BLOGFEST 2009: Day 14

Last day for my own personal BLOGFEST 2009! Just to recap, this idea began as a promotional blog from Simon and Schuster, highlighting 40 authors with 14 questions over 2 weeks. I've taken the list of questions, answered them myself and posted them up for you all to enjoy and add your own comments to! Thank you for the email -- they were great!

And now, here is the final question before we go back to you regularly scheduled programming ...

Who are your favorite authors/what are your favorite books?
I don't think if I spent the next hour on this question I would finish it accurately. I love so many books from so many genres, I'm going to leave them out and feel silly later. Better to ask me what I don't like ... OK, here goes ...

What I love: JK Rowling; Steph Meyer's 'The Host' (though it needed to be cut by 100 pages or so); Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse and Harper Connelly series (who knew acne scars could be so hot?); Anne Rice (before she went crazy); Dean Koontz; Sherrilyn Kenyon (thanks for all those dreams, btw) ... Hmmm who else ... Greg Norris (a.k.a. Jo Atkinson, and my dear friend); Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Midsummer's Night'; Calvin and Hobbes comics; DnD authors and their adventures/commentary; 'Memoirs of a Geisha'; medical mysteries, horrors, adventures with twists and turns ... There's more, hang on ... Kathy Reight, whose name I can never spell properly, so I have stopped trying; Tess Gerritson's historical works; the story of 'Pride and Prejudice'; books with good covers (I dare you to argue with me about this) ... Oh! 'Holy Cow' was probably the best travel memoir I've ever read (the only one, too) ...

OK, that's a good taste of some of my preferences. Now, for the other side of the coin.

What I don't love: 'Catcher in the Rye' -- there, I said it; memoirs; anything older than I am, with the exception of Orwell's '1984' and other classic sci-fis I read in high school; monotonous chick lit hat's been done before; the first-person present tense in writing; John Grisham (man can write a great story but just can't end them); sorry ... i hate to admit this, but I didn't like 'Lord of the Rings' -- there is just no urgency!; women's lit, it's just not my thing; 'The Chronicles of Narnia' and other things that make me feel like I'm being preached to ...