Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Italo Calvino
(gap)
Raymond Chandler
Isaac Asimov
Franz Kafka
Douglas Adams
Kurt Vonnegut
Dashiell Hammett
G. K. Chesterton
Fritz Leiber
Salman Rushdie
John Steinbeck
Neal Stephenson
Lois Bujold
Terry Pratchett
Umberto Eco
Cormac McCarthy has been frequently blowing my mind as of late. Amazing writer.
Isaac Asimov
James Baldwin
Ray Bradbury
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Robert A. Heinlein
Victor Hugo
Harper Lee
Ayn Rand
Kurt Vonnegut
Bolding mine.
DeLillo was one of the four writers taken apart in A Reader’s Manifesto. Annie Proulx, Paul Auster, and Cormac McCarthy were the other three. The gist of the Manifesto (in my understanding) is that critics fall all over themselves praising writers who often don’t make any sense. Individual words and sentences take precedence over character and story. Or something like that. (The essayist had good things to say about McCarthy’s early work though.)
Lawrence Block is my all time favorite. There’s something about the way he writes that reads well in my mind. I can devour his books.
Donald Westlake, rest his soul, is the king of the comic caper. I’ve read all of the Dortmunder novels. And now, I’m working my through the Parker novels which he wrote under the name Richard Stark.
The rest in no particular order:
Robert A. Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
Michael Crichton
Dorothy Sayers
Phillip Roth
Tom Wolfe
Hunter S Thompson (though he did a better job with non-fiction than fiction IMHO)
Elmore Leonard
No particluar order:
Neal Stephenson
Kurt Vonnegut
Michael Connelly
John Irving
Neil Gaiman
Douglas Adams
It’s a terrific piece that later became a book. The original article is here and the Wikipedia entry summarises Meyers’ response to criticisms of the article.
Terry Pratchett
Kurt Vonnegut
Charles Dickens
Victor Hugo
Ursula LeGuin’s early stuff
I used to like Mark Twain a lot, but it’s been so long I don’t know if I still would.
Neal Stephenson
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Perry
Tim Powers
Herman Melville
Vladimir Nabokov
Robert Anton Wilson
Frederick Forsyth
Victor Hugo
Jack London
Any suggestions?