Italo Calvino - Magical realism - short stories - short fairytales/ some more realism
Douglas Adams - skripts/ novels - doctor Who/ Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy - space/ science fiction
Guy Browning - comedy/ books about business
Donna Tartt - fiction - very minimalist and to the point - history/ real life murder mystery
Franz Kafka - realism - isolation, gulit, anxiety - Jewish, lived in Prague during WWII, burned 90% of his work
Samuel Beckett - philosophical writing - black comedy - looks at human existence in a satirical way - negative - life is meaningless - descriptive but heavy - has to be unpicked
Agatha Christie - murder mystery - clever/ twisted - set in real worl
Aldous Huxley - pacifism/ satire - recalls experiences on drugs - conditioning/ new technology
Edgar Allan Poe - short stories - gothic/ horror/ death (descriptive) - also detective/ science fiction
William Shakespeare - luurvee - na
Margaret Atwood - myths/ fairytales - time travel, zombies, superheroes, compounds, cults, new weird intensions etc.
Cormac McCarthy - gothic, post apocalyptic books, complex/ dark novels
Lin Yutang - society, the importance of living, philosophy, wise witty statements
Naomi Klein - economics history, capitalism, globalisation etc.
Susan Sontag - critic who travelled to places of conflict - wrote about photography/ media, illness, human writes - controversial - interesting but more theories - not characters, eating etc.
Haruki Murakami - Japanese writer of fantasy (surrealistic) - alienation/ loneliness themes - uper confusing character names
Carl Sagan - astrology - astrobiology/ physics- studied space/ constructed things to go into space - wrote scientific papers/ books - theories on space, global warming - earth on general etc.
Harper Lee - to kill a mockingbird - good and evil, morality, inequality, gothic settings, small town
Wole Soyinka - activist, first african to receive a turner prize, satirises nigerian elite etc.
Toni Morrison - central characters always african - american, controversial themes? better if blue eyes? slavery contemporary- concerned with race
George Orwell - political injustice, control of state over people, class - animal farm - comments on class systems, Russian revolution
William Burroughs - drug culture, harrowing/ grotesque, addict himself - interesting read
Malcolm Gladwell - how to think, theories - crime, science, unconscious, underdogs - TED talk
Leonora Carrington - surrealism - paintings/ books - alchemy, symbolism, interp of female sexuality - female body and ageing - crazy surreal books - celebrates the surreal - underworlds, crazy old ladies houses shaped like cakes - The Hearing Trumpet - weird .. not sure how surreal it actually is though
Angela Carter - adult fairy tails - the magical toyshop - like contemporary Grimm tales - twisted af - pornography etc.
Oliver Sacks - interested in the brain - books about patients/ own experiences - neurological disorder - quite heavy
Rachel Carson - marine biologist - environment - nature writer - attention to conservation/ pesticides/ the sea and reefs
Ray Bradbury - fantasy , horror, science fiction - future - book burning/ terrorism, jealous aliens - humans inhabiting mars - haunted house on mars/ magic
Ursula LeGuin - science fiction, fantasy - science/ psychological and social dimensions - all set in space - travel through dimensions - sexuality (ambisexual aliens)
I would like to look more into : Edgar Allen Poe, Angela Carter, Italo Calvino, Cormac McCarthy - generally when I'm reading I go for fantasy books as I find them the most interesting reads but I am worried that I am going to struggle to respond visually to these - I generally like drawing things from reference and struggle to construct mythical characters from my imagination. But reading through the list these are the authors who cought my eye the most! Maybe this will be an interesting challenge? I am going to do some more research into these authors before reconsidering.
I also really like the sound of Carl Sagan but because his work is just theories I am not sure how I would pick out 5 characters etc. I'm also worried that I'd get stuck just drawing planets and stars - I think I can push myself a little more than this.
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