Quick question to my f-list.

[matilda36]

Just because I am a literary outlaw.

Who is your all time favourite writer? Bonus point if you tell me why.

Comments

[writeslikeyoda.livejournal.com]

The answer to this has recently changed...

So I say: Patrick O'Brian.

His books are beautifully written in elegant prose. He portrays fully founded characters and he captures the difficult, often twited and confusing facets of life, mingling moments of terror, panic, fear, death, duty, passion, intrigue, the detail of battle and the utter hilarity that can sometimes befall a person.

I adore his books.

[japewierd.livejournal.com]

Many come right up there but inevitably I go back to Anne McCaffrey. Why? Well dragons, obviously :P But apart from that it's a hang up from my teenage years and my twenties, shush! and the hours I spent inhabiting the worlds that she created.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

For me it would be a toss-up between Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein. Both were significant influences on my teen years, and addressed concepts that were and are important to me (environment from Herbert via the Dune series, and sexuality from Heilein, mainly through the Lazarus Long stories as well as others.)