Books and authors - what would life be without them? (Top Ten Authors)

Member Name: Mioliere

Product:	Top Ten Authors
Date:	04/12/08 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Many; too many to count

Disadvantages: Absolutely none

I love words, I love reading and I love books - I could not imagine life without them.

My favourite author of all time is Kathleen Winsor. She wrote my favourite book, 'Forever Amber', a fantastic novel set in Restoration England and containing such graphic accounts of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, that you feel you are actually there with the protagonists. I love this book so much I have two copies in case I ever lose one or lend it to someone who also wants to keep it. I have read it three times and will read it again and again.

My next favourite author is Margaret Mitchell simply for her epic 'Gone With The Wind' which I would urge every lover of books to read. The film, although very long - about nine or so hours, I think - is great but misses out such a lot of the content that I found it very disappointing in comparison. What it did get perfectly right was the characters, and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara, will be forever etched in my brain whenever I think of the book. The writing is superb and really conjures up the American Civil War, bringing it to life in full technicolour.

My second favourite author is newly-discovered, to me. Anne Tyler wrote the book 'The Accidental Tourist' which I know has been made into a film with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt; I haven't seen the film yet. I only picked up the book because I had heard of the title but had no idea what a good writer Anne Tyler is. I have since read several of her novels and each one has been brilliant but very different from the others. She has a natural ability to set the scene and introduce the characters that gets you instantly caught up in their lives.

Jung Chang wrote 'Wild Swans' about the lives of three generations of women growing up in China, including her. It covers great swathes of Chinese history and illustrates the sheer hardship of life in China, especially for the poor, as it was and, at times, still is. It is very moving and I found it almost impossible to put down from the very first word.

Jean M Auel is the author of the 'Clan of the Cave Bear' saga which starts in the stone age and follows the life of Ayla, a child brought up by primitives. The author spends years researching for her books and this is evident when you see the detail she includes in her stories.

Charles Dickens has to be included in my list of top ten authors, not just for his brilliant writing but also for how his characters simply leap from the page, every one of them larger than life. I love the names he chose for his characters which makes them all so memorable. I haven't yet read Little Dorrit but am enjoying the BBC's dramatisation of it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is another favourite author of mine. I haven't read many of his books and am currently looking for those I would like to read but his 'Tender is the Night' and 'Great Gatsby' are fantastic stories full of romance, and books I intend to read again.


My top ten list of authors would have to include some from my childhood, amongst them the incomparable Enid Blyton - besides her Secret Seven and Famous Five, I loved 'The Folk of the Faraway Tree', 'The Adventures of the Wishing Chair' and 'The Enchanted Wood'. I enjoyed reading them to my children as much as I enjoyed them as a child. They are truly magical stories. Another favourite was the Milly Molly Mandy stories, by Joyce Lankester Brisley, as much for the lovely stories as the little map of Milly Molly Mandy's village that is in the front of each book, which really used to make the stories seem so real.

My list would not be complete without Frances Hodgson Burnett's 'The Secret Garden' - a fantastic mysterious book which I thoroughly enjoyed as a child.

I could go because I keep thinking of more and more authors, but this is supposed to be the 'top ten' so I had better stop.

For some reason, I have really enjoyed writing this!

Summary: Books to me are the stuff of life