or pace.
Lastly but by no means least I can’t ignore Claire Keegan. How Claire Keegan is able to encompass such well formed and complete worlds of humanity and compassion in such brief novels is for me nothing short of miraculous. I adore her writing and have hoovered up everything in print.
That’s three. Ask again tomorrow and I’d probably name a different trio but these will suffice for now.
The Deptford Trilogy is an absolute masterpiece and everyone should read it. Couldn’t put it down.
Robertson Davies was the first name that sprung to mind for me as well. He has the happy knack of making you feel cleverer than you really are while you’re reading him.
Your description of Robicheaux is bang on. I haven’t read him for a good while – must revisit. I’m not familiar with Davies – will give him a shot.
A great question this one & it has made me reach for my thinking cap.
My immediate reaction to this was either George Orwell or Zadie Smith & I think this is because I have always favoured descriptive writers. & these are fantastic at this.
Orwell is an obvious one, but I think his best writing is outside of the biggies & it is Coming Up For Air or Burmese Days when his wonderful writing really shines. I feel for people who have read The Road To Wigan Pier as an introduction to him & understandably given up. This is the one blot on his copybook for me.
Zadie Smith could rewrite the phone book & I would gorge on it. Her writing is truly excellent in my opinion & every single piece of hers as a line or passage in it that floors me. No one has ever captured London better.
Recently I Have been enjoying the Solvej Balle series On The Calculation Of Volume & this is due to the wonderful writing. I find myself being swept along with the story & this is due to an excellent style that really lands.
A book that is often derided, but i think is staggeringly good is Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. As far as satire goes it is unbeatable & DBC Pierre is someone I have loved since.
I loved Vernon God Little too. I never understood why it got so widely criticised. I’ve never read anything else by DBC Pierre though.
Long read Robertson Davies
Shorter Josef Konrad
I’ll add my three.
Carl Hiaasen. Believably preposterous. Gloriously stupid people getting their come uppance normally at the hands of strong women and laconic men. And very, very funny.
Anthony Horowitz. Probably the most readable writer for me. His boks are effortlessly clever and very readable. The Hawthorne books are brilliantly creative. The Susan Ryeland/Aticus Pund books feel like two great books at a time seamlessly blended. His takes on Bond and Sherlock Holmes are super as well.
Final one for me is Robert Galbraith/J K Rowling. Big old books with lots of plot are key for a mystery book for me. These have that in spades. They also have lead characters that add a longer story arc across the series which reward the serial reader.
Richard Osman is also a great read if I had space to add another. I am very much a popular fiction kind of guy.
John Steinbeck, John Irving and David Lodge. I have pretty much stopped reading fiction but these 3 have been around most of my reading life.
And Dickens
Ah, John Irving – the Van Morrison of literature: a genius who should have stopped twenty (possibly more?) years ago
You may be right …. this time.
I wish he didn’t always seem to write 600 page books as it is a bit overwhelming to think about wading through that much and then finding out it’s pretty average at the end.
Thinking carefully about this question, Charles Dickens is my answer.
My favourite books are To Kill A Mocking Bird, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Crime And Punishment, Catch 22 and David Copperfield. Harper Lee had a second book published when she was 88 but it is only an early draft for Mocking Bird. Dostoyevsky has done other great work but is hard going. Joseph Heller, likewise, has other books worth reading but not repeatedly (I can read Catch 22 over and over and still laugh). I enjoy Lewis Carroll’s poems and Looking Glass but nothing matches Wonderland. Dickens, on the other hand, has so many superb books,, I often change my mind which is best.
Does everyone stop reading fiction? I have. Not enough time to read made up stuff.
I run a (very) rough rhythm of fiction/factual – usually history/music. Often they overlap. I like the contrast.
Absolutely not. I read far more fiction and poetry than non-fiction.
Ditto.
I read a bit of fiction and I read Private Eye and that’s about it, these days.
I seem to have given up on biography/autobiography and political/social stuff just annoys me except in short Eye-size snippets. I have examples of both in my unread pile gathering metaphorical dust and they don’t look like shifting from there.
Loads, a few of which have been mentioned but a couple of non fiction writers whose books I mostly really enjoy and read more than once are Bill Bryson and Harry Pearson.
If we are talking fiction, then Ian McEwan, Sebastian Faulks, Pat Barker, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, Albert Camus, John Fowles, Patrick Hamilton, William Trevor, George Orwell, Susan Hill, Georges Simenon…..
Definitely Susan Hill, and the recently renowned Hamnet hitmaker, Maggie O’Farrell, for deft, intimate, emotionally literate portraits.
Someone you don’t hear referred to often is Alexander Barron. His The Lowlife (1963) is fairly slight, the tale of an inveterate East End gambler who can’t escape his environment. Historical novel King Dido (1969) set in the east London slums of 1911 is a tremendously inventive and immersive read, the story of someone inadvertently made boss of his manor, who can’t escape his inevitable fate. From the City from the Plough (1948) is considered his masterpiece, a relentlessly bleak tale of the build-up and aftermath of the D-Day landings. There are loads more but I’ve not read them yet.
I started out on science fiction then I hit the harder stuff. John Wyndham and Arthur C. Clarke as a teenager. A bit of Ian Fleming Bond. Among the most vivid, gripping novels I have read. Then down darker roads with Samuel Beckett and Kafka among others. Patricia Highsmith, the most page turnery books I’ve come across. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Julian Barnes. Haruki Murakami. David Michell, as in Cloud Atlas, though the recent one about a rock band was less impressive. William Boyd. Orwell, 1984 is really something. John Updike, a lorra lorra sex but a real prose artist. I think he’s out of favour now. Don Delillo, White Noise and Underworld, really mind blowing.
Off the top of my head authors whose books I buy as soon as they come out and I’m not usually disappointed.
Ian Rankin
Val McDermid
Doug Johnstone
Mark Billingham
Stuart Macbride
Sam Holland
Clare Mackintosh
Paul Charles
Jane Casey
M W Craven
Nadine Matheson
S A Crosby
Don Winslow
As you can see all crime fiction and all great reads.
Rather than repeat suggestions already made – many of whom would be in my list – here are a few, maybe lesser known writers worth exploring :
John Lawton – his Inspector Troy novels are tremendous and his Joe Wilderness books are nearly as good.
Edward Wilson – an excellent spy writer. Try ‘The Envoy’.
Sally Smith – her Gabriel Ward novels, about a KC living in the Inner Temple in London.
Elizabeth Jane Howard – her five volume Cazalet Chronicles is tremendous.
Dominic Nolan – All his books are worth reading, particularly ‘Vine Street’ and ‘White City’.
Dominic Nolan is brilliant.
He won the Booker last year but if you like that particular strain of male melancholy, rendered in absolutely brilliantly textured and controlled prose, David Szalay. ‘Flesh’ was the latest, but my heart is in ‘London and the South East’, the surprisingly gripping tale of a pissed ad salesman.
He’s in the broad lineage of some other writers Ive always been drawn to, Patrick Hamilton, Orwell, Isherwood – who plunge emotional depths with precision and without sentimentality.
Thumbs up for Patrick Hamilton. Great writer.
Ray Bradbury for me. Many anthologies of short stories to work through, and Fahrenheit 451 may be my favourite novel.
Contemporary – Francis Spufford. Very inventive, and has a new one out this week which I’ll be getting at the weekend.
That new Francis Spufford book is very very good, maybe Book Of The Year good.
I bought a copy yesterday. It’s probably going to be my next read unless my attention gets hijacked.
Great question … but how to answer properly? Impossible really, but here’s a few that have flipped my plastic Beatle wig …
Ian McEwan … from reading The Comfort of Strangers, scared stiff in a cold and draughty share house in Surrey Hills, Melbourne in 1982, to loving What We Can Know just last year. Loved all his others pretty much without exception … but Lessons from 2022 maybe my favourite.
Paul Auster … from Timbuktu and The Brooklyn Follies, to Report From The Interior and his very last, Baumgartner. But I think the masterpiece is 4321. A book to lose yourself in.
Anne Patchett … I’m late on the scene, but have made up for lost time. Began with The Doll House and went straight to Commonwealth, State Of Wonder, Bel Canto and The Magician’s Assistant. Enjoyed Tom Lake.
Helen Garner … Melbourne’s own. Monkey Grip to Mushrooms. One of the greats.
Sofie Laguna … especially The Choke and Infinite Splendours.
Jonathan Franzen. Crossroads is a must read … and apparently there will be a sequel. And he loves The Grateful Dead, The 5th Dimension and The Clash!
Amor Towles, P G Wodehouse, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout, Tony Birch
Too many … time for bed … though may not be able to sleep. Just home from seeing Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at The Forum, Melbourne. Talk about high art! Breathtaking.
If you liked Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads, might I suggest The Corrections. Fantastic.
A few writers I enjoy.
John LeCarre,
Richard Ford (especially the Frank Bascombe books),
Don Diliio,
Hillary Mantel (Beyond Black, very funny),
Richard Flannigan
Max Porter.
I really enjoy Jonathan Coe. I think it takes real skill to combine emotional depth with readability. Kate Atkinson as well.
For a nice easy read, kind of like Enid Blyton for adults, I have enjoyed all of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series – daft but enjoyable.
I have loved the first two novels by Nathan Hill – The Nix is strongly, strongly recommended. One of my favourite ever reads.
Ian McEwan rarely disappoints.
And I absolutely loved John Updike’s Rabbit series. Brilliant and era-defining.
I also really like Philip Roth, especially American Pastoral and The Plot Against America.
Finally, and possibly the best of the lot, The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon and This Thing )Of Darkness by Harry Thompson. Both just wonderful reads.
I’m aware that I drifted away from the OP there, but hey.
Authors as opposed to individual books (for example I must have read Les Grandes Meulnes/Lost Domain at many many times but it’s his only novel, as is the crime masterpiece Bill Beverly’s Dodgers).
JG Ballard – one of the those writers whose style and subjects are so singular they’ve become pervasive cliches.
Iain M Banks – I can increasingly take or leave the mainstream fiction, but the sci-fi is always a stupendous read.
Richard Ford – (see my post on my dad) – Frank Baskin certainly spoke to him, and Ford’s analysis of small-town, middle-aged, middle-class American life is unsurpassed in its compassion and wit. Now increasingly feels – the nineties – a vanished utopia.
Don Delillo – chilly, intellectual but always with a savage irony. Start with Great Jones Street, about a fictionalised Dylan/Lennon figure holed up in a Manhattan coldwater walk-up.
Philip K Dick – not every novel is 5 stars, but if you’ve written say twenty that are that’s enough.
Elizabeth Strout – my newest favourite author. I read ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ thinking ‘how can someone write sentences this good’. I have the two Olive Kitteridges to go for the complete set.
Others almost at the top of the list: Douglas Coupland (with Ford another analyst of 90s America, but his work has tailed off since the early noughties); John Le Carre; Patrick O’Brien, Muriel Spark, Murakami, Wodehouse etc. etc.
Patrick Hamilton. The canon is slim but intense. Novels filled with hopes quashed and loves unrequited. You need to be ready for that.
PG Wodehouse. 93 standalone novels plus an almost infinite numbers of shorts and collections. All are wonderful however for me it’s the first person narration of Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves novels that stands head and s. above. He’s a gilded, moneyed Edwardian toff with not a responsibility in this world so you would assume he would be a pain and we should enjoy his social disasters as comeuppances. Not a bit of it. Wodehouse makes him a very obvious kind and warm good egg with a peerless drollery. These are the ones for me.
William Boyd. ‘The New Confessions’ and ‘Any Human Heart’
Roberstson Davies. Read them all and start again.
Len Deighton both fiction and history. ‘Blood, Tears and Folly’ which is his telling of the key events and personalities of World War Two is a page turner. He makes no bones of the folly of the general commands of the Allied and Axis powers alike.
Absolutely, Patrick Hamilton. Lesser-known originator of the term ‘gaslighting’.
The Slaves of Solitude is one of my favourites – the audiobook is well worth seeking out.
The Jeeves stories are unbeatable too.
I’ve got favourite writers for specific books, but not for everything they’ve written, if that makes sense.
So, I love Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian more than any of his other novels, just as F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby casts a huge shadow over everything else he wrote.
I think Kazo Ishiguro may have peaked with Never Let Me Go, though I also rate When We Were Orphans and, especially, The Unconsoled (which is a work of genius, IMHO).
Ian McEwan is consistently reliable, and I really enjoyed Lessons, but my favourite book of his will always be The Cement Garden.
My default answer used to be Tom Sharpe, but as I don’t think I’ve read one of his books for 20+ years, I’m not sure it’s still a valid choice.
Not a big fiction reader (once every couple of years, if I’m honest).
Dominic Sandbrook and Stuart Maconie would probably be my 2 most read writers of non-fiction
I was meant to include Stuart Maconie in my list too!
As a writer he is incredibly readable due to a great style & no matter the subject it is always engaging. I have a sneaky suspicion he is a bit of a helmet, but as a writer he is superb.
I would also say Nige Tassell is similar in his style too, I have read all of his books & enjoyed the C86 kids (a subject i am very interested in) as much as i did Final Destination, his book about our rail network (something i have no interest in). His writing made both very enjoyable & I am praying he does a book about Half Man Half Biscuit at some point, a subject I feel is close to his heart.
I have not done any Domninc Sandbrook so will remedy this in 2026
Another vote for Ian McEwan. I’ve recently read Lessons which is a real return to form after one or two iffy numbers. Cockroach for one.
Dr Seuss
“A good children’s book is a good adult’s book”
Without producing a long list probably John le Carré and William Boyd. Dominic Sandbrook for modern history. I just finished a Tom Clancy – not a favourite but I’ve read most of his.
I see Dominic Sandbrook mentioned a couple of times just above. My current reading is a doorstep of his called The Great British Dream Factory, which I picked up from a charity shop because I like The Rest is History. To be honest, I’m finding it short on ideas and long on stringing bunches of stuff together. It’s stuff I’m interested in, so I’ll persevere.
Anyway … the main reason I’m commenting is that I’ve just got my reading mojo back due to soft furnishings. Since moving to our house The Light and I have shared a sofa facing towards the TV, quite a snug one to fit the space too (and neither of us is a sylph). Last Friday a new chair was delivered, and very comfortable recliner. No longer face on to her choice of viewing (Silent Witness and true crime reconstructions form 90% of it) it’s much easier to get lost in a book again.
Willy Vlautin – best living American author (that I have read)
Elmore Leonard – the master of crime
William Boyd
Jonathan Coe
Graham Greene
Paul Theroux (novels and travelogues)
Bill Bryson – genuinely funny
Paul Auster
S A Cosby
I enjoyed Vlautin’s The Horse.
Oh yes! Willy Vlautin … and he has a new one coming. About a house painter.
Anna Funder
Of the classic writers, Dickens is the one for me. At his best ( and even his weaker novels have passages of him at his best) there’s no one to touch him. As an example, I can think of no better novel showing how unscrupulous self-serving political leaders can manipulate ordinary people into mob violence and hatred against others (sound familiar?) than Barnaby Rudge, a historic novel set at the time of the Gordon riots of 1780.
Contemporary novelists whose new books I will always seek out include Sebastian Barry, Sarah Hall, Richard Powers ( his most recent, Playground, is a brilliantly clever novel about AI – one of those books whose ending upends everything you’ve read so far, making you want to go right back to the beginning and start again) and Andrew Miller whose every novel is very different, but always great.
Philip Pullman. His Dark Materials is a classic, but all the others, including the young adult novels, are highly readable.
Also, I always enjoy anything by William Boyd, Ian McEwen and Lionel Shriver.
James Lee Burke – his Dave Robicheaux series is for the most part excellent as are his novels about various generations of the Holland family.
He plots well and evokes a wonderful sense of place (Louisiana for most of the Robicheaux novels and Texas for the Hollands). The music of the south is a thread that weaves through many of his books too.
However there is a metaphysical dimension to his novels. For the most part understated, though it comes to the fore in In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead and even more so in the most recent A Private Cathedral. I have to say that latter book was difficult to enjoy as was the standalone Every Cloak Rolled In Blood.
That last one was very much a lament for one of his daughters who had died young.
I’m being too negative though. There are many great novels in his oeuvre and he’s one of the greats of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.
When we had a driving holiday in the Deep South I found myself going for Oyster Po’Boy sandwiches, Red Beans and Rice and all sorts of other food and drink, influenced by JLB.
I have reflected on the word ‘favourite’ and like with music (see Stars) take it to read ‘an artist you love slightly more then their reputation would perhaps warrant’.
On that basis can I add Sara Paretsky, author of the VI Warshawski series of private eye thrillers set in Chicago. It’s a total comfort read each time – as essentially she writes the same novel again and again.
Perm: Mr Contreras fretting, Lotty’s clinic linked to some kind of hot water, download of kompromat with Murray at the Golden Glow, scene when she reflects being a Private Eye at her spartan office, some kind of flirting/sex with an attractive man linked to the conspiracy in some way – darn it! Break-in at Vic’s apartment as she gets on the trail, running with Peppy the dog and possibly a dip in the lake, some cooking etc. It’s completely formulaic but utterly irresistible, to me anyway.
In my early 20s I obsessively devoured anything by Philip K. Dick, until I met up with an acquaintance’s girlfriend who was even more obsessed than me and a serious depressive. It put me off him a bit. Not so long ago I discovered a good selection of his short pulp magazine fiction online. It’s of it’s time but that is part of it’s charm. Still very readable.
Raymond Chandler, of course.
Kurt Vonnegut, naturally.
Len Deighton and John LeCarré. Deighton being the better writer IMO.
Iain Banks, both his “straight” fiction and his sci-fi with the added M, mid-name.
Terry Pratchett, of course.
Jo Nesbo. Particularly the early books translated by Don Bartlett.
James Ellroy.
Douglas Adams.
Carl Hiaasen.
Philip Kerr.
Neil Gaiman, until recent revelations.
Ian Rankin.
Chris Brookmyre. Also the Ambrose Parry books, written with his wife Marisa Haetzman.
Martin Cruz Smith. Particularly his Arkady Renko crime series. Quite a few others too.
J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith, though her sexual politics and her doubling down on it is troubling.
Jane Harper.
Michael Chabon. “The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay”. Also “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”. A couple of others not so much.
Elmore Leonard.
Mick Herron.
Laurence Sterne.
Charles Dickens.
Alan Bennett.
Joseph Conrad.
Stuart Cosgrove.
Robertson Davies.
Dorothy L. Sayers.
Geoff Dyer. “But Beautiful” particularly.
William Gibson.
Deke Leonard. “Winos, Rhinos And Lunatics” and particularly “Maybe I Should Have Stayed In Bed”.
George Orwell.
Philip Pullman.
Probably a few I’ve forgotten. Ho hum ..
Interesting the number of endorsements for Ian Rankin. I have found his last few awful. They are more like scripts than books.
Haven’t read anything very recent of Rankin’s.
Come to think of it, that’s true of quite a few writers in my list.
Not heard of him …. Should have as it was my dad’s name.
Alan Garner and my niece, but that’s because she’s my niece, obvs.
ok … last addition I promise …
John Niven! read and loved his 33 1/3 offering Music From Big Pink (apparently Robbie Robertson read it and said (something like) ‘that guy must have been in the room’. I heard him interviewed on a couple of great podcasts, Is It Rolling Bob? and Rock’s Back Pages. Extremely entertaining. Really enjoyed his 2023 memoir O Brother and laughed and cried through his latest, Fathers. Wonderful.
Irvine Welsh
Even the mad accents don’t get in the way 😉
Well, that’s uncanny as I have been thinking of just this topic for a few days now as I have strolled into work. On any given day I can reel off a list of favourite books, categorised by genre, era, even length. But author is harder. I’ve been on several reading jags over the years, devouring swathes of the works of authors such as John Irving, George Pelecanos, Elmore Leonard, Sebastian Barry, Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Short. And at various times I could quite easily have named one of these as my favourite.
Yet I’ve come to realise that the one writer I’ve returned to again and again since my early teens is Stephen King. It’s weird because I can’t say that I’d list any of his books amongst my top 10, 20 or maybe even 30 favourite books, yet he is my favourite writer.
I think as a teen I came for the horror, but I’ve stayed for the rest: The storytelling that hooks you in from the first few lines. The easy, warm writing style. The characters he creates, whether hero or villain. The sugar rush of easter eggs in which characters from other books put in appearances. The cliffhangers that leave you wanting to read just one more chapter. And the way he evokes childhood and friendship. Perhaps especially the way he evokes childhood and friendship. It’s got to be 40 years since I read Christine, yet the way King evokes the friendship between Dennis and Arnie was so vivid, so vital, it feels as though I knew them both.
Travel writers:
Eric Newby
Dervla Murphy
Patrick Leigh Fermor
I’d add Norman Lewis to your list duco.
Of course – “Naples ’44” – brilliant!
I always return to Philip Larkin. Both his poetry and his literary criticism.
His novels aren’t bad either, particularly A Girl in Winter.
Primo Levi. His books on Auschwitz are what he’s remembered for, and rightly so, but I love all his books. I have the beautiful Abacus paperback editions that came out around the late 80s. I recall our very own @mikethep mentioning at some point that he was involved in putting them out. If that’s the case, he should take a bow.
J.D. Salinger’s Glass family stories.
Muriel Spark
Clive James. He’s a terrible show off, and I simply can’t believe that anyone alive has read all the books he seems to say he has, but to be honest I’m quite fond of show-offs. Sometimes it’s good just to get lost in someone’s prose.
Georges Simenon. I’ve read all the Maigret! *shows off badge*
Agatha Christie. Yes, I know, some of the reveals can have you howling in rage, but the old broad really knew how to plot. “I was just thinking of how Charles reminds me of Mr Hodges the newsagent, he was never sure about things” says Mrs Marple, and you just keep turning the pages.
PG Wodehouse
Eric Ambler
Arturo Perez-Reverte
Kingsley Amis
Bow duly taken. 🤛
I’ve always forgiven Clive James for his showing off, because so much of what he wrote was so brilliant.
Nothing to scare the horses here…
JRR Tolkien
PG Wodehouse
John Le Carré
Arthur Conan Doyle
Antony Beevor
Georges Simenon
Jules Verne
…and another vote for Deke Leonard, for both true to life and laugh out loud moments…
“Maybe I Should’ve Stayed In Bed?” is an instructive read for aspiring rock musicians.
Was that by Tolkien or Le Carre ?
It’s impossible to pick out any particular names now, but if I’d answered this 40 years ago, one of my answers would certainly have been an author who seems strangely forgotten now, and that’s John Fowles. I found both The French Lieutenant’s Woman and The Magus to be absolutely captivating. I’m a bit scared to try and re-read them now, in case they’re not!