Author meme

I recently added this review blog to a "Books and Blogs" webring of reviewers associated with Library Thing, and was tagged by Literary License with this meme. So here goes:

Author Meme Rules: Link to the person that tagged you, post the rules somewhere in your meme, answer the questions, tag six people in your post, let the tagees know they’ve been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog, let the tagger know your entry is posted.


1. Who’s your all-time favorite author, and why? Well, dang. I can't answer this question. I can easily answer every other question in this meme, about first favorite author, newly added favorite author, who comes to mind favorite author.... All-time favorite author? That would mean emphasizing one of these categories of favorites over another, and I just can't seem to do it.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites? I'd have to say that Arthur C. Clarke was my first truly meaningful favorite author, who started me on the road to science fiction. In 1984/85, I spent my high school junior year as an exchange student in (then West) Germany. At the begining of the year, I couldn't read German well enough to read young adult or adult fiction, so one of my teachers lent me a box of old SF paperbacks someone had left in his attic, including some Clarke and Asimov. After I'd run through those, I found an English-language bookshop in downtown Hamburg that had a great sci-fi section, and I've never looked back. That was also the year the movie 2010 came out, and I was blown away by both the book and the movie. My favorite Clarke titles are probably Imperial Earth and Songs of Distant Earth, which aren't considered among his "important" works, but they're darn important to me. I do still consider him among my favorites, but I see his writing differently now. I see the flaws, and the little things I don't like about his writing, and mostly I feel a fond affection for those flaws, if that makes sense, as if only one who knows his writing this intimately could see and so easily forgive those flaws.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite authors, and why? Glenda Larke, an Australian fantasy writer, blew me away with her Isles of Glory trilogy: The Aware, Gilfeather, and The Tainted. The world-building was astounding, the stakes were high, and the characters were fully drawn. I'm now reading her next trilogy, and I hope we see more and more books from her in the future. Oh, and Kay Kenyon -- based on her The Entire and the Rose quartet, of which two have so far been published: Bright of the Sky and A World Too Near.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection? Mary Doria Russell, Joe Haldeman, Glenda Larke, Nicola Griffith, Ian Falconer, Lauren Child, Marjory Hall.... (I'm pretty sure most people won't have heard of that last one....)

5. Tagged:
Medieval Bookworm
She is too fond of books...
A Reading Life
Calliope's Coffee House
Silverheron's Nest