BTT: Favorites

1. Do you have a favorite author?
2. Have you read everything he or she has written?
3. Did you LIKE everything?
4. How about a least favorite author?
5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

1. I would struggle to pick just one. I guess it would have to be Sharon Kay Penman if I did. But I love so many more authors – Guy Gavriel Kay, Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey, Brandon Sanderson, Michelle Moran, Stephen King, Bernard Cornwell, George R.R. Martin, Jane Austen, and Edith Wharton, to name just a few.

2. I have not read all of their literary output, no, not even Penman’s, mostly because I haven’t read her medieval mysteries yet. I have the first one now so I’ll be getting on with that someday. I think I’ve read the majority of the works of my favorites, though.  I’ve read all the currently published novels by Guy Gavriel Kay, Robin Hobb (as Robin Hobb, not the Megan Lindholm stuff), Jacqueline Carey, and Michelle Moran. The other authors are either dead, so I’m not wanting to rush through what they’ve written – I’ve had Emma waiting for ages but I can’t bear for it to be the end – or their previous writings are science fiction – GRRM – or they simply have so much that I haven’t gotten through it yet or am not sure I want to and those two are Bernard Cornwell and Stephen King.

3. Mostly, yes. There are a few scattered books that I liked less than others, I found parts of the Welsh trilogy extremely difficult to read, but that doesn’t make them any less brilliant or compelling. I’d say the most uneven of the list of favorites up there is Stephen King, he’s got some books out that I think are pure brilliance and some that I just don’t know how they came from the same man.

4. I don’t know if I have a least favorite author. I don’t think so. I have books I didn’t like, but usually I won’t read more by them if I didn’t like the first one. Oh, there is an exception here, Steven Erikson. Everyone seems to love his Malazan series, and they recommend it on the basis of one of my favorite authors, GRRM. I’ve read the first two. Didn’t get it. I even bought the third on the off chance I’d like it after that, but I can’t bring myself to read it. I’m thinking I should give up and weed his books out of my library, but part of me worries I’ll be missing something great.

5. Probably the above author. I really, really want to see what’s so good about these books.