Doh! Add Nabokov to my list too.
China Miéville. Amazing ideas and a virtuoso with language. Plus he’s hot enough to make your eyes water.
Gene Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy would probably be my favourites. Read just about everything they’ve written.
Wolfe in particular is a special writer for me because I started reading him when I was young, so have grown up reading him. He’s written some bona fide masterpiece novels, but it’s probably his short stories that are the most impressive, particularly in recent years. He’s an absolute master of short fiction.
Larry Niven - I love most of his early stuff; after 1990 or so he became hit or miss for me
Anne Tyler - I love almost all of her books
In no particular order:
Stephen King
J.R.R. Tolkien
Dashiell Hammett
Umberto Eco
Arturo Perez-Reverte
Nick Hornby
John Irving
Raymond Chandler
John Steinbeck and Anne Tyler.
Edith Wharton and Sheri Tepper.
I don’t know that I have a favorite. Like with music, where I like songs rather than bands/singers, I like particular books but not usually particular authors.
I like some of SM Stirling, some of John Ringo’s stuff, some of Walter Jon Williams’ work, but not all of any of theirs.
I love Heinlein’s juveniles and some of his other, older books, but didn’t care for his later work.
I like reading the action thrillers of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor and Lee Child, but I wouldn’t call them my favorites…just bubblegum.
I love a lot of Dean Koontz’s early novels, but not his later ones.
I don’t much care for what’s considered mainstream “literature,” so I don’t follow the big names in that.
Sorry, but I can’t remember either. I do remember that the comedic subplot ran through the whole book and he finally printed his list on the last page, but that’s about it.
I do remember that he and all his buddies agreed that absolutely no Beetle’s tunes were to be included.
I also remember that the book started out with a very nasty argument between him and some lawyers that I thought was about some criminal case, but turned out to be about whether some song should be included. 
Robert Crais
C.J. Sansom
Elizabeth George
Kathy Reichs
John Sanford
Denise Mina
Terry Pratchett
Patrick O’Brien
Christine McCullough
C.S. Forester
Robert Graves
Also, all his early books were great, but after he got married they weren’t as good.
James Lee Burke
Nick Hornby
Ernest Hemingway
Jonathan Carroll
Bill Bryson
Dave Eggers
John Steinbeck
George Orwell
Phillip Roth
Dashiell Hammett
John Fowles
I would eagerly read a new book by any of them. There have been others at various times but most I eventually lost interest in. I have read several works by some of the writers mentioned in this thread but would not pay any attention to a new release.
I might have to buy whatever book you’re talking about just because of this. Because I’m sick and tired of the adoration of The Beatles. I mean, a Beatles addition for Rock Band? It’s 2009, half of those guys are worm food, time to move on. And don’t even get me started on Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums Of All Time”.
Lorrie Moore
Anthony Bourdain
Chretien de Troyes
(I’m pretty eclectic…)
A little Googling and I found that the book is Broken Prey, and here is the list. Apparently it’s the “Best 100 Songs of the Rock Era”, presumably to avoid debate over whether any particular song is actually a rock song. And some clearly aren’t.
Looking at the list now, it is better than I thought it was at the time. The best rock song of all time is on it. For those of you who didn’t get the memo – it is Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who. If I were to make my own list, probably a good 50% of these would be on it.
Valerie Martin, author of the brilliant A Recent Martyr, the less brilliant but still incredible The Great Divorce, the awesome and terrifying Property, and the horribly slandered Mary Reilly.
I don’t consider Tolkien my favorite novelist become neither Lord of the Rings nor The Silmarillion is a novel, and while The Hobbitis, it is not atour de force in the league of the other two.
I thought we agreed that you’d never mention that book again. You promised.
T.C. Boyle and Neal Stephenson are about the only authors that I will automatically spring for the hard-cover of their latest novels.
Don DeLillo is another favorite, but I generally consult reviews before wading in there. I skipped Cosmopolis because it was so widely panned. He often seems to care not one whit if his reader’s can follow his books. I always feel like I need a Reader’s Guide written by a university professor whenever I read him.
I’m slowly working my way through Philip Roth’s work. Got a long way to go there.
The first name that popped into my head was Salman Rushdie, so I’ll go with that. I don’t love all his books equally, but the best are really amazing, and there’s only one (The Ground Beneath Her Feet) that I didn’t like much. Okay, and I’m not sure what The Satanic Verses was on about a lot of the time, but I get the feeling that’s a pretty widespread commentary on that book. (I’m amazed that the Ayatollah understood whatever the hell the point of the book was enough to issue fatwahs regarding it. Although maybe he just didn’t like that he’s actually a character in the book.)