What's your Top Author outside of comics?

For me it'd have to be Jim Butcher, the Dresden Files and Codex Alera are both magnificent pieces. An I not only enjoy the characters he creates (Harry Dresden: Wizard, Warden, & PI; and Tavi: Cursor, Captain, Princeps and First Lord) but the amazing worlds he's crafted and stories he tells.  
 
Nods to: 
Brent Weeks: Night Angel Trilogy 
Patricia Briggs: Mercy Thompson; Alpha & Omega 
Cinda Williams Chima: Heir trilogy, and The Demon King 

JRR Tolkien would be mine, i've tried to finish every book as far as Middle Earth goes that I can though some do give me a huge headache.

Jim Butcher
 
H.G. Wells
 
Bill Willingham

" JRR Tolkien would be mine, i've tried to finish every book as far as Middle Earth goes that I can though some do give me a huge headache. "

Frank Herbert

" @Emerald_General_Jai: I'm only one behind at this point, I'm almost there..I wish I could do the entire Star Wars novel series..that's something I've always wanted to do. "

" Frank Herbert "

" @geraldthesloth said:

" @Emerald_General_Jai: I'm only one behind at this point, I'm almost there..I wish I could do the entire Star Wars novel series..that's something I've always wanted to do. "

I've read a vast majority of them. One of the only apps i still really use for FB lets you catalogue ur books n such. LivingSocial. It's kick-a$$. I took a break for awhile, but i'm gettin bacfk in the cut of it.  "

R. A. Salvatore

Richard Knaak

Michael Crichton

" R. A. Salvatore "

Jenna Jameson, Janice Dickinson, Chelsea Handler.

Joanne K. Rowling

H.P Lovecraft

Philip Pullman

Terry Goodkind.......Was and is the best fantasy story arc I have ever read (The Sword of Truth) 
Dan Abnett for sci-fi stuff. 
Best book I have read recently was by Erik Durschmied (From Armageddon to the Fall of Rome)

Dan Simmons -- Hyperion Cantos, Ilium/Olympos .... I only wish he wrote more often,  but the quality on a per book basis is without peer imho.
 
Others:
Steven Erikson -- The Malazan Book of the Fallen series  
George RR Martin -- Song of Ice and Fire series 
Stephen King -- various 
Frank Herbert -- Dune Books 
Glen Cook -- The Black Company series 
Kurt Vonnegut -- various

Philip Pullman -  His Dark Materials.

" @CATMANEXE said:

" Frank Herbert "

My dad's a huge fan of Dune.
 
@Emerald_General_Jai said:

" @geraldthesloth said:

" @Emerald_General_Jai: I'm only one behind at this point, I'm almost there..I wish I could do the entire Star Wars novel series..that's something I've always wanted to do. "

I've read a vast majority of them. One of the only apps i still really use for FB lets you catalogue ur books n such. LivingSocial. It's kick-a$$. I took a break for awhile, but i'm gettin bacfk in the cut of it.  "

Cool stuff I hope to eventually "

Jim Butcher, Piers Anthony, Laurell K Hamilton, David Eddings, Clive Barker. Just started reading Kim Harrison.

I actually haven't gone cover-to-cover with a regular novel in a while.  I suppose out of the last 5 years, I read quite a bit of Dan Abnett's 40K work.  Particularly the Eisenhorn trilogy. 
 
Lately I've had the urge to go and read a number of the commonly challenged books out there.

" @geraldthesloth said:

" JRR Tolkien would be mine, i've tried to finish every book as far as Middle Earth goes that I can though some do give me a huge headache. "

Silmarillion FTW!  though actually didn't Christopher Tolkien do some changes with those books because of inconsistencies and such... "

" @geraldthesloth said:

" @aztek the lost said:

" @geraldthesloth said:

" JRR Tolkien would be mine, i've tried to finish every book as far as Middle Earth goes that I can though some do give me a huge headache. "

Silmarillion FTW!  though actually didn't Christopher Tolkien do some changes with those books because of inconsistencies and such... "

Did you know how much of a headache I had going from the LOTR trilogy to that book? "

no? why the headache? I remember I had a problem with Unfinished Tales of Middle-Earth or something like that but LOTR, Hobbit and Silmarillion were all very enjoyable "

, the Fables novel (Willingham),

James Rollins, Stephen King, JRR Tolkien, Ian Fleming is pretty cool dude, and Mark Z. Danielewski.
 
Everybody else sucks. But not really.

Michael Chabon, Jim Butcher, Hunter S. Thompson, Warren Ellis(he wrote a book he kinda counts), Jeff Lindsay , Tolkin, Neil Gaiman and many more

Jacqueline Carey , Sara Douglass, Faith Hunter, and last but not least the brilliant J.K. Rowling.

Eoin Colfer, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Micheal Crichton.

I have a bunch of favorites, but if pressed it would be Chuck Palahniuk because, simply, he writes the craziest things I have every seen put into books, which a few consist of a mentally unstable pencil-pusher leading a revolution against consumerism (Fight Club), A woman with her lower jaw shot off befriending transexuals (Invisible Monsters), three men giving their opinions in partaking in the largest and greatest sex act in history (Snuff), A time traveling redneck starting a fad in the future involving public demolition derbies (Rant), a bunch of writers locked in a house for three months and unwittingly making each others lives hell (Haunted), and the one that simultaniously horrifies and fascinates me, an african culling song getting in to a childrens nursery rhyme book which leads to an epidemic of dead babies (Lullaby). Every one of these is guarenteed to make the most mentally resiliant shudder, and the most squemish faint, and personally loved every one of those books by that beautifully insane bastard.