Top Ten Picks: Favorite Writers

Top ten picks is a weekly meme hosted by Random Ramblings where each week a new topic is chosen to pick your ten ten favorites from. This weeks top ten: Favorite writers. :)
There are so many brilliant writers out there, and to choose a favorite would be so hard for me, but I could pick ten in no particular order so here it goes.

1. A. A. Milne
Well he popped into my head rather randomly but really he is one of my favorites. Even now I love to read the Winnie the Pooh stories, they make me laugh, and there are wonderful little lessons to learn from the animals in the Hundred Acre Woods, like accepting your friends for how they are in "In Which Tigger is Unbounced" and blind prejudice against things we don't understand in "In Which Kanga and baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet has a Bath." which are both two of my favorites. Like Dr. Suess's stories, A. A. Milne's aren't just for children.

2. Jane Austen
Well here she is! You we're expecting her right. ;) Anyway I must say I never truly appreciated Jane Austen until after I read Emma and Persuasion two of my favorite by her. I read P&P and S&S when I was younger and although I liked them I never really loved them, not like I love Emma and Persuasion now. Maybe I'll revisit P&P and S&S with my new found love for classics and appreciate them like I should.

3. L.M. Montgomery
You can read all about my love for her in this post. Really I can not begin to explain just how happy this author makes me when I read her books.

4. Ellen Raskin
I love this author because not only does she write mind-boggling mysteries for Young Adults and Middle graders, but because she actually leaves clues all through the book so that you can solve it right along with the characters. I mean, truthfully I've never succeeded in solving any of her stories before they were done, but looking back through them I saw that I could have. This author is really not to be missed. My two favorite novels of hers are The Westing Game and The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon(I mean Noel).

5. Agatha Christie
I have always loved mysteries but there are two...no three authors I knew I had to read to really call myself a mystery fan. One was Arthur Conan Doyle, the other was Edgar Allen Poe and the third was the queen of crime herself Agatha Christie. She is absolutely brilliant. I read The Body in the Library and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but after And Then There Were None I was hooked on this ladies novels.

6. Dianna Wynne Jones
I have already mentioned probably about a million times how much I enjoy DWJ's novels. They are wonderful examples of great british fantasy. She also writes some science fiction too. My three favorite novels by her are Charmed Life, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Game.

7. Elizabeth Gaskell
My friend Katherine over at A Love for Literature introduced me to this brilliant writer. I am reading Wives and Daughters right now, and am absolutely loving it. She has a wonderful style of writing, you just float into her books without realizing it. I have bought The Cranford Chronicles and am very interested in reading more of her work.

8. Beverly Cleary
I grew up on a healthy diet of Ramona, Henry Huggins, and Ralph S. Mouse. I loved every one of the books I read by Beverly Cleary, I really related to Ramona. -_-; But really she wrote some of the funniest, most touching books, ever written for children and I will definitely be saving her works for my future children. Also I can relate to Beverly Cleary as a writer because she wrote in her autobiography how she struggles with describing things and I also struggle with the same thing.
9. Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, two of the most influential books I have ever read. Taking experiences from her own life, FHB wrote wonderful stories about forgiveness, the power of love, and new beginnings, that can be appreciated by readers no matter what their age. Sarah Crewe and Mary Lennox are really two of the strongest female characters ever written, and who even now I look up to.

10. Rick Riordan
AHHH! This was such a good top ten picks and there are still so many authors I love!!! But I thought I'd end with one of my favorite modern day writers Rick Riordan. He is a really brilliant and imaginative writer, and it's too bad The Percy Jackson movie didn't live up to it's potential. I really love that series, and read the first book in the 39 clue's series which was cute. I can't wait to read The Kane Chronicles as well, I picked up the 1st book in the series for my b-day. :) Also can this guy name a chapter or what?! I am looking forward to the future books this man will write, because I think he's got a really great style.