<>JRRTolkien<> – you know<>CSLewis<> – especially Till We Have Faces<>Dorothy Sayers<> – the Lord Peter Wimsey books, especially the foursome about him and Harriet Vane<>Jane Austen<> – especially all of them<>Charles Dickens<> – especially Tale of Two Cities and most of the rest of themThere, that’s a start.

Mine would be:David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest is his best, but I even liked his book on the mathematical history of infinity, so I guess that means All of them!Patrick O’Brian – All (they’re all really one extended book anyway)Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Brothers Karamazov is my favoriteVictor Hugo – Les Mis and HunchbackAlbert Camus – The Plague, The RebelVladimir Nabokov – Lolita, of course, but Ada, or Ardor is great tooJonathan Franzen – The Corrections, Strong MotionPhilip Roth – American Pastoral, especiallyAlexandre Dumas – Count of Monte Cristo, La Reine Margot are my two favoritesJon Krakauer – Into The Wild, Into Thin Air, Eiger Dreams, Under The Banner of HeavenNorman MacLean – AllJames Fenimore Cooper – All, but I think I like The Deerslayer the bestJane Austen – All, but esp. P&P

Difficult, difficult… naming favourites is always hard, but I’ll give it a try:– A few years ago I would probably have said J.D Salinger without a moments hesitation. His work does not mean as much to me anymore but it triggered a surprising and exhilirating desire in me to write when I first encountered it. Ironically, I’m not a big fan of his most famous novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”, but I love “Franny and Zooey”, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Inroduction”. Salinger was the first author I came across who approached humour with such gravity, his characters are so tragically funny, so endearingly human. – I have to put down a recent favourite: “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. Was worried it wouldn’t be as good as everyone’s been cracking it up to be, but there was no need to worry- I sobbed the whole coach journey home, rumbling through the English countryside thinking about the little Afghan boy living in the book clutched in my hands. – Anything by Louis de Berniéres.– J.M Coetzee. “Foe” completely changed the way I thought about the emergence of Western Civilization, the Englightenment and the Robinson Crusoe myth. – Athol Fugard (I know, he is a playwright.. but he is a darn good one!)– Anne Lamott. I love that woman! She made me see that God is big, and bigger still.– Marcel Proust (Does that make me a literary snob? Oh well.) Can only take his stuff in small doses, but his language is beautiful.– Haven’t finished this book, but I’m loving it so far: “Austerlitz” by W.G. Sebald.– “House of Sleep” by Jonathan Coe. Because it’s romantic and we need some romance for crying out loud… (“Your grace, your gravity, have turned a tide in me”)Can’t think of any more right now and this list will probably change by tomorrow, but there you go!I was so excited that you replied to my message 😀 My computer is very temperamental, and occasionally dies completely, so I can’t get on line very often, but I have an e-mail account I check sometimes if you ever want to swap writing or something like that: lk_sjo@hotmail.comWould love to hear more about your story and journey of faith! The World Wide Web is a strange place for sure. You never know who you are gonna bump into…

Fish away, sister. My favorites:Gabriel Garcia Marquez – hands down. His writing is absolutely brilliant. And did you know he reads a page a day in the dictionary just because he loves words so much?Pablo Neruda – he doesn’t really write books, but poetry counts, right? I could read him all day long.(Pablo and Gabriel are the other men in my marriage, but Roberto accepts them willingly.)Jane Austen – see, despite the accusations of my closest friends, I do read in English (on occasion).There are more. But I have to go do some writing of my own, so I’ll leave you (letters, not books…)All this talk of authors has tightened my chest and reminded me just how much I miss reading fiction. I need to start again. Yes, I think I must.

Jon,Victor Hugo’s Les Mis should have made my list, too. Excellent taste you have there.TwoRivers,Also superb taste with Jane Austen. I think we’d like each other very much.