Favorite Authors: Commercial and Literary

Episode 10

I love to read. I can get lost in a book. Like everyone, I have my favorite authors. Here are just a few of my favorites, in no particular order.

John Grisham. Just as he’s billed, Grisham is a great storyteller. A Grisham mystery is guaranteed to grab your attention and hold it until the very end. He cut his literary teeth on legal thrillers, but he has successfully branched out over the years.

Jodi Picoult. I love Picoult’s braided narrative novels. She, too, knows how to tell a great story, but her braided structures are a real treat to follow. In addition, Picoult can be counted on to provide information about issues and subjects that help us learn something new. Whether it’s the preparation of hamburgers at a McDonald’s, how honeybees organize their hives, or what it is like to be trapped in a COVID comma, she presents information in a simple way that is easy to follow.

Stephen King. The horror novel is how King built his reputation as a great author but those are my least favorite King books. I enjoy his novels that deal with the real world, not the world of the paranormal. I especially enjoyed Holly and Never Flinch.

Cormac McCarthy. He stretches our imaginations with books that carry us into the dark side of the world. His stories are known for their minimal punctuation, an Old Testament writing rhythm, deeply lyrical scene descriptions, a constant questioning of what is accepted as good and evil, and the effective use of purposeful violence. His classic No Country for Old Men was made into a great movie. And The Road made us picture a post-apocalyptic America.

Raymond Carver. (Deceased) Carver was considered one of the most powerful short story writers of the 20th century His stories were typically about the thoughts of insignificant people who experience enormous things in their lives. His writing style consisted of simple, direct sentences, an ordinary vocabulary, no decoration in his descriptions, and unresolved endings. Some critics called him a gentle writer, but his stories take hold and remain with a reader forever. Two of my personal favorite collections are Cathedral and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Michael Cunningham. One of the most accomplished novelists in American literature, Cunningham writes psychologically aware stories that examine love, family, and personal identity. His literary fiction is rich with emotion. They are introspective and beautifully structured. Cunningham’s The Hours is a timeless classic. And his memoir Unsayable gives us insight into how his past helped form his writing.

Julian Barnes. Barnes, one of England’s most celebrated authors, is known for his willingness to write about life’s most difficult subjects. His most successful stories examine love, memory, aging, death, and marriage. He presents challenging topics in a simple, straightforward manner before describing complications to demonstrate that there are no easy answers in life. His novels include Flaubert’s Parrot, Arthur and George, and The Only Story. My favorite Barnes book—his signature novel— is A Sense of an Ending.

Colson Whitehead. Whitehead is one of America’s most inventive, versatile novelists. His work covers much ground: historical fiction, literary fiction, satire, speculative fiction, and crime novels. He employs beautiful prose while tackling big ideas, and his work often causes a reader to reconsider a previously held view of the world. And he is not afraid to put the issue of race on trial, as is evidence in his novels, The Underground Railroad, and The Intuitionist. He is also known for his mastery of metaphors that give weight to his stories.

George Saunders. Saunders is a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, who has mastered the art of the absurd. He is a social critic that employs humor to make his points. He can move a reader from considering something completely ridiculous at one moment to feeling profoundly sad the next. He often presents a distorted view of America to make his points. Perhaps his most famous book is Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize.

Alice Munro. (Deceased) A Canadian, Munro was considered one of the greatest short-story writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She had a unique ability to find meaning in people who seem to live ordinary lives. She exceled in presenting the complexities of life. People have enjoyed her collections such as Dance of the Happy Shades, The Moons of Jupiter, and Runaway.