I wanna hear what your favourite book is or who your favourite author is and why?

I'll start us off with mine;

Chris Ryan's 'Greed' is my favourite book because i just love his writing style. It's a tense, exciting read with a great twist at the end. Full of firearms, sex and murder, just pure win in my eyes

I also used to love Kate Cann's 'Hardcash' or 'Moving Out' as it's recently been released as, a really good book for young adults, i've read it cover to cover more times than i care to remember!

'Hayley'

I used to love the Twilight series before the movies came out. Then everyone suddenly liked them and they lost their appeal to me.

Of course, Harry Potter is also one of my favorites, only book 6 & 7 weren't all that great in my opinion.

Then there's Thea Beckman, a Dutch author whose books I read many times when I was a kid, and I still have some of her books in my bookcase...

I recently discovered the books by Chuck Palaniuk, and while they're kind of strange, I really enjoy ready them...

And the last one is a book by Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes. I read this one for my list, and I didn't really expect much from it, but I liked it very much. It's just a beautiful story..

I loved The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. The synopsis sounds silly but its a great novel.

Not a novel, but The Illustrated Man is an awesome book. Great, great stories in it.

When I was younger I loved Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights tryology (Golden Compass for the US) but the movie sucks. They turned it into a badly-directerd kids story. He wrote other good stuff to.

Plata Quemada by Ricardo Piglia, Perilous Seas by Anne Edmondson, etc, etc. I used to read a lot, there are lots of great books.

I guess someone is going to come out with Dan Brown's books, but let me say: I've read them all, and they're all the same!

@Ericcq: I love Pullman and agree on Brown - OK for one read, but that's it and two of them were enough. He writes lousy characters. Pullman of course is wonderful

My favourites? Many...

author: Jonathan Carroll, hands down
He has been classified as a fantasy writer, even as horror I guess and probably other genres, but none of that really hits it. If you ask him, he refers to his writing as "magic realism",but it is totally different from the South America branch.
Anyway, his books have a quality of drawing me in from the first line and spitting me out in a trance like state in the end. He creates characters that talk to me and stories that often start very usual, but then slowly drift off into the fantastic and before you know it you turn around and nothing in the world he describes is famliar any more. Yet he writes it in a way that I can believe every word is true and imagine all this could happen. With some books he throws me right into this world, with some, he only touche on it and integrates the fantasy elements so seamlessly that anything seems possible.
He also creates great characters, especially interesting women and I generally enjoy his writing style. He has an awesome blog as well. The little things he posts there are just wonderful.
favourite books by him? The Marriage of Sticks and Bones of the Moon

Books, in no particular order:

Reinhold Ziegler: Es gibt hier nur 2 Richtungen, Mister
A book I have loved in my youth and still enjoy reading. It's about a man who sets out for a travel across the US to find luck, to find himself, to figure out where and who he wants to be. It's a wonderful and interesting journey that is fun to read. It also gives an interesting look at the US.
Most of all though, the thoughts he shares on his journey touch me deeply. It also includes one of my favorite quotes: Träumer? Wir sind alle Träumer. Wir schlucken es nur zu tief runter, weil wir immer wieder gesagt bekommen, daß man im wirklichen Leben nicht träumen darf. (Dreamer? Each one of us is a dreamer. We just push it down deep because we are repeatedly told that we are not allowed to dream in real life."

Mary Lawson: Crow Lake
Again, the story touched me deeply. It's about families and missed chances and how one's own values do not have to be everyone else's. It is very well written, but the main reason I enjoyed it so much was that it reminded me of my own family - totally different story there, but some of the feelings were eerily similar.

Michael Ende: Der Spiegel im Spiegel (Mitrror in the Mirror)
At first glance, this is "just" a collection of short stories, but after a closer look I noticed that they are all connected and the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. Very well written, anything from scary to sad to funny and all simply wonerful. I need to re-read that one!

Audrey Niffeneger: The Time Traveller's Wife
Great story, great characters. Well told with flashbacks and changing perspectives. It had me hooked from the first page.

Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
sad, beautiful, brilliant! nuff said.

Anita Amirrezvani: The Blood of Flowers
Very sensual writing. I could see, hear, taste and smell what she described. Great story too and a wonderful female main character who goes her own way in a time and place where that was virtually impossible for women. Loved it.

I don't want to bore you so I'll add more later...

lol A favorite, now that's a hard one...

If you judge by how many times I've read the book, then it's Tim Burton's Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories Love it, just weird enough for me.

I don't read that much these days, so that makes this even more difficult, but Tolkien is still high on my list. Another one whose style I have been liking is James Luceno, And Pullman's His Dark Materials was great too. Clive Barker's Mr. B. Gone, what I am reading now, is also very interesting.

Then of course there's my love, Neil Gaiman. I have to say his novels are not always the easiest to start (he has a very slow style at the beginning), but once you get past that the stories themselves are just great. The Graveyard Book and Coraline were fabulous, and Anansi Boys is my favorite. His short stories are quite nice as well.

I'm really more into stories and writing styles than the writers themselves, so sometimes it's hard to name a particular writer. It's a bit like with movies, doesn't matter who does it as long as it has something that interests me.

Ah, I forgot, I still need to buy that book I've wanted to read it ever since I spotted it some time ago in a library.

My fave author is Gabriel García Márquez. I've only read two of his books, but I love his style.

Then there's Mikhail Bulgakov. He's a challenge to read, at times, but nonetheless he's kick-ass.

Iris Murdoch is on my list of fave authors, too. She can also be difficult to read sometimes, but her stories make you think a lot about all kinds of things.

Some years ago I read a wonderful book, by Sarah Waters. It's called ''Affinity'', and it's simply unputdownable. ''Le Pétit Chose''(''Little What's-His-Name'', in English), by Alphonse Daudet, is a lovely book; it has something of the Burtonesque style in it.

In my childhood I used to read some books on Greek and Roman mythology, written by a Romanian author. A fab read. (I blame him for my love of Greek and Roman mythology, which has lasted through the years, and still lasts )

Like redboss, I'll shut up now

Well, my favourite author is by far, Anne Rice. I adore her writing style, the passion she puts into describing even the smallest details; the beauty of her characters, it's almost like you could feel every word, like you could be walking hand by hand with the character through those timeless places she loves to write about. My favourite book by her... It's hard to tell; but right now, I fell in love with 'Blood and Gold' all over again.

Other than Anne Rice's somehow 'romantic' novels, I enjoy books that have an edge of danger, suspense; books that won't let me drop them. I really enjoy fictional novels with some kind of historic content.

I read Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder when I was just a kid. I thought it was one of the greatest way to get interested in philosophy, while trying to figure out what is it that the author's hiding from you. It's dinamic, a little bizarre and amazingly written.

The Analyst by John Katzenbach has no real historical content, but it's one of those books you can devour faster than you can say the author's name . It's part of a series, they're all really good books.

The League of Night and Fog by David Morrell has that conspiracy theory kind of edge to it. It develops into a more and more trapping story that ends in a completely unexpected way. I like when books do that. I strongly recommend you to read at least one of David Morrell's books.

Of course, I also enjoy the classics like Dickens, Stephen King and E. Allan Poe. I still love The Petit Prince, and I think One Hundred Years of Solitude is a really good book, although it can be very heavy and kind of... Depressing. I think that's all I remember for now.

I thought no one else here would mention García Márquez. I'm glad you did, he's an awesome writer!!!

E. M. Remarque And J. R. R. Tolkien
ou, and ofc. Jeremy Clarkson

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King are the very best in my eyes. I love the idea of Roland and the entire universe created there. It intrigues me

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewezki (I think that's how you spell it)

A great, intriguing, inventive, unusual, book. The set up is bizarre the story is creepy, the three stories veshed together gives it a much more developed univers, oh and nothing beats the sideways passages or the maze of footnotes. Definately a great experimental novel by a great author.

The Black Dagger series by J.R. Ward

Humorous, action-packed and erotic books.
In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly turf war going on between vampires and their slayers. There exists a secret band of brothers like no other-six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Yet none of them relishes killing more than Wrath, the leader of The Black Dagger Brotherhood.

Criminy, I have too many to list. Here are a few:

Stephen King: What makes his work brilliant is, if you take out the supernatural, you still have a very good story.

Richie Tankersley Cusick and L.J. Smith-My two favorite authors as a teen. They both wrote exciting stories with just enough weirdness to make them fun, too.

Jacqueline Carrey-Author of Kushiel's Dart series. She manages to roll fantasy, history and political intrigue all into one cohesive universe. The sheer depth of research she had to do just to have a solid foundation is madness.

Laurell K. Hamilton-Author of the Anita Blake and Meredith Gentry books. I haven't read any of hers for a while, but her early works are fantastic. Suspense, the supernatural, and a touch of sensuality made for good reading. Her books started to focus more on the sex rather than story, and that's when I stopped reading. However, I heard she's getting good again, so I might pick one up soon.

Okay, that's enough for now.

it's hard...i love so many. anyway, my favourite book is wuthering heights by emily bronte, the only book she's ever written. i love books that make me suffer, books that give me a very sad mood, and i'm not a masochist or a freaking emoist, but i feel that a book is really good when it makes you not only happy but when it hurts you. i also love requiem for a dream by hubert selby jr ,torture the artist by joey goebbles, one flew over the cocoo's nest by i don't remember who, shogun by james clavell and so many others.

my favourite author is by far, a romanian writer and historic of religions, MIRCEA ELIADE. all his books are full of miths and the characters are complex people and the books have a suspended end, i love that.

My favourite author is Stephen King and my favourite book (by him) is Salem's Lot.

Hmmm, Asimov Isaac & Dean R. Koontz

By far my favourite book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Moving, current, and has a very interesting commentary about the state of society

I think the authors are Agatha Christie and Paul Auster

J.K Rowling
Clive Barker
Neil Gaiman
Piers Anthony
Lemony Snicket
Anthony Burgess

Thomas Harris and his Hannibal Lecter trilogy. That crazy cannibal will always have a place in my heart.

Robin Cook. He writes medical thrillers and even a person like me, who doesn't know a thing about that stuff, will actually understand it.
I can recommend his novels 'Mortal Fear' and 'Toxin'.

I don't have a favorite book or author..........there are too many to name! But I did want to share something and I didn't know where to put it so I will post it here. I love poems and this is one of my favorites and this is by far the best translation, although there are many:

Le Pont Mirabeau by Guillaume Apollanaire as translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti with the help of David Delannet:

The Mirabeau Bridge

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Siene
And our loves too
Must I remember them again
Joy came always after pain

Comes the night Tolls the time
The days go by and I remain

Face to face and hand in hand we stand
While under the bridge of our arms
flow the waves so weary with
our eternal look

Comes the night Tolls the time
The days go by and I remain

Love goes by like this running stream
Love goes by -
How slow is life
How violent is Hope!

Comes the night Tolls the time
The days go by and I remain

Pass the days pass the weeks
Neither the past nor loves
come back again
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Comes the night Tolls the time
The days go by and I remain

Let me add Dan Brown to my favorite authors beside Paul Auster And Agatha Christie...

Hmm, I'd say the Halo Chronology. I also love Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne; it's an emotional and personal medieval fantasy drama, with similarities to the Greek trageties.

Ih like very much Terry Pratchett and his diskworld books. the most like like Death and his naive inquisitive character.

g.r.r. martin and the Song of Ice and Fire series

jon will kick ass the white walkers and rule the kindgodms together with Daenerys, i wish

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Master JRR Tolkien!

Since I am not much of a bookworm there are no specific authors but some title that took my interest. Potter - Saga of course (thinking book 5 was boring), Faust by Goethe and books about supernatural phenomena

Well I like fiction a lot, so I am gonna have to go with Dan Brown. Apart from that (This sounds crazy) I appreciate Lemony Snicket's work, cause I believe his grammar is pretty simple and effective. But if Poets of the Fall wrote a book, (needless to say) they'll bring the rain on other guys.....or gals.

hmm.. what a great topic!

love clive barker - weaveworld, imajika, his SF rocks!
piers anthony xanth series - easy reads but LOVE the puns
tad williams - otherworld series area awesome
steven king/peter straub - the talisman
and king's darktower series (i hear they are making a movie...:/)

and the newest one - joe abercrombie - the first law series - not normally my type of read (sort of along the lines of tolkien lord of the rings) but his character development is awesome!

thanks for the suggestion ivireanu!

Good topic!

My favourite author i Tomas Mann. I like the way he writes, I like his way of thinking and expressing his thoughts.

And I Don`t have favourite book - each is special itself