My 10 Favorite Authors

 

Disclaimer: I teach high school English, so I have this notion that my favorite authors ought to be literary. However, I’ve been a reader longer than I’ve been a teacher or a writer, and most of what I’ve read is not considered fine literature. There are a few literary authors in my faves list, but most of them are popular fiction.

 

My 10 Favorite Authors in no Particular Order:

1. Beverly Cleary – I read all the Ramona books when I was little, and it was like reading about my own thoughts and my own life. When I was twelve I read Fifteen and it was the best book I’d ever read. I went on to read everything by Cleary, except for the books with male main characters. However, I’ve read all of those now too, because I read them aloud to my seven-year-old son. Beverly Cleary really stands the test of time.
2. J.K. Rowling – When speaking of books “meant for children” the Harry Potter series has to come to mind. I was definitely no longer a kid when I read them, and like most of the world, no series has left me so enthralled. I’ve read the first three books to my son now, but we’re holding off on the fourth, because he’s a little young yet for something so dark.
3. Suzanne Collins – I read The Hunger Games as assigned reading when I was taking a course on writing young adult lit. I couldn’t put it down! Collins blends action, suspense, romance, and satire seamlessly. God, I wish I had written it myself.
4. Betty Smith – She wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Joy in the Morning, both of which I read when I was kid. Something about them really struck a cord; they’re both female stories of self-discovery, which is what I like to write myself.
5. Melissa Bank – Her novel Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing is one of the pioneers of the chick-lit movement, and her writing style is amazing. I could read and reread this novel endlessly.
6. Emily Giffin – I always read whatever she publishes.
7. Jennifer Weiner – See above.
8. Curtis Sittenfeld – See above again.
9. Douglas Coupland – I actually haven’t read that much by him, but his short story collection, Life After God made me cry because it was written so beautifully.
10. William Shakespeare -  I love his plays. I don’t sit around and read them in my spare time, but every year when I teach my 10^th graders Macbeth I discover something new about it myself. It’s simply amazing.