what authors do you read/collect?

[Emotional]

I have been an insatiable bookworm since I was ten years old. Growing up I always dreamed of having one of those huge libraries with the desk, chairs and fireplace.

Through the decades I have still be an avid reader, usually 2-3 hours a day. I also have worked on my library through the years as well. I love to pick a book off the shelf that I havent read in a few years and experience it again.

I have the complete works of Louis Lamour, Clive Cussler and John Grisham.

Recently I have also enjoyed Pierce Brown and Andy Weir.

So who do you love to read and collect?

 

[lovecraft68]

Horror comics from pre-code up to the 70's. First prints of classic horror novels and cheesy action series like the The Destroyer and Mack Bolan Executioner. I also have a full run of the Conan paperbacks as well as Doc Savage.

In other words....the same stuff I was into at 14. I haven't evolved much, or matured either according to most who know me.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I have a pretty exhaustive collection of tabletop RPG/boardgame novels. I'm not talking rulebooks (of which I have way too many too), but the fiction from the universes of Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms, Battletech, Shadowrun and Warhammer 40,000.

Author-wise, the only ones I actively "collected" were Terry Pratchett, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Richard Morgan and William Gibson. I'd add Robert Kirkman to the list. A friend of mine translates comics from English to German and he got me into The Walking Dead and Invincible. A bitch to read with a magnifying glass, but totally worth the effort.

Huge piles of books I inherited from my father and my maths teacher, of all people. When she divorced her husband and had to move, I ended up with four shoe boxes full of SF/F stuff I had never heard of before. LeGuin, McCaffrey, some of the more obscure Zimmer-Bradley stuff. My father left me his pulp reprints and quite a few Von Lustbader novels. I still adore The Sunset Warrior and the oppressive mood of the underground bunker it creates. And some of the sex scenes, especially in his Japan-centric thrillers were kinda shocking for teenage me.

Lately I've been heavily into wrestler and musician biographies. It started with my Mom-in-law giving me the Lemmy bio as a birthday gift and spiralled a bit out of control from there. I've read The Dirt and appreciate Mötley Crüe a whole lot more afterwards. Never been a huge Stones fan, but the Keith Richards bio was certainly illuminating. Well, and I'm a sucker for wrestling drama. Since WWE nowadays is such a shitshow, I figured I'd have a look at the real-life madness behind the circus. The three "Titan..." books are a fascinating read and great entry point to the insanity that is pro wrestling drama.

 

[Duleigh]

Terry Pratchett by far. He was incredible! When the swords and sorcery boom hit the publishing world in the '70s he decided to hop in on it just because it looked easy. He did it as a joke, and he rocked the fantasy world, not because it was good fantasy, but because he was making fun of and with fantasy. He invented his own world, a flat disc shaped world that sat on the back of 4 huge elephants that rode through space on the back of a huge turtle. All the scientific minds on the disc world were desperate to find out the sex of the turtle because they believed it was mating season.

His humor was blistering, he took all the wizards and put them on the same faculty at the Unseen University so their dangerous spells would be used on each other due to faculty in-fighting. His characters are still beloved, the only person in the university with any common sense is the Librarian, but he got turned into an orangutang, his anthropomorphic personification of Death is hilarious! and his entire police department is beyond description. A must read!

 

[Duleigh]

Horror comics from pre-code up to the 70's. First prints of classic horror novels and cheesy action series like the The Destroyer and Mack Bolan Executioner. I also have a full run of the Conan paperbacks as well as Doc Savage.

In other words....the same stuff I was into at 14. I haven't evolved much, or matured either according to most who know me.

Those Conan books were awesome, as were the Conan B&W comics

 

[Emotional]

You reminded me of another childhood favorite, Terry Brooks and the Swords of Shannara

 

[ElectricBlue]

Mervyn Peake
John le Carré
John Banville
Philip Pullman
Antony Beevor
Nicci French
China Mieville
Haruki Murakami
Leonard Cohen
Gerald Seymour
Minette Walters
J.G.Ballard
Robert Harris (earlier novels)

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Collect (fiction edition):

Nelson Algren, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Phillip K. Dick, Elmore Leonard, Henry Miller, Hubert Selby Jr., Irvine Welsh

Read:

That would take way, way too long.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not a collector of anything. But I read almost anything, and I like to mix it up with a steady diet of fiction and nonfiction. Lately I've been focusing on mystery/detective novelists: Dashielle Hammett, Dorothy Sayers, Michael Connolly, Sara Paretsky, and now Elizabeth George.

 

[Bramblethorn]

At one point or another: a ton of roleplaying stuff, Phil Foglio, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Stjepan Šejić, Charles Stross, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Gailey, Edward Tufte (non-fiction). I have half a dozen or so Pratchetts but I hesitate to call that a "collection" since there's so much more I ought to have of his.

 

[thomas1965]

My favourite authors are: Lee Child, Matthew Reilly, Stephen Leather(Jack Nightingale series), James Rollins(Sigma)

 

[lovecraft68]

Those Conan books were awesome, as were the Conan B&W comics

Absolutely, I have a bunch of the Savage sword of Conan mags. There was another Mag, the Conan saga but they were reprints of early comics if I recall.

 

[oggbashan]

Jeffrey Farnol
John Buchan
Charles Dickens
Rudyard Kipling
Rider Haggard
Baroness Orczy
Raphael Sabatini
Thorne Smith
Ernest Bramah (Kai Lung)
Russel Thorndike (Dr Syn)
Dorothy Sayers
Ngaio Marsh
Jack Higgins
Clive Cussler
Tom Clancy
Isaac Asimov
Poul Anderson
E E (Doc) Smith
Asterix (in English,French and Latin)
and many more...

 

[karaline]

I've got so many books i feel like i need to join support group for book addiction, my shelves are overflowing. My poison is literary fiction, with side helpings of speculative/dystopia/sci-fi. On the whole i try not to read the same author more than one, the exception is Margaret Atwood, i've read everything she's ever written

 

[geronimo_appleby]

lee child until the reacher books turned to shit.

jodi picoult - unless i'm on a downer!

cormac mccarthy

leslie thomas

gerald seymour

 

[oggbashan]

As an ex-secondhand bookshop owner, my library is extensive. In my old house, I had 30,000 books. I have downsized to about 10,000, still more than my shelves can cope.

But I have 50,000 on my e-reader.

 

[Duleigh]

As an ex-secondhand bookshop owner, my library is extensive. In my old house, I had 30,000 books. I have downsized to about 10,000, still more than my shelves can cope.

But I have 50,000 on my e-reader.

Jealousy!

I love old books, and I love both kinds of books: Classic SciFi and Railroad History

I met a fellow in Colorado who has an award-winning model train layout that fills his entire basement, and I was invited to operate his layout one weekend with about 6 other fellows (up to 9 trains can run at once). It was a HUGE honor, but I never made it to his basement. The fellow is a railroad historian and his entire first floor is a library, with the exception of the kitchen every wall in every room is covered floor to ceiling with railroad books, magazines, and technical manuals. I found his autographed collection of books by Lucius Beebe and completely forgot about the basement.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Robert A. Heinlein
Mack Reynolds
Gordon R. Dickson
David Drake
Keith Laumer
Andrew Keith & William Keith Jr.
John D. McDonald

Along with many more in the past.

 

[IsItBad]

I have been an insatiable bookworm since I was ten years old. Growing up I always dreamed of having one of those huge libraries with the desk, chairs and fireplace.

Through the decades I have still be an avid reader, usually 2-3 hours a day. I also have worked on my library through the years as well. I love to pick a book off the shelf that I havent read in a few years and experience it again.

I have the complete works of Louis Lamour, Clive Cussler and John Grisham.

Recently I have also enjoyed Pierce Brown and Andy Weir.

So who do you love to read and collect?

Wilbur Smith

 

[oggbashan]

Jealousy!

I love old books, and I love both kinds of books: Classic SciFi and Railroad History

I met a fellow in Colorado who has an award-winning model train layout that fills his entire basement, and I was invited to operate his layout one weekend with about 6 other fellows (up to 9 trains can run at once). It was a HUGE honor, but I never made it to his basement. The fellow is a railroad historian and his entire first floor is a library, with the exception of the kitchen every wall in every room is covered floor to ceiling with railroad books, magazines, and technical manuals. I found his autographed collection of books by Lucius Beebe and completely forgot about the basement.

A decade or so ago, one of my brother's friends was a collector of pre-first world war railway models - Bing, Carette etc. He had built a secure extension to his house, nearly as safe as a bank vault because his models were worth so much.

My brother owed him a favour for some assistance with a village project.

I had a brass plaque from a train in Australia. It was from one of the old Wild West type coaches that had verandahs at each end. The sign was on the inside of the door and read - 'Passengers are not allowed to stand on the platform'. The coach was on its last journey before being condemned and burned. I asked permission from the guard to take the plate. He agreed and lent me a screwdriver.

I gave the plaque to my brother who gave it to his friend who mounted it prominently in his collection store.

When the friend died, his collection was sent to auction. It raised three times the value of his house. The plaque sold for £1,000 alone.