OT - what's your favorite fiction novel or author?

Hans61

Haven't read a good book in a while, and was thinking, I value so much of the forum members opinions on such an array of topics, I'd see what people thought?

Generally, I like good satire or humor. Christopher Moore is probably my current favorite author, with "Lamb" being my favorite of his books, though he has many. I also have read most of Kurt Vonnegut's novels along with a bunch of his short stories too. "A confederacy of dunces" is also up there.

I also really like Dan Brown novels. Any recommendations? 

Ozzie_Isaac

Peter F. Hamilton - His Commonwealth Saga, it is where my screen name comes from.

bgebrent

Hemingway hands down if you want to be transported into the story.  Any of them. Short story: A Clean Well Lighted Place.

Ozzie_Isaac

bgebrent said:

Hemingway hands down if you want to be transported into the story.  Any of them. Short story: A Clean Well Lighted Place.

I love Hemmingway.  Snows of Kilimanjaro, may be cliche, but I really liked it. 

RedSkip

Grisham 

JohnInCarolina

Scott Turow

Richard Russo

Michael Lewis

SaintJohnsEgger

Craig Johnson is my favorite author. I love his Longmire series and have read all of his books.

JustineCaseyFeldown

Nerd alert. james joyce (Ulysses), yearly or so

vonnegut is the focus of my current jag

Beckett may be a good choice to teturn to given the current environment. Been awhile. Waiting for Godot is a lot funnier than it is given credit for.

non fiction too.

david foster wallace's essays are pretty funny, with some gravity to them. The collection "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" is a riff on the capital A American psyche

fakewiig

Greg Iles

Botch

Satire/humor doesn't usually work for me on the "novel" level, it needs to be an article or at the very least, a short story.  
If I had to pick one though, it'd be Lewis Grizzard.  
 
For non-humorous, give me Tolkein or Arthur C. Clarke.  

Ozzie_Isaac

Botch said:

Satire/humor doesn't usually work for me on the "novel" level, it needs to be an article or at the very least, a short story.  
If I had to pick one though, it'd be Lewis Grizzard.  
 
For non-humorous, give me Tolkein or Arthur C. Clarke.  

One of my favorite satirical novels is:
Thomas Sharpe: Riotus Assembly
It opened my eyes to good Satire.

Little Steven

JustineCaseyFeldown said:

Nerd alert. james joyce (Ulysses), yearly or so

vonnegut is the focus of my current jag

Beckett may be a good choice to teturn to given the current environment. Been awhile. Waiting for Godot is a lot funnier than it is given credit for.

non fiction too.

david foster wallace's essays are pretty funny, with some gravity to them. The collection "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" is a riff on the capital A American psyche

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

James Joyce
 

johnnyp

Steinbeck is probably my favorite American author.

If you're looking for something a little different, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card or The Road by Cormac McCarthy were recent reads that I was pleased with.

JustineCaseyFeldown

Little Steven said:

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

James Joyce
 

That was Bloom who said it, technically
 Otherwise we could say:

'My hole is itching me' -James Joyce

Acn

John's Russo recommendation is on point.  If we're throwing out great American authors, then Fitzgerald is clearly the way to go - don't know what these other guys are saying.  

If you're looking for humor and you haven't read them yet, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams should be next on your list.

Walter Moers is another author you may want to check out - The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear is great.

High Fidelity is one of my favorite books, and I always find it funny, but if you weren't a music nerd when you first read it (and see yourself a little too much in the main character), I suppose your mileage may vary.

Ed Tarkington's Only Love Can Break Your Heart was one of the better books I've read this year, I'd recommend that as well.

For nonfiction, I've enjoyed the recent memoirs of Jacques Pepin and Erik Ripert.  I got through Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips bio too, but that really only grabbed me for a couple hundred pages in the middle.  His Sweet Soul Music is significantly better IMHO.

Little Steven

Wasn't Bloom fictional and therefore technically not quotable. Does nobody understand?

fishlessman

angling in the smile of the great spirit by dr harold lyons   used to read tons of books but the last 20 years its just the fishing ones i like to read. not so much the how to books, more on the lore.

Rascal

James Lee Burke

GATraveller

Louis L'Amour has always been one of my favorites.....The Sackett series.  Also love Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.  
Bill Bryson has some incredibly funny books - A Walk in the Woods or In A Sunburnt Country.
I could read Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men every week and never grow tired.

Legume

Anything by Carl Hiassen is usually pretty good. Humorous, quirky, interesting characters, funny stories.  Excellent airplane books.

Elmore Leonard is another author you can just sit down and dive into.  Good characters, good stories.  

You're not going to feel smarter for reading them, but they're both pretty prolific and consistently entertaining.

+1 on Vonnegut as well.  

PiratePig

Lee Child...his Jack Reacher series is total mental candy and you will love every book (well, except for Echo Burning, that one sucked).  

If you grew up in the 80's you have to read "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline.  Spielberg making the movie that comes out next year...great great book.

Non-Fiction...Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferris and Malcom Gladwell

JustineCaseyFeldown

fishlessman said:

angling in the smile of the great spirit by dr harold lyons

the kids diving off the dock at the marina to make noise to attract bass, and then catching some six pound lunker...  i tried it, but they thought i was drowning

avibug

Philip Roth.  American Pastoral is great.  Also, Plot Against America and Human Stain.    

fishlessman

i would go read the old man and the sea again but catholic school ruined a perfectly great book

JRWhitee

Grisham.

JustineCaseyFeldown

Little Steven said:

Wasn't Bloom fictional and therefore technically not quotable. Does nobody understand?

Not how it works. Maybe it is a Canadian thing though.

...nice bit at the end.  why do you know that ("does nobody understand?")

Chief9

Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, both great reads

InfectedDAS

Good reads, different themes, genres and styles:

-William Gibson - Sprawl Trilogy
-Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of a Death Foretold
-Patrick Süskind - Perfume or The Pigeon

Little Steven

JustineCaseyFeldown said:

show previous quotes

Little Steven said:

Wasn't Bloom fictional and therefore technically not quotable. Does nobody understand?

Not how it works. Maybe it is a Canadian thing though.

...nice bit at the end.  why do you know that ("does nobody understand?")

Sort of the same way as I know that people don't understand as much as they know or something like that 

DuckDogDr

Michael Crichton 

hoosier_egger

I can't read