Favorite Books / Authors / Poets

[Dr. Old Bill]

Alright, so now that finals and applications are almost behind us, I figure it's time for another lighthearted thread. A companion piece, if you will, to Queennight's "What Are You Reading."

 

Sometimes our proposed specialization takes us in a different direction from the literature that we truly love, while sometimes we have the fortune of having the two work together. I'm much more of a "generalist" than a "specialist" when it comes to literature, even though I'm happy to carve out my own narrow niche. So with this in mind, I'm curious: what are your favorite books, and who are your favorite authors and/or poets? Admit it, you enjoy talking about this stuff...and where better than on a forum for graduate English hopefuls?

 

My favorite poet is W. H. Auden. By far. Seriously, no other poet comes close. Even though I'm planning on specializing in prosody and will likely be grounded in early modern studies, my interest in poetry truly starts with coming across Auden about twenty years ago. There's something about the topics he chooses, the tone he adopts, and simply how he writes that appeals to me. He can discuss some really heavy subjects, yet his tone is always slightly wry.

 

I don't have one favorite author. Some of my favorites include Steinbeck, Orwell, Nabokov, Hemingway, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Rushdie, and...Stephenson. I mentioned Neal Stephenson in another thread recently, and while he's not a "literary" writer, all of his works are extremely intelligent. I wasn't a big fan of his last novel, REAMDE, but everything else he's written has been gold, in my view. In fact, I'm looking forward to re-reading some of it when I get a chunk of free time. As for my other favorites, it's so weird for me to look at that list and notice that almost all of those authors are from the first half of the 20th century. I'm not sure what that means.

 

As for favorite books, I can't claim a single one of those either, though a few works by the above authors are certainly right up there (East of Eden, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Midnight's Children, Mother Night, Cryptonomicon etc.). Beyond those, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is near the top of my list, and I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany (my wife's favorite novel) and The Count of Monte Cristo. Also a few great science fiction novels like Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, Card's Ender's Game, Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and a wide assortment of Heinlein. Oh, and Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, of course. Maybe not "high literature," but they've all contributed to my love of literature in some way.

 

So...how about the rest of you?

[Mattie Roh]

Well, my apps are all in so I'll give my two cents!

 

Favorite poet: Whitman. Whitman has gotten me through some very tough times. There's something about the way he speaks to the reader, the way he creates this camaraderie, this notion of a universal experience that we're all in together, that I find soothing. I've also been partial to the Wordsworth, though I think that's generally considered the mark of an amateur (I've never studied poetry). Perhaps this exposes my traditional Dead White Male upbringing in literature. For nonfiction, I'm a sucker for Malcolm Gladwell and, as I mentioned in another thread, Sam Keane.

 

Authors: I've always been partial to the 19th century -- Hawthorne, Melville, Dickens, Austen, Wharton, James. And for plays, the Golden Age of American Drama -- Miller, Williams, O'Neill. Love me some Ibsen, too.

 

My favorite books all over the place, however -- The Lord of the Rings, The Sword of Shannara (yes, Tolkien and Terry Brooks are not mutually exclusive in my book), Catch 22, The House of the Seven Gables, The Age of Innocence, The Historian, The Disappearing Spoon. 

[queennight]

SO MANY OPTIONS AA

[1Q84]

My favorite poet is W. H. Auden. By far. Seriously, no other poet comes close. Even though I'm planning on specializing in prosody and will likely be grounded in early modern studies, my interest in poetry truly starts with coming across Auden about twenty years ago. There's something about the topics he chooses, the tone he adopts, and simply how he writes that appeals to me. He can discuss some really heavy subjects, yet his tone is always slightly wry.

I just bought a record from Goodwill over the weekend of Auden reading about 45 minutes of his poems. It's an awesome paper-writing soundtrack!

[smg]

Henry Miller seems to be my fave literary fellow.  Herman Melville may come next. I used to love Neal Stephenson. I just bought a copy of The Diamond Age which I read 10 or so years ago.  I'm looking forward to cracking it open. As far as poets are concerned I cant get enough of Langston Hughes.

Edited December 17, 2014 by smg

[Dr. Old Bill]

I just bought a record from Goodwill over the weekend of Auden reading about 45 minutes of his poems. It's an awesome paper-writing soundtrack!

 

Wonderful! And unlike a lot of poets, doesn't he have a great voice for reading his own work?

[HesseBunuel90]

My favorite writers are William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, and Yukio Mishima.

 

I have countless favorite novels, but some of the books that have resonated with me most are Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain. Right now, I am reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; it is truly masterful so far, but very dense, so it is not exactly a page-turner.

 

[Dr. Old Bill]

That's a great list, Hesse! I've been meaning to read Dead Souls for years now, and I will be reading "Winesburg, Ohio" for a class in the spring. One of my big literary gaps is mid-20th century (and later) American literature, which is odd, since I love a lot of early 20th century American lit...

[fancypants09]

Such a great thread!

 

Mine are all over the map, but to start off, in no particular order:

 

My favorite Americans: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and Charles Bukowski.

 

My favorite amongst the Francophone: Guillaume Apollinaire and Albert Camus. Love, love, love these two. 

 

My favorite contemporaries: Haruki Murakami and Colm McCann.

[smg]

Such a great thread!

 

Mine are all over the map, but to start off, in no particular order:

 

My favorite Americans: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and Charles Bukowski.

 

My favorite amongst the Francophone: Guillaume Apollinaire and Albert Camus. Love, love, love these two. 

 

My favorite contemporaries: Haruki Murakami and Colm McCann.

 

I forgot about Bukowski and Camus. Great so great.

[Put a cat on it]

Favorite not-so-alive novelists: Jane Austen (above and beyond anyone else, but let's not get me started), Charlotte, Emily & Anne Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Gaskell, if you sense a theme here you'd be correct.

 

Favorite living novelists/writers: Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Junot Diaz.

 

Favorite poets: I am total hack who just has never been a big poetry fan. I can appreciate it, but it's not something I'll pick up in my spare time.

[fancypants09]

Junot Diaz! Yes, what an amazing writer.

[xolo]

Keeping with the Latin theme, Francisco Jiménez.