When asked for their favourite books it seems that authors have the same problems as we ‘ordinary souls’ when it comes to actually picking a single book title with many offering up a list of favourites instead just one.
I think that as an author it must be the highest of accolades to see your novel in the hands of another much loved and highly revered author but to then hear that your book is among their favourites? I cannot imagine a greater honour. Can you imagine the feeling when finding out that your book is included in this list of authors and their favourite books?
G.R.R Martin
It will come as no surprise that the book that the author of the Song of Ice and Fire named his favourite book as being Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings which he first read when in Junior High but he also has high praise for a 2014 novel by the name of Station Eleven which he said, is “a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac … a book that I will long remember, and return to.”
Gillian Flynn
The Gone Girl author was asked for her favourite books in a Reddit AMA and offered up her “comfort food” books—the kind “you grab when you’re feeling cranky and nothing sounds good to read” in reply. They included Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
Mark Twain
When asked for reading recommendations for both young boys and girls as well as the authors’ favorite books in a letter from Reverend Charles D. Crane, a pastor in Maine Twain replied by saying that Carlyle’s The French Revolution and Sir Thomas Malory’s King Arthur were among his most loved books.
J.K Rowling
Jo Rowling’s is a classic: Jane Austen’s Emma. “Virginia Woolf said of Austen, ‘For a great writer, she was the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness,’ which is a fantastic line,” Rowling said when asked for her favourite book. “You’re drawn into the story, and you come out the other end, and you know you’ve seen something great in action. But you can’t see the pyrotechnics; there’s nothing flashy.”
Maya Angelou
Maya is another author who couldn’t narrow her choice down to a single title and included Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe amongst her favourite books saying of Little Women“When I read Alcott, I knew that these girls she was talking about were all white, but they were nice girls and I understood them. I felt like I was almost there with them in their living room and their kitchen.”
Stephen King
Perhaps surprisingly the King of Horror and proponent of always taking a book with you wherever you are going has a top ten favourite book list that isn’t made up of guts and gore and is in fact compiled of an eclectic mix of classic and contemporary fiction including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
Jojo Moyes
Jojo also has several favourites with The Women’s Room by Marilyn French which she read in the early eighties and left her thinking “I had better never read this book again or I’ll never get married.” And Heartburn by Nora Ephron which she says “showed me that there is almost no experience you can have that’s so awful that you will not be able to joke about it one day. Or even write about it.” topping her list.
Neil Gaiman
When asked for his top ten Neil produced a list of obscure title including The Biography of Manuel by James Branch Cabell “Eighteen volumes of beautiful, worldly, wise writing by a forgotten American master.” And Codex Seraphinianus by Luigo Serafini “A guide to an alien world, in an alien language. The strangest book I own.”
Paulo Coelho
In a list of books that Paulo says everyone should read and that had a profound and lasting effect on him iclude the books The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran which coelho says is “An underrated masterpiece on dealing with human conflicts.” and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller that “Shows how a man can write from the heart.” according to the best selling author.
Haruki Murakami
Another author who loves the classics Haruki has a top five that includes titles such as The Brothers Karamazov and The Great Gatsby which he says “is my favourite book. I translated it a couple of years ago, I wanted to translate it in my 20s, but I wasn’t ready.”
If there is anything to be learned from this list and from the thousands of authors who have also recommended books to their readers over the years it is that to become a great writer you also have to be a great reader.
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