My Top Fifteen Favourite Authors

I was tagged by a friend on Facebook to name 15 authors who have captured my imagination, shaped my intellect and consequently influenced how I live my life.

Well, 15 is such a number that I'm even forced to think whether I qualify to call reading as my hobby. But, here it goes:

1. Enid Blyton: Enid Blyton was my first favourite and Noddy my first love as a child. I used to fish out Noddy books from our junior school library. A little bit grown up, I loved the 'Famous Five' and the 'Secret Seven' series.

2. Jane Austen: She is my most favourite author as an adult. When I was in my teens and early-twenties, she introduced me to romance and I set foot in my thirties, she introduced me to feminism.

3. Erich Segal: I have read a few of his books but nothing has ever moved me the way Love Story did. I still cry even after having read it multiple times before.

4. J.K. Rowling: I am unabashedly and unapologetically a Harry Potter fan and have read each of the seven books multiple times.

5. Khaled Hosseini: I have read two of his books and the rest are in my to-read list. But those two were enough to redefine my reading list - somehow I could never again go back to Danielle Steel style romance.

6. Dan Brown: I loved 'Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons' and found the 'Deception Point' and 'Digital Fortress' too predictable. I am yet to read the rest and 'The Lost Symbol' is definitely on my list. But, why I include him here is that after having literally grown up in a convent school, my entire connection with the Bible stories I had heard as a child was ripped apart by his books and somehow I can never listen / read any bible story the same way ever again without being reminded of 'Da Vinci Code'.

7. John Grisham: All his books have similar names, similar story lines even and I often find it difficult to recall whether I have read his particular book or not. But, he is such an effortless writer that I can pick any of his book and read it at a stretch and even enjoy the same.

8. Jeffrey Archer: I loved the Kane and Able trilogy, especially 'The Prodigal daughter' thanks to its feminist storyline. The books were not at all connected in terms of the plot but were equally capable of hooking one. I didn't however enjoy his short stories, 'A Quiver full of Arrows'.

9. Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew series): Another book series I loved as a kid, after outgrowing Noddy, was the Nancy Drew series. They were a part of growing up as well.

10. Ayn Rand: Let me be honest, I have only read her 'The Fountainhead' as of now. It was a painfully difficult novel to read but so representative of our society today even though the novel itself was based in 1920s and 30s in US. 'Atlas shrugged' is waiting to be picked.

11. Sidney Sheldon: He was my first introduction to thrillers and the day I picked up a Sidney Sheldon (I even remember it was 'The Best Laid Plans'), I never again picked up another Danielle Steel. I was totally done away with romance.

12. Danielle Steele: Well, the entries above would make it sound like I detest Danielle Steel but in reality she and her books had introduced the idea of romance in my head in my early twenties. Only, she set the standard too high for real life people to be able to meet the criteria. *wink*

13. Robert Ludlum: This should actually have been much above in the list but I am not in the mood to redo the numbering (wish it worked like MS Word). The Jason Bourne series will always be my favourite (even the Matt Damon movie series which was radically different from the books) and he will remain my eternal Superhero - more human than any superhero stories in the world.

14. Margaret Mitchell: The only book she has ever written in her lifetime is also one of my all-time favourites, 'Gone with the Wind'. This book made the summer of 1996 beautiful for me.

15. Louisa May Alcott and Johanna Spyri: I am including these two for the only books of theirs that I have read till date: 'Little women' by Alcott, my introduction to classics and 'Heidi' by Spyri, my introduction to novels; both of which sowed the seeds to importance of being a good human beings.

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