A key to be a fantastic writer is to keep reading—and it does not stop even after you get published. Here in this article, we are enlisting 20 favorite reads by famous authors. We hope you would love one of the books recommended by following best authors.

1. Ayn Rand

Rand stated in 1945 that the best book he had ever read, his favorite book in world of literature, was a novelette known as Calumet written by K by Merwin-Webster. It was one of the most famous books of those times. According to Chicago magazine, Calumet ‘K’ was a charming, ingenuously Midwestern novel regarding construction of a grain elevator. It was a procedural regarding big-scale agricultural construction. If that appears like something you would love to read, don’t hesitate to buy the book.

2. Ernest Hemingway

It was Papa Hemingway who said “there is no friend as loyal as a book”. A piece was published in 1935 in Esquire, in which he presented a list of some friends he stated he would read again than having a guaranteed income of a million dollars per annum. They included, Yeats’s Autobiographies, Dubliners, La Chartreuse de Parme, Le rouge et le noire., The Maison Tellier, La Reine Margot, Ohio, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hail and Farewell, Winesburg, The Brothers Karamazov, A Sportsman’s Sketches, War and Peace, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, Buddenbrooks, Far Away and Long Ago, Anna Karenina, and a few more.

Most interestingly, it was not the 1st reading list he had made; a year ago, Hemingway had revealed a list of fourteen books for an ambitious writer who hitchhiked to Florida in order to meet him. It comprised some of the same books above, with 2 short stories written by Stephen Crane.

3. Joan Didion

Joan Didion was a novelist and creative nonfiction scribe. In an interview with The Paris Review, he claimed that Victory by Joseph Conrad’s was his favorite book in the world. He stated that he had never started a novel absent rereading Victory. It opened up the prospects of a novel. That makes it seemed worth doing.

4. Ray Bradbury

Sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury discussed his favorite books in 2003 in an interview with Barnes & Noble. Bradbury was 83 at that time. His choice of favorite book was somewhat unexpected. Bradbury stated that “The collected essays of George Bernard Shaw” was his favorite book containing all of the humanity’s intelligence in the last 100 years and probably more. Other books included books by Loren Eisley, the greatest essayist/poet of last forty years, and Moby Dick by Herman Melville’s. Bradbury claimed that the book had obvious impacts on his life for over 50 years. Other book which mostly influenced his career involved John Carter: Warlord of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Bradbury says that these books entered his life when he was 10 years old and caused him to go out on summer lawns, put his hands up and ask for Mars to take him home. He started to write in a short span of time and it was all because of Mr. Burroughs.

5. George R.R. Martin

It is possibly not astonishing that George R.R. Martin, the Game of Thrones author, has stated that The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, was the book he read in junior high and continues to be a book he vastly admires. But his choice for the best book may surprise you. He recommended this book in a Live Journal entry by saying that he would not soon forget Station Eleven. The book by Emily St. John Mandel is about a group of actors in a newly post-apocalyptic civilization, he said, is an extremely gloomy novel, but beautifully written, and brilliantly nostalgic … a book that he would long remember.

6. Gillian Flynn

When Gillian Flynn, the Gone Girl author, was inquired about her favorite books, she named And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. She called these books her “comfort food”; the books which you grasp when you feel bad-tempered and nothing seems good to read.

7. Vladimir Nabokov

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The Lolita author wrote all his books on note cards, which were progressively copied, expanded, and reorganized till they became his novels. In an interview in 1950s with a French TV station, he revealed a list of literature which he rated great. It includes Ulysses by James Joyce’s, The Metamorphosis by Kafka’s, Petersburg by Andrei Bely and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (the first half).

8. Jane Austen

The writer of classics like Emma and Pride & Prejudice was herself a gluttonous reader of books, plays and poetry, including Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, Theophile, Madame de Genlis’s Olimpe and Lord Byron’s The Corsair. The most favorite, however, was Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson.

9. Mark Twain

A pastor in Maine, Reverend D. Crane wrote a letter to Twain in 1887, which probably inquired about Twain’s recommendations for both young girls and boys along with the authors’ favorite books. The letter is unfortunately lost. Twain responded that his favorites included The French Revolution by Carlyle, King Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory and Arabian Nights.

10. Meg Wolitzer

The interesting author adores the Jane Gardam’s novel Old Filth. She said that was a stimulating, bold and amusing book by a British writer whom she came to know rather late. She said that she could not say she had read anything like Old Filth, which stood out for her as a single, opalescent novel, a piece of beauty that gave immense satisfaction to its fortunate readers.

11. Erik Larson

The much-admired author of The Devil in the White City names The Maltese Falcon as his all-time favorite book. He admires everything about this book; its plot, characters, dialogues, most of which were used exact by John Huston for his much-loved movie having the same name.

12. F. Scott Fitzgerald

In 1936, Fitzgerald used to live at the Grove Park Inn 4 years before his death, in North Carolina. After firing a gun as a suicide intimidation, the inn forced that he be administered by a nurse. Under care of Dorothy Richardson, he delivered her a list of 22 books that he believed “essential reading.” The list comprised of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Ernest Renan’s The Life of Jesus, Winesburg and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and Sherwood Anderson’s Ohio.

13. Edwidge Danticat

This MacArthur Fellow and esteemed writer of The Dew Breaker, I’m Dying, Brother, and Claire of the Sea Light told that her preferred summer read is Love, Anger, Madness, by Marie Vieux-Chauvet. Danticat said that she had read and reread the book, both in English and French, for many times. And every time she stumbled into something novel and eye-opening making her to continue reading that over and over again.

14. Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot’s author and Winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, Beckett was always a secluded person, even after reaping praise for his inscription. In 2011, a volume of his letters from 1941 to 1956 was issued, providing the world a sight into his reading habits and friendships. Beckett talked about numerous books in his communication: He labeled Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, as “lively stuff”. He stated that his 4th reading of Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest triggered “the same old tears in the same old places”. He also admired J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

15. R.L. Stine

In a piece published in Washington Post in 2012, Fear Street and Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine admired Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, labeling it among the most underestimated books ever. The lyrical depiction by Bradbury about growing up a long-ago time in the Midwest, a time that possibly never occurred, is the sort of lovely nostalgia very few authors have attained.

16. Amy Tan

Jing Ping Mei is the favorite book by The Joy Luck Club author. It is labeled as a finest piece in classic Chinese literature. The name translates to The Plum in the Golden Vase. It is held in by an unidentified scribe. Tan describes it as a book of comportments for the depraved. The readers of this book in late Ming ear possibly concealed it under their bed sheets, as it was banned as pornographic. It offers a quite naturalistic, modern style; ‘Show, don’t tell’.

17. J.K. Rowling

The Silkworm and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling named a classic writing Emma by Jane Austen. Once Virginia Woolf talked about Austen that for a great writer, she had been the most difficult to hook in the deed of greatness, which was a fantastic line according to Rowling. We were dragged into the story, and we came out the other end, and we knew we had realized something boundless in action. But we could not see the pyrotechnics; as there was nothing showy, she said. As a child, when she asked about her favorite book, she named E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Treasure Seekers. She called her the children’s author with whom she most recognized. The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a revolution book for children. Oswald is a truly a real narrator, at times when majority of writers were writing moral plays for kids.

18. Maya Angelou

The author and poet has numerous beloved books, including A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, Look Homeward, the Bible, Thomas Wolfe’s Angel, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. She said that when she read Alcott, she had known that those girls she had been talking about were all white, but they had been nice girls and she had understood them. She had felt like she was there with them in their kitchen and living room.

19. Lydia Davis

Reading Orient Expresswas by Dos Passos’s was a turning point for the Lydia Davis, said the award winning novelist in 1997. She said that the book had been among the 1st ‘grown up’ books that had made her thrilled about the language.

20. Henry Miller

The writer of Tropic of Cancer wrote a complete book; The Books in My Life that held an appendix titled “100 Books Which Influenced Me Most”. The books which were named included Leaves of Grass, Les Miserables, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Wuthering Heights.