I geek, therefore I am

This one’s for p.w., who asked for something like it a long time back but who fell victim to my amazing hamster memory.

These are the authors I can read again, and again, and again simply because I am madly in love with their writing.

1. Terry Pratchett. Because he writes like he’s on speed and loving it. A true original, the man has a hellishly wicked way with words. Don’t whine "but fantasy is not my thing", it’s just a vehicle to let him satirize the living fuck out of every single sacred cow out there, from religion to Hollywood to racial prejudice. He does it all with a joyous, madcap sense of fun, the wildest imagination and with a tongue-in-cheek hilarity. He writes like he harnessed creative lightning and smoked weed on top of that. But it’s not just about being funny, sometimes he gets right to the heart of you and stops you dead. Don’t ever expect to understand what the hell the book is about for at least the first few chapters, just strap yourself in more the ride. If you’ve never read him, run, don’t walk, to your nearest library. Almost all of them are good, but my personal favorites are: Small Gods, Interesting Times, Reaper Man, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Hogfather, Witches Abroad.

2. Tanith Lee. Good luck getting hold of her books, some of them are apparently banned. Again, like Pratchett, it’s presumably fantasy or sci-fi, but really, it’s just about a damn good story about the mores and conventions governing our world. But whereas Terry Pratchett uses an absolutely crazed plotline and a wicked sense of humour to gut society open, Tanith Lee uses almost magical worlds, close to ours, but not quite, and weaves characters and worlds which are some of the richest and most thought-provoking out there. A world where you could recreate your body so you could look like anything or anyone you wanted, where you couldn’t die unless you wanted to, and the only rule is pleasure. Warning though, sometimes her stories are heartbreaking. Best bets are Biting The Sun and The Silver Metal Lover . Oh, and she wrote the most frightening version of Snow White ever in White As Snow.


3. Neil Gaiman. Because Neverwhere ranks right up there as one of the best books I’ve ever read, because his language is simple but the sense of atmosphere he cerates is so unbelievably palpable, because sometimes his turn of phrase is achingly beautiful, and because he is able to horrify a reader in ten pages. Coraline actually scared the bejesus out of me. Very disturbing, but compulsively readable. Neverwhere is practically mandatory reading, as is Smoke and Mirrors (tell me the short story Babycakes doesn’t disturb the living fuck out of you) and Coraline.

4. James Herriot. I swear, between him and Willard Price, I never stood a chance. The life of a vet has never been funnier. I think my favorite story was the dog which used to sneak up on him from behind the fence. His writing style is simple, but he has a fine feel for the sense of the ridiculous, and his wit is almost always terribly self-deprecating. His writing shines because he loves what he does, and it comes through so strongly you can’t help but fall in love with what he loves as well. Also appeals to the medical geek lurking in the heart of Slinky.

5. Peter Mayle . Thanks to him I have a mad desire to fly to Provence and eat all the food I can find. Thanks to him, pastis sounds like the most enticing drink in the world (I’ve had it, it’s not) and I know that the cottage truffle industry is full of espionage and prize truffle pigs. Reading his books are a gastronomical and literary feast for the sense, and I owe my Francophilia at least in part to him. Both his fiction and non-fiction are incredibly good. Get A Year In Provence, Toujours Provence, and A Dog’s Life.

6. Louis be Bernieres - for the love of God, go read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Forget the fact that Hollywood came along and made a complete travesty of it because Nicholas Cage can’t do an Italian accent even if his life depended on it. The book is luminous. It’s funny and tragic and beautiful, and it’s one of those books which you find yourself wanting to read faster because you’re so in love with the book you need to know what happens next, but you force yourself to slow down because you can’t bear for the book to end. It is a beautiful, wondrous book, and I love it.

7. Michael Marshall Smith - Head-trippy sort of writing, and a bit difficult if you don’t like your writing with a bit of a techy flavor, but absolutely worth it. Very dark, often apocalyptic writing. Best one so far is Spares, where the modern world has evolved so that everyone has clones of themselves in order to ensure that compatible spare parts are easy to obtain. Deeply disturbing, wildly original, savagely written. Fantastic.

8. Roald Dahl. No introduction necessary.

9. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling - editors for collections of fairy tales, rewritten for adults. These fairy tales are definitely not for children, if they ever were, in the first place. Violence, sex, greed, love, loss, all of that. The collection is in five volumes so far, I think, with Snow White, Blood Red, Silver Birch, Blood Moon, and Black Heart, Ivory Bones some of the titles published. Go find the story "Ivory Bones" by Susan Wade, which is an update of Thumbelina. The sense of horror that creeps up on you when you read it, sign of a good story.

Honorary mentions

10. Oscar Wilde - all his plays, and definitely his collection of fairy tales.

11. Jim Butcher. Okay, there’s absolutely no intellectualism in this one at all, he writes an equivalent of a really good action movie. Lots of fighty-fighty and great dialogue, really fun characters, all about a wizard called Dresden in our world, where magic exists but we just don’t know it.

12. Stephen King, because even though he’s accused of being cheap horror and writing commercial shtick, I fell madly in love with The Dark Tower saga and I’m selfishly glad he didn’t up and die before he finished it, because otherwise I’d never find out whether Roland found the Dark Tower. And The Shining was genuinely scary. When I was reading it once ad all the lights went out and I was alone at home, sweet Jesus, I so didn’t hang around near any open doors.

13. Janet Evanovich, but only up to about book five. Book one (One For The Money) made me laugh so fucking hard though. The market is flooded with either these macho men type stories where everyone has biceps the size of footballs and can abseil down buildings on a length of spidersilk and using their little fingers to kill ninja assassins, or these tough-as-nails chicks who occupy all the positions usually held by men, where they kick ass. Here, the main character becomes a thoroughly incompetent bounty hunter because she can’t afford not to be, and oh my god, it’s so fucking funny.

14. Diana Gabaldon. The only romance which I’ve ever enjoyed, because the characters were so unbelievably real. The main character doesn’t simper around in bosom-enhancing dresses being all fiesty (but feminine!) and making the man feel exasperated yet strangely attracted to her, and there is no fundamental misunderstanding based on her mistaken identity and being caught in the broom closet with the footservant (played by Orlando Bloom), and they don’t have to find the magical key to the golden monkey’s buttocks or else their love will be in jeopardy and they have extremely euphemistic sex and she’s always a bloody virgin. God, those books drive me nuts. This one is extraordinary, completely plot-driven, great fighting sequences, characters which are so real you get sucked right in, and some of the most engaging, funniest dialogue I’ve ever read. The book’s characters had actual chemistry, and we’re talking volcanic-hot here. And it doesn’t have Fabio on the cover, which can only be a plus.

15. S.L Viehl - because her sci-fi doctor totally grabs my medical geek by the neck and squeezes. Doctors, diagnostics and aliens, what’s not to like?

16. Jeff Noon - another head-trippy sort of book, definitely more drugged-out than Michael Marshall Smith, more in the category of Neil Stephenson. Absolutely insane worlds, you’d either really like it or you’d hate it because you don’t get it. Try Vurt .

17. Steven Pressfield - I don’t like books about war, and I don’t like books about history, and I certainly don’t like books about both. But Steven Pressfield writes like an angel about both, and history has never been quite so enthralling. The tragic, ultimately-unwinnable Battle at Thermopylae was sketched out in breathtaking detail, with the lives of the Spartans being brought to life by the characters he creates in Gates of Fire (yes, I know Hollywood made a movie too, but fuck Hollywood). The Amazons are the subject of Last of the Amazons, also really, really good.

18. Choderlos de Laclos for Dangerous Liaisons, which isn’t easy reading, but patience will be rewarded, since it’s got some of the most wicked lines ever written.