Top Ten All Time Favorite Authors

Good gravy.  How do you pick just ten of your favorite authors?

I decided to make rules, because otherwise it's impossible (impossible!) to narrow it down.  There are too many. I asked myself: which books have I picked up and read and re-read (and haven't already written about ad nauseam on this blog)? How many of those authors have written other books that I've picked up and read and re-read?

And then I chose.  Eurgh.

So, yes, JK Rowling and Zora Neale Hurston should be on this list, as well as Hans Fallada, Frantz Fanon, Leo Tolstoy, and Diana Gabaldon.  But here we have it, cut down to a mere ten.  Three ladies, seven men, all white, five from Western Europe, five from these United States, nine out of ten deceased.  If you want to read something (potentially) life-changing, go pick up one of their books/letters/essays/poems.  My favorites? Linked in their names.

From left to right!

Top Row: 

Marilynne Robinson, Dorothy Sayers, Albert Camus, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Primo Levi

Bottom Row: 

Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Steig Larsson, Roald Dahl, John Steinbeck

Also, whenever I see that picture of John Steinbeck I think: You old cad, you.

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Who are your ten all time favorite authors? Would you be able to narrow it down?