>>>>>I'm not quite finished yet, so don't anybody spoil it for me. But if anybody wants to read something quite astonishing, pick up a copy of "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. What a duo. Two of the best there is writing together.
>>>>>
>>>>>Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking toward Tadfield.
>>>>>
>>>>>And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Then a Good Thumping But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.
>>>>
>>>>Maybe I will check it out on your recommendation. Conceptually, though, I wonder how successful a book written by a duo can be. IMO one of the defining qualities of a book is that it comes from a unique, personal POV.
>>>
>>>I think that must be a joke and not a serious comment given the amount of reading you've done...
>>>
>>>Bill Crider and Willard Scott
>>>Perri O’Shaughnessy
>>>Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgens Clark
>>>Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes
>>>Faye Kellerman and Jonathon Kellerman
>>>James Reasoner and Davis Dresser
>>>etc
>>
>>No, ir wasn't a joke at all. I don't respect any of them.
>>
>>I expect I will be booted from here momentarily, having replied indiscreetly to Kevin, so will leave you with a few recommendations.
>>
>>Graham Greene -- my favorite writer ever, period.
>>Jim Thompson -- dark as night, the source of many movies
>>Jhumpa Lahiri -- an emerging legend
>>Raymond Carver -- see my post a couple of weeks ago
>>Richard Russo
>>Richard Price
>>Amy Tan
>>
>>And on and on and on....
>
>Coincidentally I've just started re-reading Graham Greene. Wouldn't go so far as to say he's top of my list of best authors - but right up there.....
>Taking them off the shelf at random I just finished 'The Comedians' and now back to 'Travels with my Aunt'. In Paris:
>"I went restlessly out and crossed the little garden where an American couple (from the St. James or the Albany) were having tea. One of them was raising a little bag, like a drowned animal, from his cup at the end of a cord. At this distressing sight I felt a long way from England......."
>:-}

Probably my favorite passage is the opening of The Third Man --

"One never knows when the blow may fall. When I saw Rollo Martins first I made this note on him for my security police files: “In normal circumstances a cheerful fool. Drinks too much and may cause a little trouble. Whenever a woman passes raises his eyes and makes some comment, but I get the impression that really he’d rather not be bothered. Has never really grown up and perhaps that accounts for the way he worshipped Lime.” I wrote there that phrase “in normal circumstances” because I met him first at Harry Lime’s funeral. It was February, and the grave-diggers had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna’s central cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks."

A gold mine of a site, just stumbled across it --

http://danliterature.wordpress.com/graham-greene-the-comedians/graham-green-brighton-rock/