You Don’t Have A Favorite Author
As a proud and pugnacious fanboy of literary fiction, I am often asked THE question that all of his fellow bibliophiles both love and dread: “Who is your favorite author?”
This seemingly innocuous, even kind-hearted question causes a peculiar paralysis, one born of self-consciousness and existential dread. Because here’s a little secret—no one has a favorite author. That’s right, you heard it here first; we’re all lying when we tell someone that John Steinbeck or Barbara Kingsolver or Toni Morrison or Tolstoy or Austen is our favorite author.
Don’t resist; you know this to be true. Can you really say that you always crave Dostoyevsky on the beach? Or Dickens on a long plane ride? Or Margaret Atwood on the subway? Or Hemingway on rainy Sundays or Joyce on a bright September morn? You see what we’re getting at here.
One of Book Riot’s founding principles is that our tastes are as changeable as the weather and twice as unpredictable. So, we need a stable of go-to authors to attend to our carousel of whim, our revolving door of obsession.
Who have been your “favorite” authors at various times? What authors do you turn to on specific occasions? Who is your favorite author now and how long do you think that will last?
