So, now that I have this…

So, now that I have this appallingly long list (and I'm sure it'll continue to grow), it seems a shame not to make it public so others can use it; I think it'd be a great resource for book-shopping. :-) So I've stripped off the (rather artificial) rankings and alphabetized it. I think what would make this far more useful would be if it had brief annotations and links to the authors' websites.

If you have a moment to scan through, find any authors you suggested (or know well) and send me a line or two of description of their work (especially noting its relevance to genre), that'd be a great help. Thanks, everyone, for all your help and patience with this! See George Saunders for an example of what kind of annotation I mean. I'll post the full list to the SLF site, under booklists.

Alive:

  • Sherman Alexie
  • Isabel Allende
  • Martin Amis
  • Kingsley Amis
  • Kate Atkinson
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Paul Auster
  • Donald Barthelme
  • Charles Baxter
  • Aimee Bender
  • Ray Bradbury
  • Judy Budnitz
  • J.G. Ballard
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Octavia Butler (http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler/)
  • A.S. Byatt
  • Ron Carlson
  • Jonathan Carroll
  • Michael Chabon
  • Fred Chappell
  • Michael Crichton
  • John Crowley
  • Roald Dahl
  • Samuel R. Delany
  • Don DeLillo
  • Peter Dickinson
  • Umberto Eco
  • Dave Eggers
  • Harlan Ellison
  • Carol Emshwiller
  • Laura Esquivel
  • Karen Joy Fowler
  • Neil Gaiman
  • Amitav Ghosh
  • William Goyen
  • Alasdair Gray
  • Russell Hoban
  • Alice Hoffman
  • Nick Hornby
  • Graham Joyce
  • Caitlin R. Kiernan
  • Stephen King
  • Jane Langton
  • Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Doris Lessing
  • Kelly Link
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Ian McEwan
  • China Mieville
  • David Mitchell
  • Rick Moody
  • Michael Moorcock
  • Toni Morrison
  • Walter Mosley
  • Haruki Murakami
  • Suniti Namjoshi
  • Gloria Naylor
  • Katherine Neville
  • Audrey Niffenegger
  • Joyce Carol Oates
  • Walker Percy
  • Marge Piercy
  • Richard Powers
  • Thomas Pynchon
  • Salman Rushdie
  • Geoff Ryman
  • James Sallis (htp://www.jamessallis.com)
  • Jose Saramago
  • George Saunders: the author of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and numerous short stories in The New Yorker, Saunders writes dystopian fantasies of America in the near future, a toxic wasteland overrun by thugs and opportunists. His work has a distinctly magical realist element, with a horrific flavor. Often quite funny, in a twisted sort of way.

  • James Thurber
  • Kurt Vonnegut
  • Nancy Willard
  • Eleanor Wilner
  • Jeanette Winterson

Deceased:

  • Villiers de l'Isle Adam
  • Kathy Acker
  • Stephen Vincent Benet (supernatural apocalyptic free verse poems)
  • Anthony Burgess
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Italo Calvino
  • Angela Carter
  • H. Rider Haggard
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Franz Kafka
  • Rudyard Kipling
  • C.S. Lewis
  • Guy de Maupassant
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Mary Shelley
  • Bram Stoker
  • Jules Verne
  • HG Wells

4 thoughts on “So, now that I have this…”

  1. According to the official Roald Dahl website, he died on 11/23/1990. But we know that writers never really die, don’t we?

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