You Don't Have a Favorite Author, Redux

Every week, Jenn over at Crazy for Books hosts the Book Blogger Hop--a chance to explore some new book blogs. This week, she asked that participants talk about a favorite author, but we always bristle at that question, like, we think, many readers do. However, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, we don't want to shirk the task, so will instead offer a previous post on the subject (in fact, the very first post here at The Ape).

You Don't Have a Favorite Author

As a proud and pugnacious fanboy of literary fiction, the Ape is often asked THE question 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 The Reading Ape'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. So stay tuned as we offer bizarrely specific recommendations for the myriad of reading occasions that comprise our literary lives.