Top Five Novelists

[unforth]

Comment with the words "Top Ten" or "Top Five", and I will reply with a subject for which you will generate a top ten (or top five) list. Post the list and instructions in your own journal.


From arcana_mundi; I've put it off because this one is actually kinda hard for me, cause I don't read many novels. So these are my favorites. Which means I have to have read at least one of their books. :)

(In no particular order)

1. Arthur Conan Doyle. How can you wrong with Sherlock Holmes? You can't, that's how.

2. Oscar Wilde. Dorian Gray = one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read.

3. Junichiro Tanizaki. In Praise of Shadows = one of the other most beautifully written books I've ever read. :)

4. Patrick O'Brian. Anyone who can make me read through chapter after chapter about the detailed changing of tack and make it interesting deserves major credit.

5. Patricia C. Wrede. She's not a great novelist. But her books changed my life, so there it is. :)

If this seems like an incredibly strange list...it is. This is because I am actually surprisingly poorly read. I've hardly read any classics at all, and many of the books that are my favorites are in no way what I'd consider the work of excellent novelists. :) So oh well, it is what it is. I'd think of a better 5th, but I really don't have any more time to spend on this.

Comments

[nekomata.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I had to write a huge paper on In Praise Of Shadows.

i'll take some pain . . .

[mistress-sin.livejournal.com]

top 10 me woman! =)

[closetgnome.livejournal.com]

Top five please! :)

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

Instead of asking for five, I'll answer your five, limiting it to living speculative fiction authors, as I find it to be an amusing and immediate diversion.

• Marie Brennan, because I'm sort of contractually obligated to do so, and because she is, in fact, pretty darn nifty.
• Guy Gavriel Kay. Well crafted, beautiful, bittersweet stories in a history that never quite was. How can you go wrong?
• George R. R. Martin. A Song of Ice and Fire is excellent epic fantasy. It's what Robert Jordan once aspired to, in my view, and failed to achieve.
• Stephen King. He was too long dismissed as a "popular" writer. He is, in fact, quite talented. Perhaps the best horror/fantasy novelist out there.
• Ursula Le Guin. Few people have so successfully blended science fiction and social issues with such compelling, simple prose. Plus, she, like swan_tower, is a 'Cliffie.
• Gene Wolfe. He writes some surprisingly dense stuff, but it's inventive, interesting, and alive. I've heard more than one person call him the greatest living American novelist, ignoring the genre boundaries.
• If I were offered a sixth choice, I'd probably go with Tim Powers. Perhaps the best secret history around, he's really keen. Of course, his endings, like Gaiman and Stephenson, are somewhat weak, but the ideas he tosses at you are just phenomenal.

There you go. Heh.

[drake-rocket.livejournal.com]

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