Who Is Your Favorite Author?
“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
I have always been intrigued by the question, who is your favorite author. My favorite fiction authors have infused my life with beauty, inspiration and meaning. As such, I am curious. What have ‘favorite authors’ done for others? Have others learned or experienced something I haven’t?
I googled the question who is your favorite author and perused dozens of commentaries. Here is what I found out. First, I was reminded there have been a lot of books written, with literally thousands more coming every week, so there are a lot of authors to be inspired by. Second, the majority of internet commentators focus their affection on genre authors, writers of mystery, suspense, romance, science fiction and fantasy. Only a minority select the classic authors of (mostly) western literature.
As a college student, I read a lot of those classics and I certainly learned from them. Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment, for example, showed how social class and one’s mental state can disadvantage an individual.
My reading tastes, however, trend to modern literature, probably because I find the social context of modern literature more readily understandable and the grammatical structure and style easier to digest. While I appreciate a range of literary genres, I am especially a fan of mystery and suspense, and middle-grade literature focusing on plucky heroes and heroines who overcome the odds. If I had to psychoanalyze myself, I’d guess my reading interests were heavily influenced by my mother, who taught me how to read. She was a big fan of fantasy and suspense literature. She was also an orphan, and her tales of growing up in 1930s and 1940s American orphanages, both good and bad, have always remained with me. It should probably not be surprising that my debut novel published in 2022, Eddie and the Vegetarian Vampire, featured an orphan in search of his family who teams up with a kindly but starving vegetarian vampire.
I laughed at the answer one commentator, an author, gave to the question of ‘favorite authors.’ That author asked, “Would it be immodest to say my favorite works of literature are the ones I wrote?” I don’t think that answer is immodest at all. It makes perfect sense to me that an author would want to read what they loved to write.
My personal favorites in the mystery and suspense genre include PD James, Stephen King, Philip Kerr, Robert Galbraith (a pen name for JK Rowling), Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly; in the middle-grade genre, Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, Melanie Crowder, and Kate DiCamillo. If I had to pick one all-time favorite, I would go with JK Rowling, as the author of both the children’s Harry Potter series and (under the name Robert Galbraith) the adult Cormoran Strike mysteries.
As an exercise in understanding my reading tastes, I sat down one day and asked myself what do all my favorite authors and novels have in common? I came up with the following themes: the redemptive power of love; the intertwined nature of joy and sadness; the willingness to take risks; gaining agency through bravery and resilience; humility and self-sacrifice as a path to goodness; the power of friendships and belonging; and the value of humor.
My answers are not too different from those found on my internet searches. The most frequent reasons readers cited for love of an author include:
· seeing people they can relate to, characters they identify with, their own emotions translated into words;
· gaining a sense of possibility and the discovery of new worlds which can be inspiring and life-changing;
· experiencing intense pleasure and relaxation, including laughing out loud
In other words, to paraphrase the Nietzsche quote at the beginning of this article, a favorite author can turn one’s world upside down. Who has turned your world upside down? I’d love to hear your answer. Leave a comment on my social media page or send me an email.
