Top Ten Tuesday: Authors and Books I'm Thankful For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the lovely people at The Broke and The Bookish. Every week, all the bloggers participating post their Top Ten list of a certain topic.

This week's topic is: Top ten authors and books I'm thankful for.

I'm not American so I don't do Thanksgiving, but seeing all those posts on twitter and around the blogosphere always gets me in a pensive mood, too, and makes me remember what and who I'm grateful to have in my life. So I'll give this list a try... as always, no particular order.
Sorry for the lack of pictures but there would be so many and the formatting always drives me nuts if I want them to look nice in the text.

1. Stephen King - On Writing
   I love this book and I've read it several times. Most of what I know about writing and how I approach it I've learned from here. It's written in a way that even my 17-year-old self could understand.
2. Ralf Isau - Der Kreis der Dämmerung (Circle of the Dawn)
   This is an epic saga in 4 volumes, spanning the entire 20th century. I've read all the books at least twice. They've made me laugh and cry and feel pretty much any emotion known to man. Reading makes me remember what's important. And I just love David Camden as a character.
3. J.R.R. Tokien - The Lord of the Rings
   Probably no explanation needed for this one... I first red it 10 years ago and have been meaning to re-read it... for the 5th time. It was part of my introduction to fantasy books.
4. Wolfgang & Heike Hohlbein
   I'm grateful for pretty much any book they've co-written between 1982 and 2004. I don't really know their more recent work. Some of my favorites are Der Greif, Dreizehn, Krieg der Engel, and Spiegelzeit. Those were the reads of my early to mid teens and fueled my imagination. I got another 2 or so from the school library every week (yes they wrote tons of books).
5. Kate Griffin - A Madness of Angels
   One of the best Urban Fantasy books I've ever read. Her writing blows my mind every time! It makes me see the city through fresh eyes again, and it makes me believe that maybe magic is still possible even these days.
6. Holly Black
   Anything she's written is amazing. She comes up with such great ways to express things, and her writing is very courageous and touches on topics that I think many authors shy away from or skirt around.
7. Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls
   For putting the bite back into vampires. Well, for me at least since I read it about 18 years after it was published. Great writing, though sometimes on the vey gory side.
8. Stephen King - Dark Tower series
   Roland Deschain and his ka-tet. Their journey will be with me until the day I breathe my last.
9. Edgar Allan Poe
   I love his poems and short stories. He's hard to grasp but he was a big influence on me, especially his way of approaching short story writing in one of his essays.
10. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
    I have no way to express my feels. I really love and admire this man. I even visited his grave in Paris, and I'm grateful I got there before they put this weird glass wall around it. One of my most treasured memories.
11. John Keats, Stephen Crane, John Donne, William Carlos Williams, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, John Milton, William Blake...
    I'm sure I forgot some. A very cut-back list of some of my favorite poets.

I realized that I put a big (too much?) focus on modern authors and forgot about all the Classics I read for university, many of which have left a big impression on me. That's part of the reason for number 11. Also, poems are very underrated. More people should read and discuss them.