Walt Whitman. I know he’s required reading for any basic English class, but he just a’int as respected as he should be.
douglas adams. especially last chance to see.
clive barker. weaveworld and imajica
totally agree with john irving and tom robbins. also neal stevenson, carl hiassen and elmore leonard.
also sharyn mccrumb’s appalchian mysteries, and * bimbos of the death sun* and zombies of the gene pool.
I thought Dead Souls was about the conditions of the peasants in tsarist Russia. Doesn’t strike me as a very humorous subject.
Neil Gaiman
Terry Pratchett
Robert Anton Wilson, start with the Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children. Indian superheroes. If you liked the movie Unbreakable, you’ll love this book. If you didn’t like Unbreakable, read this book and find out why you should’ve.
Big fat second for James Morrow and Tim Powers.
George MacDonald Frasier. Most famous for his Flashman books, but I think his best work was The Pyrates. Hilarious.
Jonathan Lethem: Gun, with Occasional Music. Animal Farm meets Brave New World meets The Maltese Falcon. Genius.
Ooh, I forgot Nick Hornsby (High Fidelity) and Umberto Eco (In the Name of the Rose, How to Travel with a Salmon.)
Robert Anson Heinlein:
Just so much to gain from him. Great storytelling, interesting philosophy, and very multi-level plots. He influences fiction to this day.
Ray Bradbury:
He turned me on to science fiction and advanced reading in general. Someone of any age can gain from his works, be they the prophecy of Fahrenheit 451 or the near-dreamlike SF-Fantasy Martian Chronicles.
Isaac Asimov:
The author of the first hard SF I ever read. The man is phenomenal in general, with an absolutely huge output, all of a very high quality. His hardheaded fiction, laced with actual science and realistic people, really shaped my conception of SF.
Arthur C. Clarke:
2001 was a revelation for me: Hard SF with the dreamlike qualities of Bradbury’s works. The 2001 series was also the first series of novels I’d ever read, and the epic qualities made a strong impression.
I love authors beyond these, and I would recommend more to those who showed interests in those directions, but the above authors are the people I think anyone could enjoy reading.
Tim Sandlin. Why this guy is unknown is beyond me. If you’ve read Annie Proulx’s “At Close Range”, you shoud read Sandlin to see the other side of Wyoming.
Joe Lansdale – his Hap and Leonard buddy-type action stories, as well as his horror
I’ve bought extra copies of these books so I could give them to people:
More Than Human and A Touch of Strange by Theodore Sturgeon
The Dollmaker by Harriett Simpson Arnow
Heart of the Country by Greg Matthews
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout
Alan Furst, who writes great little novels about spies before and during World War Two.
Dorothy Dunnett. I’ve got a lending set of all her books. Unfortunately I havne’t managed to convince many people it is worth persevering with.
Sharyn McCrumb.
This is the ONLY book I recommend to others with a buy back guarantee: you buy the paperback, read it all the way through, and you don’t like it, I’ll buy the book from you. I’ve done this three times and I haven’t bought a copy yet.
Rohinton Mistry
A Fine Balance–the most important piece of fiction I’ve read, based in 1970’s India. The characters sustain impossible hope in the face of horrible conditions.
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections–see what all the buzz is about. This guy can write you a tornado. And the book has a talking turd.
Philip Roth
Operation Shylock, American Pastoral, and probably most of his other books–a fabulous, very imaginative writer who continues to be nominator for and win awards year after year.
Also, The Poisonwood Bible, One Hundred Years of Solitude… I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton of other great writers.
I like many of the authors mentioned.
One book I always recommend to absolutely everyone is Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One.
Another author I enjoy is Roddy Doyle: **The Committments,**The Snapper, Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, A Star Called Henry.
I also have liked Alice Hoffman’s books. All three of these authors are natural storytellers.
This is Miss Mapp’s answer, but
E. F. Benson
I once started Niccolo Rising but gave up after about 100 pages. Not only was it a mildly tough read, I couldn’t get a grasp on who the main character was supposed to be (which irritated me) and the complexity of the names got confusing. However, since I’ve had several people who’ve read the series say much the same thing as you did, I think I’ll try again and stick with it this time.
This makes me realize that I am some sort of rabid book pusher. I “book talk” all the time, it’s probably only a short time before I start going door to door, bothering people on weekends, asking them if they’ve read Gaudy Night or The Three Musketeers.
Hardygrrl, I loved Secret History. When is she going to come out with something else? I might stop book talking Secret History out of spite.
Caprese,, have you read any Robert McLiam Wilson? He’s a Northern Irish writer who reminds me a little of Roddy Doyle. I push Wilson’s Eureka Street on unsuspecting persons all the time.
Primaflora, I also recommend Dunnett all the time, but usually only to people who express an interest in historical fiction. I’ve had a high success rate getting fans of the Outlander series to try the Lymond series. I’ve also found that fans of Elswyth Thane, although her books are about American history, often like Dunnett’s work because it has a similar blend of rather intense history and romance.
To get people hooked on Thane, I often target people who like Gone with the Wind, so it’s a never-ending chain. The secret to good book pushing is to know which books are gateway drugs ;).
I recently “discovered” Solzhenitsyn. Wow, this guy can tell a story. One of those writers who many people have heard of but many have never read.
For younger friends who don’t read a lot I try to recommend classic authors like Hemmingway or Steinbeck who are easy reads.
Terry Pratchett
Clive Barker
I’m not a huge fan of poetry, but James Merrill is incredible, to say the least.