Favorite writers?

 Mark Twain
 Anthony Burgess
 Daphne Du Maurier
 Issac Assimov
 George R.R Martin
 Kurt Vonnegut
 Tom Sharpe
 Douglas Adams
 Haruki Murakami
 Stephen King- He gets a lot of crap for being a trashy writer, but I like most of his books and On Writing got me into writing.
 Vladmir Nabokov
 Alexandre Dumas
 Rudyard Kipling
 Theodore Sturgeon
 Evelyn Waugh
 Raymond Carver
Cormac McCarthy

I need to read more, but my favourite by far is H.P. Lovecraft.

Terry Pratchett.

Jeffrey Archer

Isaac Asimov
Douglas Adams  
Piers Anthony 
George Orwell 
Robert Jordan 
Chuck Nalahniuk 
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
Raymond Chandler 
Alan Moore 

John Hodgman 
Lewis Carroll 
Ray Bradbury 
George Orwell 
Stephen King 
Doug Adams 
Garth Nix (Yeah...yeah... I read YA fiction too.)

Truman Capote 
Alan Moore 
H.P. Lovecraft 
Stephen King 
Bret Easton Ellis 

Tim Rogers, Gene Ray, Ray Kurzweil. I like messed up brainstorming.

Tim O'Brien
Kurt Vonnegut
John Steinbeck
Charles Dickens
Dennis Lehane
Stephen King
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jedidiah Berry 
George Orwell
W.D. Ehrhart
Philip K. Dick

Alexander Pushkin
Lev Tolstoy
Anton Czehov
Nikolai Gogol
Isaac Azimov

Patrick O'Brian 
Jules Verne 
Frank Herbert (just for Dune, really)
 Philip Pullman
 
.... and a couple dozen other people. Those are the first that come to mind though.

Kurt Vonnegut 
Jhonen Vasquez 
Alan Moore 
Ray Bradbury 
Kahlil Ghibran  
some Ayn Rand 

George Orwell

I agree about King. great writer.
 
My favorite is Bret Easton Ellis though.

R.L. Stine. Goosebumps fuckin rocked.

based solely on having read a book of theirs each, i'd say gabriel garcia marquez and mark z. danielewski.

"  Mark Twain  Anthony Burgess  Daphne Du Maurier  Issac Assimov  George R.R Martin  Kurt Vonnegut  Tom Sharpe  Douglas Adams  Haruki Murakami  Stephen King- He gets a lot of crap for being a trashy writer, but I like most of his books and On Writing got me into writing.  Vladmir Nabokov  Alexandre Dumas  Rudyard Kipling  Theodore Sturgeon  Evelyn Waugh  Raymond Carver Cormac McCarthy "

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Agatha Christie
Amy Tan
Diana Gabaldon 
J.K. Rowling

" @Innersloth said:

"  Mark Twain  Anthony Burgess  Daphne Du Maurier  Issac Assimov  George R.R Martin  Kurt Vonnegut  Tom Sharpe  Douglas Adams  Haruki Murakami  Stephen King- He gets a lot of crap for being a trashy writer, but I like most of his books and On Writing got me into writing.  Vladmir Nabokov  Alexandre Dumas  Rudyard Kipling  Theodore Sturgeon  Evelyn Waugh  Raymond Carver Cormac McCarthy "

The lack of Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke in this list disturbs me. "

Cormac McArthy, John Stienbeck, and Ray Bradbury are my top 3. 

" @GhostlyEnigma said:

" @Innersloth said:

"  Mark Twain  Anthony Burgess  Daphne Du Maurier  Issac Assimov  George R.R Martin  Kurt Vonnegut  Tom Sharpe  Douglas Adams  Haruki Murakami  Stephen King- He gets a lot of crap for being a trashy writer, but I like most of his books and On Writing got me into writing.  Vladmir Nabokov  Alexandre Dumas  Rudyard Kipling  Theodore Sturgeon  Evelyn Waugh  Raymond Carver Cormac McCarthy "

The lack of Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke in this list disturbs me. "

I like Arthur C. Clarke, but his Space Odyssey series got terrible later on. He can be very hit and miss. "

John Irving, by far.

The books I always seem to go back to are from the Dragonlance series.  For those unfamiliar, it's along the same fantasy lines as dungeons and dragons, but with some different races, heroes, etc.  The authors of most of the books are Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and I believe they do a fabulous job with their writing.  I'm not sure what it is about their writing or it could be the characters in their stories, but I've loved their books ever since I picked up my first copy some 7 years ago.

John Steinbeck 
Charles Bukowski 
Jack Kerouac 
Stephen King 
Douglas Coupland 
Jack London

you dont know whats good. 
grab  Paul Samuelson...
 
reading with benefit :)

Hunter S Thompson.

No Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy? Fuck you guys.

George R.R. Martin
Terry Goodkind (suprised I haven't seen him in any other lists.)
J.K. Rowling
Dean Koontz
George Orwell

William Blake 
William Cullen Bryant 
Walt Whitman 
T. S. Eliot 
Ezra Pound 
Christopher Hitchens 
Marianne Moore 
Claude McKay 
Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun is the best book ever).

Yoko Ogawa
Haruki Murakami
Roald Dahl if only for his book My uncle Oswald

• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Vladimir Bartol
• Andrzej Sapkowski
• Dmitry Glukhovski
• Stephen King
• R. L. Stine
• John Steinbeck
• Ernest Hemingway

yeah I dont read fast enough to be a regular reader. I wish I could read faster, but it takes an hour to read 10 pages. I understand the material thoroughly, but I read really slow so its hard for me to choose, though I do enjoy mark twaine's works quite a bit and chuck palniuk has had some good books.

Collectively, I've read more by R.L Stine and Louis Sachar than anyone else.

H.P. Lovecraft

I've read very few books. 
So I guess Orson Scott Card and Eric Nylund get props from me for being able to hold my interest long enough to finish the books. 
 
Yea, I need to read more.

I have only one... Dan Abnett.

Hmmm really wish you would have made this a top 5 thing to keep it short and sweet.
 
Eh I'm too lazy to make decisions so I'll just post up my 10 in no order, man and I read a good amount of stuff in spanish...eh I'll just add one.
 
Lovecraft 
Vonnegut 
Arthur C Clarke 
Cormac McCarthy 
Phillip K. Dick 
William Gibson 
Tolkien 
George R.R. Martin 
Raymond Chandler 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

Milan Kundera 
Albert Camus 
Jack London 
A.A. Milne 
Bill Watterson 
 
There are others, but these were the first five I thought of. 

I don't read fiction and its very rare to find work done by the same person when talking about scholarly research/journals. 
 
On the other hand Maddox(online writer) was pretty cool, he has that site, the best page in the universe. But i think he is going to stop writing now, he turned youtube, soooo its videos now. 

" No Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy? Fuck you guys. "

Joseph Conrad 
Cormac McCarthy 
Tim O'Brien 
Ray Bradbury 
Jack London 
Ernest Hemingway  
William Faulkner 
H.P. Lovecraft 
Isaac Asimov 

We need more Terry Pratchett and Terry Goodkind in this thread!  I also enjoy a bit of Neal Stephenson and Haruki Murakami.