Your Favourite Authors' Favourite Books

Struggling to decide what your next read should be? One way to find new authors that you might be interested in is to turn to the authors that you already like. If you like their style then the chances are that you’re also going to like the authors who inspired them.

In fact, it can be a lot of fun to try to spot the influences or to identify specific techniques that they’ve borrowed and put to use in their own work. But who exactly are our favourite authors’ favourite authors? Let’s take a look!

1. Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is hailed by most as one of the greatest authors of all time, and indeed his work features on many other authors’ favourite book lists. A few of Hemingway’s favourite books included Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dubliners by James Joyce.

2. George R. R. Martin

You can probably guess this one. George R. R. Martin’s favourite books have been J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings ever since he was a teen, although he did go on record not too long ago to say that Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was a recent discovery that he’d be thinking about for a long time to come.

3. Gillian Flynn

Flynn is most well-known as the author of Gone Girl, and perhaps she takes inspiration for the twists and turns in her stories from some of her favourite authors. Answering fans in a Q&A session, she cited two of her favourites as And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. 

4. R. L. Stine

Goosebumps author R. L. Stine unsurprisingly finds his inspiration via a range of different authors, but one shoutout in particular caught our attention. Writing for the Washington Post back in 2012, Stine talked about his love for Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, which he called one of the most underrated books of all time.

5. J. K. Rowling

The creator of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a voracious reader with a range of different influences, with favourite works including Emma by Jane Austen and The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbitt. Both are magical in their own way, but they’re also notable for being so far removed from the wizarding world. There are parallels for sure, but they’re not always easy to spot.

Conclusion

These are just a few of our favourite authors and their favourite books, and there’s plenty more information out there. In fact, these days, we can quite easily hop on to social networking sites to take a look at our favourite authors’ favourite Starbucks orders. So now it’s over to you so you can share your favourite authors and what their favourite books are. Be sure to let us know in the comments!