15 Influential Authors
I haven’t done one of these chain letter-type Facebook thingies in awhile but I liked the sound of this one. Instead of keeping it on Facebook, I thought I’d open it up to all you Skepchick readers who might want to give it a go. Here’s the copy pasta:
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who have always influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes, and they don’t have to be listed in order of relevance to you. Tag at least 15 friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends chose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste the rules in a new notes, list your 15 picks, and tag your friends.)
Um, I’m obviously tagging all of you. Here are my fifteen:
1. Kurt Vonnegut
2. James Randi
3. Michael Chabon
4. Neil Gaiman
5. Jon Ronson
6. Richard Feynman
7. Grace Paley
8. Mary Roach
9. Umberto Eco
10. Chris Ware
11. David Sedaris
12. Art Spiegelman
13. Margaret Atwood
14. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
15. Carl Sagan
1 Allan Moore
2 Larry Niven
3 Terry Brooks
4 Kurt Vonnegut
5 Carl Sagan
6 Frank Herbert
7 Neal Stephenson
8 Stephen Jay Gould
9 Richard Dawkins
10 Douglas Adams
11 Harlan Ellison
12 Neil Gaiman
12 Kim Stanley Robinson
14 Julian May
15 Patrick O’Brian
Did this on Facebook a while ago and it was a lot harder than I thought. It didn’t help that I was replying to a friend who travels in literary circles, making me afraid that my plain-jane choices would be mocked
Also, the version I replied to had no description, so I thought it meant “authors who have influenced your writing” rather than just influencing you personally.
Bearing that in mind, here’s what I wrote:
If we’re talking about influence on my life OUTSIDE of writing, I’d have to add Sagan and Dawkins to the list. And probably Tolkien and Salinger.
I also did this a bit ago. Here is my list…
Haruki Murakami
Kurt Vonnegut
Charles Dickens
David Mitchell
Margaret Atwood
Orhan Pamuk
Graham Greene
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Philip Pullman
Marcel Proust
Leo Tolstoy
Robert Louis Stevenson
Penelope Fitzgerald
George Eliot
Mark Twain
@Expatria
That list would take me a while to think through and write down, but as for skeptic authors, I think Carl Sagan is the one that I enjoyed the most. Many things about Dawkins I don’t like, but it is more how he says things than what he says.
1. Douglas Adams
2. Terry Prachett
3. Isaac Asimov
4. Piers Anthony
5. Robert Heinlein
6. Robert Anton Wilson
7. Warren Ellis
8. Daniel Dennett
9. C. S. Lewis
10. Carl Sagan
11. Bruce Hood
12. Michael Shermer
13. e.e. cummings
14. George Orwell
15. The Good Reverend Roger
I try to keep my readings varied.
0. Larry Niven
1. Robert Heinlein
2. James P. Hogan
3. Roger Penrose
4. Neal Stephenson
5. Neil Gaiman
6. Martin Gardner
7. Rudy Rucker
8. Brian Greene
9. Frederick Pohl
10. Roger Zelazny
11. Billy Collins
12. Erik Frank Russell
13. Isaac Asimov
14. Richard Dawkins
As I was composing this I thought of two questions. I was wondering if anyone else would name a poet and lo and behold @Expatria also listed Billy Collins. The other question was is there a difference between an author who influenced you and a specific book? There are lots of individual books I have nearly memorized that for the life of me I couldn’t tell you who wrote them. It was strictly the subject matter that grabbed me. These include:
The Code Book
Fractal Geometry of Nature (oh, crap, I should’ve known this was Mandelbrot)
Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation
How Things Work
1. Anne McCaffrey
2. Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Harry Harrison
4. Mark Twain
5. Issac Asimov
6. Lucy Maud Montgomery
7. Robin McKinley
8. JRR Tolkein
9. Piers Anthony
10. Rudyard Kipling
11. Cynthia Voight
12. Arthur Conan Doyle
13. Frances Hodgson Burnett
14. Shakespeare
15. Tennyson
No nonfiction. But I think that’s more because I never remember the names of the authors of the non-fiction since I rarely find multiples by the same author.
Lots of classics and sci-fi/fantasy. That was pretty much my childhood – nose in one of those peoples’ stories :)
1. Madeleine L’Engle
2. Douglas Adams
3. Richard Dawkins
4. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
5. David Quammen
6. Aldous Huxley
7. Rohinton Mistry
8. Carl Hiaasen
9. Joseph Boyden
10. Thomas King
11. Christopher Moore
12. Stuart McLean
13. Henry David Thoreau
14. Edward Abbey
15. Gail Anderson Dargatz
Every time someone posts a new list I see authors I should have put on my list. Damn my memory.
@Rebecca and @spurge and @davew: Some monkey, FSM, Sagan love for all fans of Neil Stephenson!!!
In no particular order:
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Madeleine L’Engele
C.S. Lewis
Frank Herbert
JRR Tolkien
Isaac Asimov
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Erich Fromm
Dan Simmons
William Manchester
Charles Dickens
Leon Uris
John le Carre
David McCullough
Neil Stephenson
It would be fun to see which imagined visual images come to mind for everyone when asked to recall a favorite piece of fiction. When I think of authors or a novel my reference is often a character or scene in a book that I’ve created in my mind. The memory is visual despite it being created in my mind while reading.
@Skulleigh: I have many fond memories of reading McCaffrey’s dragon/Pern books way back when.
1. Stephen Donaldson
2. Terry Pratchett
3. Peter David
4. Douglas Adams
5. Dean Koontz
6. Terrance Dicks
7. Lance Parkin
8. Stepehn J Gould
9. Carl Sagan
10. Agatha Christie
11. Lloyd Rose
12. Bob Shaw
13. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
14. Matthew Reilly
15. Rob Shearman
1. Isaac Asimov
2. Robert Heinlein
3. Erle Stanley Gardner
4. Rex Stout
5. Genevieve Bujold
6. Roger Zelazny
7. Mark Twain
8. W. Somerset Maugham
9. Guy de Maupassant
10. Don Coldsmith
11. Andre Norton
12. Anne McCaffrey
13. Poul Anderson
14. Harlan Ellison
15. Charles Dodgson
Cheeses! 15 already?
I write Dodgson rather than Carroll because Symbolic Logic got me started,
but for a long time I could recite Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter
@James Fox:
I even read the whole Baroque cycle.
In no particular order…
1. Richard Dawkins
2. Jared Diamond
3. David McCullough
4. James Morrow
5. Neil Stephenson
6. Neal Gaiman
7. Margaret Atwood
8. Phillip Pullman
9. Cormac McCarthy
10. Kurt Vonnegut
11. John Steinbeck
12. Ernest Hemingway
13. Charles Dickens
14. Robert Sapolsky
15. Fyodor Dostoevsky
I realized I have almost no female authors… I should work on changing that… Any suggestions?
1. Douglas Adams
2. Tom Robbins
3. Carl Sagan
4. Richard Dawkins
5. Malcolm Gladwell
6. Oliver Sacks
7. David Sedaris
8. Ray Bradbury
9. Stephen D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (the Freakanomics folks)
10. Aldous Huxley
11. Madeleine L’Engle
12. Norton Juster
13. Jonah Lehrer
14. Dave Barry
15. Aldous Huxley
I did this same meme on facebook except for albums. Since I’m a jazz musician and have lots of musician facebook friends, this was very nerve wracking. I find the author game to be a lot more comfortable, since I don’t put much of my self-worth into who I read. I definitely get where @Expatria is coming from, though.
Another note: I mention Gladwell, since I love his books, but something Rebecca said offhand on the SGU about his stuff being pseudosciencey has made me reevaluate some of his claims. (And nobody here mentioned him, too, which is another sign). Sometimes it’s easy to fall in love with an idea and shut off your brain to dissonance. I s’pose reevaluating even the things you love is what being a skeptic is all about, though.
1. Charles Dickens
2. Michael Malone
3. Chuck Palahniuk
4. Hernandez Brothers
5. Judy Blume
6. Jeffrey Steingarten
7. John Irving
8. Vince Bugliosi
9. Jane Goodall
10. Carolyn Keene
11. Stephen King
12. Neil Gaiman
13. JK Rowling
14. Julia Child
15. Richard Feynman
All influential on my life in some way at some time.
1. Isaac Asimov
2. Harlan Ellison
3. Robert Silverberg
4. Robert Heinlein
5. Arthur C. Clarke
6. Ursula K. LeGuin
7. Kate Wilhelm
8. Samuel R. Delany
9. Philip Jose Farmer
10. Ogden Nash
11. William Shakespeare
12. Robert Browning
13. Keith Laumer
14. Fred Saberhagen
15. Robert Bloch
I had 25 listed before I remembered the assignment was 15…
1. J. R.R Tolkien
2. Ray Bradbury
3. Ursula le Guin
4. Dvid Mitchel
5. Philip K Dick
6. William Goldman
7. Max Brooks
8. Carolyn Burke
9. Ben Goldacre
10. Brian Aldiss
11. Liza Dalby
12. Bram Stoker
13. Mervyn Peake
14. Philip Pullman
15. Umberto Eco
And now I want to re-read all these books again.
I’m cheating a bit, since I’ve read everyone else’s lists, but here goes (start 15 minute clock NOW!
1) Isaac Asimov
2) Arthur C Clarke
3) Jules Verne
4) Joseph Heller
5) JK Rowling
6) Stephen Jay Gould
7) JRR Tolkein
8) Ursula K LeGuin
9) Terry Pratchett
10) Homer
11) Shakespeare
12) Arthur Conan Doyle
13) Ellis Peters
14)Edward Abbey
15) Richard Dawkins
In no particular order, except older ones are earlier.
And whoever wrote the “Freddy the Pig” books who got me addicted to reading in the 2nd grade.
Edit…
The accidental smiley got me at number 8, oops, John LeCarre should be in there somewhere… and Eric Ambler. (Notice how I’ve cleverly expanded the list to 18!)
1. Norman Mailer
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Kazuo Ishiguro
4. Sebastian Faulks
5. Joseph Heller
6. Bret Easton Ellis
7. James Joyce
8. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Margaret Atwood
10. Philip Larkin
11. Douglas Adams
12. Bill Bryson
13. George Orwell
14. Harry Thompson
15. David Winner
Had to cheat a little by looking up at other people’s posts near the end, but fairly representative.
I could have inserted Enid Blyton in there somewhere, I read a lot of her books when I was a lot younger, but I just couldn’t bring myself to include the golliwog-loving old hag.
Nini44, I’ve only got one female author in there – so start off with Margaret Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin”, but I’ve got no idea where to go from there. Must read some Iris Murdoch at some point.
Thanks Rebecca, I enjoyed that.
I made the list first and added the commentary.
1. Mark Twain
For sheer. unadulterated genius in every respect. I am in awe, sir.
2. Neil Gaiman
For reminding the world how wonderful and powerful a good story is.
3. Jhonen Vasquez
For expressing the things I was trying to say in a way I never thought to say it but was, in the end, the best way.
4. Edgar Allan Poe
For expanding my vocabulary at a young age, and writing stories I’ll never forget.
5. Joseph Conrad
For writing about the darkness.
6. Herman Hesse
For writing about the light.
7. Anne Rice
For indulging in exactly what I wanted.
8. Laura Ingalls Wilder
For writing about her own life, and making it a story I could play in.
9. Margaret Atwood
For showing me what the other side is really like.
10. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For reminding me that I shouldn’t have to come down there to have them understand.
11. Robert E Howard
For starting a lifelong love of fur-clad musclemen.
12. Terry Pratchett
For using words properly.
13. Douglas Adams
For making me open my mind to the Universe.
14. Robert Anton Wilson
For changing my brain.
15. Ramesh Menon
For creating an epic so epic it still tops all other epics.
In no particular order:
1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. @Expatria: Susanna Clarke! :D
3. Marion Zimmer Bradley
4. Lewis Carroll
5. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
6. Phillip K. Dick
7. Harper Lee
8. Orson Scott Card
9. Shel Silverstein
10. Allen Ginsberg
11. Neil Gaiman
12. Neil Campbell
13. John Kennedy O’Toole
14. Madeleine L’Engle
15. Richard Feynman
Fun! I actually quite like a lot of other people’s choices (as anyone can tell from the number of repeats).
1. H.P. Lovecraft
2. Arthur Machen
3. Edgar Allan Poe
4. William Shakespeare
5. Flannery O’Connor
6. Tennessee Williams
7. Carl Sagan
8. Paul Kurtz
9. Alfred Bester
10. Stanley Kubrick (I know he’s a director, but 2001 is my favorite movie).
11. Arthur C. Clarke
12. Neil DeGrasse Tyson
13. William Golding
14. Philip K. Dick
15. Steven Novella (I always find his blog posts intellectually stimulating, fair, and not too snarky).
I can’t leave this topic without mentioning Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights is awesome.
Sort of chronological (to my life):
1. Robert Heinlein
2. Isaac Asimov
3. Larry Niven
4. Harlan Ellison
5. Martin Gardner
6. Piers Anthony
7. Carl Sagan
8. Douglas Hofstadter
9. Stephen J. Gould
10. Richard Dawkins
11. Daniel Dennett
12. Douglas Adams
13. Terry Pratchett
14. Neil Gaiman
15. Neal Stephenson
1. Dr. Suess – I’m surprised no one has mentioned him yet
2. Stephen Jay Gould
3. Stephen King (yes, big fan when I was a child)
4. EB White – who can forget Charlotte’s Web?
5. ee cummings
6. Shakespere
7. George Orwell (he got in wrong in 1984, Big Brother isn’t the government, it’s Big Business)
8. Sharyn McCrumb
9. JK Rowlings
10. Joanne Dobson
11. A Lee Martinez
12. Christopher Moore
13. Carl Hiaasen
14. Terry Pratchett
15. Douglass Adams
15. Mary Stewart
15. Bob Tarte (Enslaved by Ducks convinced me to never have pet ducks)
15. Robert Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers)
15. Sibley (So he writes Field Guides, it’s still writing!)
15. Tom Stoppard
The best part of this list? New authors to check out!
1. Isaac Asimov
2. Robert Heinlien
3. Douglas Adams
4. Harlan Ellison
5. Carl Sagan
6. Garrison Keilor
7. Dashiel Hammet
8. Ian Flemming
9. Neil Gaimen
10. Herman Melville
11. Raymond Chandler
12. John Sandford
13. Terry Gilliam
14. Robert Frost
15. e e cummigs
1. Stephen Jay Gould
2. Loren Eiseley
3. Cormac McCarthy
4. Jack Kerouac
5. Bill Bryson
6. Robert Pinsky
7. Tim Powers
8. JRR Tolkien
8. Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. Patrick O’brian
10. Joshua Slocum
11. John Steinbeck
12. Neil Stephenson
13. Carl Zimmer
14. Farley Mowat
15. Steven Callahan
I probably thought too much about this.
@The Edge: 1. Dr. Suess – I’m surprised no one has mentioned him yet Wow, I wish I had remember him.
Jean Craighead George
Dr. Seuss
Madeleine L’Engle
Robert A. Heinlein
David Sedaris
Oliver Sacks
Charles Dickens
William Pene du Bois
Arthur Clarke
John Steinbeck
Harper Lee
Douglas Adams
Mark Twain
Margaret Atwood
Cormac McCarthy
@James Fox: McCaffrey pretty much got me started on sci-fi.
Egad, how could I have forgotten LeGuin? She was a huge influence on me, especially a book she did on writing. There’s an essay in there called “Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” that I adore.
1. Mark Twain
2. Robert Frost
3. Amy Tan
4. Douglas Adams
5. Kurt Vonnegut
6. Shel Silverstein
7. H.G. Wells
8. Ray Bradbury
9. Emily Dickinson
10. William Shakespeare
11. Woody Allen
12. Ambrose Bierce
13. Charles Darwin
14. E.B. White
15. Charles Dickens
I did this before reading any of the other lists (except Rebecca’s) so I’m going to make a guess that a couple of these are new to my list. Silverstein and White because they are childrens’ authors, Tan and Dickinson because they aren’t “serious”, and Bierce because everyone forgets about that bastard.
I’m going back to see if I’m right.
My List, as with so many of the others, has no particular order. If this question were to be asked again, either in a few days, a month, or years hence, there would be some variance.
1. Ray Bradbury
2. Franz Kafka
3. HP Lovecraft
4. Mark Twain
5. Rudyard Kipling
6. Robert E Howard
7. Robert Utley
8. Stephen Jay Gould
9. Patrick F McManus
10. Jorge Luis Borges
11. Alejo Carpentier
12. MR James
13. Shirley Jackson
14. HG Wells
15. Joseph Heller
Can’t believe I left off Douglas Adams and Twain and Vonnegut! They were all on the short list I was trying to keep in my head. And when I thought about poets, Robert Frost was it. But the most inspired choice I completely forgot about was Dr Seuss.
These lists have reminded me of so many books I want to read again. And for the 1st time.
Gee, hard to complete without the most prolific and versatile Anonymous. In any case, I don’t think you’ll recognize many of them:
1.- Carl Sagan
2.- Jacob Bronowski
3.- Isaac Asimov
4.- Enrique González MartÃnez
5.- Luis de Góngora
6.- Rius
7.- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
8.- Mark Twain
9.- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
10.- Jorge Manrique
11.- Francisco de Quevedo
12.- Lope de Vega
13.- Juan José Arreola
And if lyrics count as poetry:
14.- Roger Waters
15.- José Alfredo Jiménez
As well as some of the great writers in the books of National Geographic and MAD magazine.
1. Roald Dahl
2. Naguib Mahfouz
3. Salman Rushdie
4. James Joyce
5. Proust
6. John McPhee
7. Laurens van der Post
8. Loren Eisley
9. Madeleine L’Engle
10. Elswyth Thane (especially for her book Tryst)
11. Ray Bradbury
12. Gregory David Roberts (for Shantaram)
13. George Orwell
14. James Randi
15. Augusten Borroughs
I have read voraciously my whole life, so I could go on and on… one thing I notice in the list above is the paucity of female writers…
1: Kurt Vonnegut
2: Joseph Heller
3: Will Eisner
4 & 5: Los Bros. Hernandez
6: Villy Sørensen
7: Oscar Wilde
8: Charles Dickens
9: Jack Vance
10: Fritz Leiber
11: William Gibson
12: Neal Stephenson
13: Douglas Adams
14: Richard Dawkins
15: Christopher Hitchens
Edit: I forgot to mention that I included comic book creators.
1. Neil Gaiman
2. Terry Pratchett
3. Douglas Adams
4. Richard Dawkins
5. Michael Shermer
6. James Randi
7. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8. Oliver Sacks
9. Hunter S. Thompson
10. William Gibson
11. William Burroughs
12. China Mieville
13. Richard Wiseman
14. Christopher Isherwood
15. Bram Stoker.
(bonus fact: reading Pterry’s “Small Gods” is what first made me really, really *think* about religion. It was all either down- or up-hill from there, depending on your point of view)
1. Carl Sagan
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Sam Harris
4. Jacques Ellul
5. George Orwell
6. Winston Churchill
7. Christopher Hitchens
8. Edward Gibbons
9. Tom Clancy
10. George Macdonald Fraser
11. Geoffrey Blainey
12. Robert Michael Ballantyne
13. Banjo Patterson (poet)
14. Whoever wrote my Grade 8 history textbook
15. Whoever wrote my Grade 8 science textbook as taught by my teacher Mrs Edwards
Banjo wrote Waltzing Matilda and The Man From Snowy River.
Ballantyne wrote A Coral Island in 1857, and I read it in 1960. It is available in the public domain as an audio book.
@Evelyn: I have read voraciously my whole life, so I could go on and on… one thing I notice in the list above is the paucity of female writers…
Upon reflection I did manage to come up with one: Shirley Corriher. If the question had been “authors you like” rather than “authors who influenced you” I certainly would have thrown in Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson.
I wonder why women are underrepresented here? Does it speak more to our tastes or to the publishing industry or the sort of books women write? That last one is probably a bad guess. My wife reads lots of weighty, important tomes by women like Barbara Kingsolver. I just can’t make it through them.
The duplicates are very interesting! One that keeps coming up that I’m kicking myself for missing: Madeleine L’Engle. My absolute favorite when I was young and such a huge influence on my imagination and my writing.
I meant to do this yesterday, but forgot. Might as well hop on:
1. Kurt Vonnegut
2. JRR Tolkien
3. Carl Sagan
4. Douglas Adams
5. Sarah Vowell
6. Mary Roach
7. Douglas Coupland
8. Tim Sandlin (The GroVont Trilogy)
9. Edgar Allan Poe
10. Jack Kerouac
11. Haruki Murakami
12. JK Rowling
13. David Rackoff
14. JD Salinger (found his house before he died!)
15. Michael Chabon
@Rebecca: The duplicates are interesting. I looked at everyone else’s lists for reminders :)
I can’t read a single list and not find someone I wish I had put on mine but I don’t know who I would kick off of my current list.
1. Le Comte de Lautreamont
2. Italo Calvino
3. Philip K. Dick
4. Clarice Lispector
5. Martin Gardner
6. Mark Twain
7. Stephen Jay Gould
8. M. F. K. Fisher
9. Katha Pollitt
10. Kurt Vonnegut
11. Anatole France
12. Hunter S. Thompson
13. Raymond Queneau
14. Alexander Cockburn
15. Molly Ivins
This was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’m also surprised how much my sense of humor and thinking on religion can be traced back to Lautreamont.
1. Isaac Asimov
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Bertrand Russell
4. Ernest Hemingway
5. Daniel Dennett
6. Steven Pinker
7. Carl Sagan
8. Leon Trotsky
9. Richard Leakey
10. Nassim Taleb
11. Geoffrey Miller
12. Alexander Puskin (also as a poet)
13. Mark Twain
14. Alessandro Manzoni (also as a poet)
15. Giacomo Leopardi (mainly as a poet)
I had Alexandre Dumas in there, but I had to remove him, and I forgot a few more that I can’t add (time is running out…)
Obviously, the exercise has to have some arbitrary limits, such as the first 15 you think of, not taking longer than 15 minutes. If you didn’t set limits then the lists would just keep going and going. Witness the posted addendums, including this one. One of my criteria is a book had to mean enough to me to revisit and reread it multiple times, or (in the case of Carl Zimmer’s Microcosm) be so fascinating that I know I will read it again. I hit 16 before I stopped to count, and couldn’t bear to remove any one of them, so I (not very cleverly) listed two number 8s. Most of mine were influential at different times in my life. I’m not a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs reader, but when I was 7, 8, 9, 10 I read Tarzan of the Apes until the book fell apart, taped it back together, and read it until it fell apart again. I haven’t read it in probably 30 years. I didn’t list Vonnegut because it didn’t immediately occur to me, but when I was 11 and my sister was in college, she sent me a copy of “Breakfast of Champions” and I went on a 5 or 6 year Vonnegut rampage.
With regards to female authors, I noticed years ago that there weren’t many on my list of “greats”. I don’t know why that is. There are many woman authors that I read for entertainment, but they didn’t make my off the cuff list of most influential. One exception that I thought of retrospectively is Marguerite Yourcenar. Her “Memoirs of Hadrian” is a fantastic book that I have revisited a few times. Two whose work I really enjoy are C.J. Cherryh and Nevada Barr.
@spurge: Triple Shaftoe golden monkey calculus bonus points!!
@amslotnik: @Buzz Parsec: @Skulleigh:
Forgetting Ursula K LeGuin actually pains me; but who to kick off!?
@Rebecca Watson: Shameless name drop. One of Madelyn’s best friends is a good friend of ours and about ten years ago I had the opportunity to meet Madelyn, and even cook dinner for her. I was able to talk at length with her about what “A Wrinkle in Time†meant to me as a young reader and lot’s more. I recall her saying that AWiT seems to have had a big impact on many young readers as my story was not unique.
@junco: When I was 10, 11, 12 I read every Tarzan and John Carter of Mars book by Burroughs. I don’t have any real desire to reread those books, ( I am excited about the John Carter movie in production) but I do have great memories and those books led me to Herbert and Asimov so score one for Edgar!
1. Farley Mowat: for introducing me to nature and wildlife at a young age, as well as the horror of warfare
2. Edward Wilson: For eloquently describing the value of biodiversity and scientific thinking about the natural world
3. Richard Dawkins: just because
4. Dan Savage: You know why
5. Charles Darwin: For influencing biology profoundly with OOS, and wonderful travel writing with Voyage of The Beagle
6. Timothy Leary: If you haven’t read his work, you should. A brilliant and witty guy who I would love to have met
7. Irvine Welsh: Entertaining and funny and bleak at the same time
8. Aldous Huxley: Wonderful novelist and social critic
9. Paul Theroux: A real hard working and engaging novelist, with brilliant sketches of human behavior
10. Douglas Kennedy: for escape purposes only!
11. Paul Auster: I sure am hitting a lot of novelists here!
12. Artur C. Clarke: For Science Fiction
13. R.D. Lawrence: Great describer of Canadian wildlife and rural living
14. Gerald Durrell: Humorous and entertaining descriptor of animals and humans…He was a reluctant writer, using proceeds to fund other interests
15. Douglas Coupland: for his early, less preachy stuff
Another on my mental short list who I forgot while writing it down and no one else has mentioned is Barbara Tuchman.
Can’t believe I forgot Ed Abbey!!!!
@davew: I too was puzzled by the lack of female authors, even in my own list. It’s not that I don’t read them – I’ve read Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Grace Paley as well as multiple single titles by other female authors. Perhaps it’s that I’ve always been a tomboy, so “boyish” things appeal to me generally. I have multiple titles from a variety of male authors, but usually only single titles from female ones.
I’m just waiting on a collaborative Skepchick book before I make any ranking decisions.
I am appalled that nobody has mentioned Sarah Vowell. Not just because of the lack of women authors listed, but she is a kickass writer who is so hip that it wouldn’t surprise me if she read this webpage!
I have always loved adventure writers. The top of my list would be John Krakauer, Sebastian Junger and Thor Heyerdahl. Most of Thor’s anthropological theories have been disproven, but he really put his neck out there! Nobody has put my imagination into Everest’s rarefied air like Krakauer. Junger found an ingenious way of telling a story whose details nobody was ever quite sure of.
As a professional outdoorsman, the writers who shaped my philosophy and choice of a career were Ted Trueblood, John Gierach, Ernest Hemingway, Pat McManus and Lee Wulff.
Humor writing has always been important to me. Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and Mark Twain loom large, as well as McManus and Vowell I already mentioned.
C.S. Lewis I will always regard fondly, because he introduced the concept of escapism. For an early adolescent boy trapped in a town and school he didn’t like, stepping through magic portals to sail on clipper ships was very appealing.
There are some writers whose work I have read gobs of, but don’t consider them important to me. Steven King writes more than i can read, and just didn’t stick to me. I bet I put Piers Anthony’s kids through college, but a year ago I tried re-reading one title that I so enjoyed sophomore year of high school. The novel seemed so ridiculous that I can’t believe I ever dug that rubbish.
I want to list F.S. Fitzgerald on my top 15, but does it count if he only wrote one book I like? I absolutely hated My Side of Paradise when I was made to read it in high school. But the Great Gatsby is the most finely crafted novel I have ever read – not a word is superfluous or misplaced.
Oh Shit!! Female author that inspired and influenced the hell out of me! Jean Craighead George wrote My Side of the Mountain! I read and re read the hell out of that book!
Ursula LeGuin, how could I forget your “Left Hand of Darkness”? Shame on me!
@junco
+1!!!! Loved the book! Got me started on loving raptors, and in fact raptors are what I study today!
I found this so hard! I could have had a hundred! These are the illustrious first 15 that popped into
My head.
1 bob Dylan
2 Ian banks (not Ian m banks)
3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4 michael palin
5 John Irving
6 jeff Buckley
7 Richard dawkings
8 JRR Tolkein
9 rob grant/doug naylor
10 Paul Theroux
11 Peter Moore (gutsy Australian traveller)
12 Louis de bernieres
13 Albert Camus
14 Terry Pratchet
15 Stephen Fry
Got to add Jon krakauer on too. I’m having 16. Damn the rules.
I’m sure I did this on the Facebook at some point.
1) JRR Tolkien
2) Noam Chomsky
3) Larry Niven
4) Stan Lee
5) Shel Silverstein
6) Gregory Mcdonald (he wrote the Fletch novels)
7) Douglas Adams
8) Roger Zelasny
9) Mark Twain
10) Katherine Kurtz
11) Diane Duane
12) JK Rowling
13) Joe Posnanski
14) Bill James
15) George Carlin
That’s off the top of my head. It is neat to see all of the overlap amongst skeptics. Lotsa Tolkein.
Kudos to bighitterandy for Grant Naylor!
@junco ‘My Side of the Mountain’ was the reason that I included her in my list.That was one of the 1st ‘ I can’t put it down’ books that I ever read.Cheers!
This was a great and fun exercise Rebecca.
@junco: I forgot about MSotM! Still have a copy! It threw me off because the protagonist is a boy written first person. Another writing that shaped my choice of career.
@Yankee: You can stop being appalled then, as I have Sarah Vowell on my list at comment 43 :)
I actually got to chat with her for a minute a few weeks ago. Dream come true.
My 15 are pretty obscure, you probably haven’t heard of them. #nohipster
Not a list of best writers or favorite books, but a list of the authors who changed my life and/or the way I think about the world.
1. Herodotus
2. Homer (Iliad)
3. Karl Marx
4. Mark Twain
5. V. I. Lenin
6. e.e. cummings
7. George Gamov
8. Mezz Mezzrow
9. Nelson Algren
10. Jack Kerouac
11. Woody Guthrie
12. Richard Feynman
13. Stephen Jay Gould
14. Oliver Sacks
15. Steven Pinker
I’d probably have to add all the authors at Viz comic too. (kind of like a much cruder but funnier MAD for anyone who’s not heard of it).