Ask for my favorite writer and I'll probably reply with the name of this little-known author. She wrote gentle short stories—mostly fantasy—during the 50s, 60s and 70s. A long-time teacher living in the American Southwest, she set her stories in those arid lands, and she sketched children's characters better than just about anybody. About half her stories are about "The People"—human-looking aliens with special powers, struggling to find each other. All her books are collections of her short stories. I think the paperbacks are out of print.

Who? Creator of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—that's who. Fun and formative stuff. Every now and then, I'll pick one up and read it. Stratemeyer didn't really write the stories, tho. He (and later, his daughters and other successors) provided outlines to ghost writers who fleshed them out, under the famous pseudonyms of Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene. Leslie McFarlane ghosted the first Hardy Boy books. Mildred Wirt Benson ghosted the first Nancy Drew books. For fans of the 1930s, Applewood Books is reproducing the original versions of the early books with their original illustrations and dust jackets.

In the early 80s, I purchased David Keirsey's & Marilyn Bate's book on personality types. My girlfriend-at-the-time and I answered the questions, got our profiles (or "types") and spent the rest of the evening reading the appropriate sections to each other. We were both fascinated because it caught our personalities better than anything before. Based on the works of Isabel Myers which, in turn, derives from Carl Jung's ideas, it can be used for fun or for serious investigation. (Perhaps an expert in Chaos Theory with its "strange attactors" could study and explain personality types in scientific terms.)

Even tho I ain't religious, I was transported by Dante's great work. I read John Ciardi's verse translation, laden with footnotes. I hope to read it again. It doesn't mean anything that I felt most at home in "Inferno", does it?

Perhaps he's too cynical, but I find his style of writing so engaging that I don't care what the content is about. He (like S.I. Hayakawa) has that cadence to his prose that appeals to my ear and a sweeping vocabulary that furnishes just the right word or phrase. He was prolific and works are widely reprinted.

Here's one of those guys who went out while in his youth and had a lifetime's worth of adventure, then spent the rest of his time writing about it. I'm a lifelong stick-in-the-mud and must accept that I will not be able to write a Jack London type of story that rings true.

This is more my type of writer. A stay-at-home dreaming of far-off adventures. His stories were somewhat formulaic but vastly fun.