Who´s your favorite author?

Great thread, ghosttown - thanks for starting it!

My favorite author of all time is Paul Bowles, my favorite novel his The Sheltering Sky. If you haven't checked out his work, please give it a try, perhaps starting with that book. Other works of his I like are The Spider's House and Let It Come Down. He led a really fascinating life and was also a composer. He spent much of his life living in Morocco, which is where most of his work is set.

I also like Allende, Garcia Marquez, and biographies of US presidents.

Camus! And my all time favorite book: the Stranger.

I just got the Plauge, and I’m really looking forward to read it. Maybe the Stranger will be replacedas number one - who knows
I “just” have to finish Crime and Punishment first.

Can’t even explain why I love the Stranger so much, but I really like the atmosphere. I have a strange tasge in litterature, and seem to like “boring” stuff. Hahaha
(Maybe it’s because my life is so busy)

Do you also like the far more complex but very similiar novel Happy Death or do you prefer the simple but beautiful style of L´étranger? (Yes, L´ètranger, I can´t ignore this chance to practise the very little French I speak... ;-) ) Or is it mostly the story that captured your heart?

My favorite, The Sheltering Sky, is about a threesome traveling in North Africa post World War II. It involves existential and relationship crises, mortality, and rebirth, of sorts. It's incredibly dark, and the really bleak setting of colonial North Africa suits the arc and subject matter perfectly. I also really like Bowles' use of language. It manages to be both succinct and incredibly vivid. the film version with Willem Defoe and Debra Winger isn't bad, as I recall but do not watch it first!

All of his works, at least those I'm familiar with, center around Americans and Europeans sort of doing their best to assimilate into an incredibly different culture, specifically North Africa. But they're incredible shielded from the actual culture by the colonialism.

Allende and Garcia Marquez both work in the genre of magic realism. They can transport you to a world where magic is simply an understood part of everyday life and I love that their novels have strong, matriarchal protagonists.

For Allende I'd recommend The House of the Spirits as a great starting novel. For Garcia Marquez I think Love in the Time of Cholera.

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I never used to read a lot but since getting a Kindle, i'm reading all sorts (especially if it's public domain!)

Terry Pratchett I enjoy the most.

I've just started reading Agatha Christie for the first time.