Blog Post
Authors We Love
And mourn when they write no more....
Every reader has favorite authors. Most of those who are still with us keep writing as long as they can punch a key board, dictate, or draw a breath. It is a part of the fabric of their being, to write. Lillian Jackson Braun, the successful writer of the cozy mystery series, The Cat Who..... knew when she reached her 90th year she was past being able to write anymore quality stories featuring Jim Quilleran and his beloved felines. But because her adoring public wanted more she tried - with heartbreaking results.
My sister and I were both avid fans of Dick Francis. We didn't always care for the hint of some of his personal opinions that showed themselves in his novels, but we agreed he was a phenomenal writer of fiction, with an amazing gift for weaving a great story. About ten years before Mr. Francis did pass away my sis confided, "I'm so afraid he's going to die so there won't be any more books!"
Of course we both knew it was inevitable that he would. Fortunately before that happened - in 2010 - this former steeple jockey who turned author was a prolific writer. He gave us plenty of material to go back and re-read.
Some of my other personal favorites are David McCullough, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Jacqueline Winspear, Eric Larson, and Rex Stout. If they wrote it, I want to read it - or re-read it after a period of time passes.
There are many other stories I'll never forget ,written by people who had something important to tell, and did it well. There are talented authors I have yet to find. There are the geniuses like Steinbeck and Tolkien who have become household names. There are authors with a large reputation and a large reading public I did try, and didn't care for.
If that guy named Gutenberg only knew what he started when he invented that printing press.
My list might be similar to yours. I re-read Jane Austen once a year, like my grandmother before me. She was reading "Pride and Prejudice" before cataract surgery when a friend asked how she could see to read, and she replied, "Oh, well, I know the words." I could say the same about Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. (Skip the "serious" fiction he tried to write first.) And Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers. I pulled one of the last Christie's off my shelf recently but put it back unfinished. Brilliant though she was, she is another whose public pressured her to keep writing when she should have stopped.
ReplyDeleteI'd add Marian Babson to your list. Her mysteries are laugh-out-loud funny. And her last was, if not my favorite, still as good as ever. I'm sure I'll think of more later.
I'm grabbing a pen and paper and writing down Marian Babson - plus some of the other authors listed below - and taking the time to explore them all!
DeleteI agree totally about Rex Stout, he had to find his niche - when he did he was enormously successful and rightfully so.
As far as Christie goes, also agree with your take; have always thought she was too
prolific and there is no denying some of her work was 2nd rate compared to what she
was capable of. Funny, but nowadays Christie seems like one of those pioneers of the great whodunit era, someone you start sinking your teeth into but move on eventually.
Mystery lovers owe a lot to Agatha Christie, and she wrote some exceptional ones, but I agree that she spread her talents too thinly . . . which meant some of her work was second rate. I've read everything she wrote, several times, and it's clear that she occasionally recycled a story -- making a few superficial changes. The 1960s have a lot to answer for, including lots of awful fiction and films, and I think she suffered some from its influence -- though not as much as the films that were made of her novels during that time.
DeleteYou will love Marian Babson. Some of her stories are sort of dark, not so funny, but most of them are hilarious and all of them are very good indeed.
I also enjoy the John Putnam Thatcher series written under the pseudonym Emma Lathen, for Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Hennisert. I really didn't discover this series until near the end of their writing career, so I don't know if it fits the theme of your post.
Eric Larson is a common name. I looked him up on Goodreads but not sure I found the right author. What did Eric Larson write?
ReplyDeleteYour list of favorites behooves me to give my own list. Here it is: Janice Holt Giles, Michael R. Phillips, Nancy Turner, Lynn Austin, Jennifer Chiaverini, Phillip Yancey, Corrie ten Boom. I also like David McCollough. Happy reading!
I might help if I spelled the name right; it is Erik Larson. He wrote Isaac's Storm,
Deleteand several other books about a certain event in history.
Speaking of spelling, even after about 4 edits, I missed the fact that I wrote that Gutenberg Invited rather than Invented the printing press. Sigh..... Husband caught it, and it was
an easy fix.
When it comes to typos I am the Queen. You have nothing on me! I did find Erik Larson. He sounds like a great author.
DeleteFunny that you should mention Rex Stout. I have been frustrated getting books as our library is virtually closed and the online books I want to read have a waiting list (one 164 ahead of me)! So, in desperation I pulled up a Rex Stout from my Kindle - what a joy the 3rd time around, it had me laughing right from the start. "Wolfe lifted his head. I mention that, because his head was so big that lifting it struck you as being quite a job. It was probably really bigger than it looked, for the rest of him was so huge that any head on top of it but his own would have escaped your notice entirely." That strikes me as hilarious!
ReplyDeleteSo agree with you, one of Stout's great talents was his development of Archie Goodwin, and putting what must have been his own capability for humor into him.
DeleteWriting a good plot is one thing, but making the entire read truly enjoyable needs that extra something.
If you have never seen the Nero Wolfe mysteries televised a number of years ago on TNT, Timothy Hutton does a very decent job of portraying Archie Goodwin, and the scripts stay pretty close to the stories. Wolfe's portrayal was okay, but did not quite fit my own perception from Stout's - and Archie's - descriptions. I also liked the portrayals of Fritz and Cramer.