Favorite Authors / Books?

[Abraham]

For History: H.W. Brands
Stephen Ambrose
David McCullough

Brands biography of Benjamin Franklin is superb.

Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" is terrific and "Undaunted Courage" about the Lewis and Clark expedition was exceptional.

McCullough's biography of John Adams while outstanding left me admiring his wife Abigail even more than the President.

[striker55]

A friend turned me on to Daniel Silva series about an Israeli intelligence agent, Gabriel Allon. Fiction.

[cheezit]

steven king
ray bradbery
Ernest Hemingway
Poe
H. G. Wells
mark twain

ok so Im a little strange

[Divided Attention]

There are so many...

JRR Tolkein (Lord of the Rings all of them)
CS Lewis (Chronicles and so many more)
Earlene Fowler (Benni Harper and Love Mercy mysteries)
Patricia Cornwell (forensic mystery thrillers
Stephen King in my younger days, can't read 'em since I became a mom... too realistic and I am a chicken


Being a mom of avid readers has a few "younger faves" too:

Madelaine L'Engle (Wrinkle in Time Series)
JK Rowling (HP of course)
Tamora Pierce (Lady Knights)
Suzanne Collins (Gregor the Overlander)
DJ MacHale (Pendragon)

Punishment at our house is PUT DOWN THE BOOK!

Thanks for this thread, always looking for a good read.

[biggyin]

Larry Correia

Monster Hunter International and just working through MHI Vendetta!

[Dave2]

Madelaine L'Engle (Wrinkle in Time Series)

I loved that book when I was a kid. I don't think I finished the whole series, though. Hmm... a trip to the bookstore might be in order.

[i8godzilla]

Based on the authors in the OP, I would suggest Nelson DeMille.

http://nelsondemille.net/content/index.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My favorite is Charm School. I would suggest reading this book before reading any of his "Jonh Corey" series. There are references to "Miss Ivanhoe's Charm School" in a couple of these books.

[brandrum]

Right now, anything by Pastor Tim Keller.

[speedsix]

...Tom Clancy: Teeth of the Tiger...awesome terrorist plot novel...makes you think...

[JJVP]

James Rollins <----- favorite. Read everything he's written
Dale Brown
Dan Brown
Robert Ludlum
Stephen Coonts

[Oldgringo]

Look up author C. J. Box.

If you like the outdoors, family issues and shootin' and killin', you'll really enjoy following the fictional trials, tribulations and triumphs of Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett and his family. Do a little research and start the series and read the books in order. Maybe one reason we like 'em so much is because we've been in the settings.

We're waiting on the next one.

Add James Lee Burke to our list of favorite authors.

For a really good read, we recommend David Benioff's "City of Thieves" a fiction that has to do with the siege of Leningrad in WWII.

[Abraham]

Just finished "Driving On The Rim" by Thomas McGuane - absolutely terrific!

[aardwolf]

Larry Correia

Monster Hunter International and just working through MHI Vendetta!

I read a few chapters of MHI at a friend's last month. But when I went on Amazon to buy my own copy, it looks like they're now printing with a cheesy cover instead of the cool one with the AR and MHI patch. Why do publishers do that?

[mgood]

Y'all have already named most of mine.

Tom Clancy

LOVE his stuff. I got hooked by The Hunt for Red October many years ago and continue to enjoy Clancy's books.

WEB Griffin

I've read The Corps series multiple times. 1st class stuff. I am not a Marine, but my dad was. He gave me a few of those books to read. I thought "Why is this dang jarhead giving me some jarhead books to read?" But I tried them and thought they were fantastic. Ken "Killer" McCoy, Pick Pickering and their friends are really, really well developed characters.

John Sandford.

His Prey series of crime novels are great.

I'm currently reading Rules of Prey for the umteenth time. I've purchased two or three copies of most of the Prey novels. (Left them in storage in Texas when I moved to California, bought them again out there. Gave one set to a friend.) Lucas Davenport is another excellent example of character development. I've also read two or three of his other books, including one or two of the Kidd novels. They're pretty good too.

The Walking Drum by Louis Lamour(along with everything else by Louis Lamour)
. . .
Most of John Grisham's books.

The Last of the Breed is one of my all-time favorite books. Never read much Louis Lamour, but love that one.
Read most of Grisham's stuff too. He's another of my favorites. Grisham considers A Time to Kill a clumsy first attempt at writing a book. I consider it a masterpiece.

Twain

Yeah. Tom Sawyer and also A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
(Sorry, I never cared for Asimov. I'm a science fiction buff, but never could get all that excited about his works.)

Robert Heinlein
Frank Herbert

I've only read a couple of Heinlein books, Friday, and Stranger in a Strange Land. Liked both, read both multiple times. Both have a way of making you examine your own prejudices and seeing how rediculous they are. Always meant to check out more of his books and never got around to it.
The early Dune books ROCK. Then after the first few, they get more and more far out and I lose interest. I've read the first five or so, most of them multiple times.
(Hated Kafka when I had to read him in college.)

During my younger years we had J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Piers Anthony, Alan Dean Foster, Anne McCaffrey and others in the fantasy and scifi genre, but they were geared more toward adults.

I don't know Foster. I've read the others and enjoyed them.
Interest in Tolkien later led to interest in Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance books. I still go back and read those again from time to time. The first six in particular. More great character development, even if they do seem to be written for kids.


Considering the forum, I'm surprised to not see more political works. I've enjoyed books by Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Mark Levin to name a few.
(Try Men In Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America by Levin!)

[Matt Fleming]

My favorite gun books:

Hatcher's Notebook
NRA Fact Book
Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson
Shotgunning - The Art and The Science - by Houston's Bob Brister

For Fiction:

Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men - the movie does NOT do the book justice.