More authors who have had an effect

In no particular order (so what else is new?), here are some more of the writers whose works are memorable:

Leo Tolstoy - I may have mentioned that I read "War and Peace" while I was in Vietnam.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Any reasonably modern poet who can write epics is worthy of regard.

Charles Dickens - Gone from required reading in high school to old friend.

Sir Walter Scott - I love adventure. He writes it well.

Robert Lewis Stevenson - Like I said, I love adventure... as long as it's somebody else's adventure.

Rudyard Kipling - His adventure stories hold me and his poetry is almost something you could put to music.

e. e. cummins - He's just cool.

Walt Whitman - Stirring verse from a point of view I hadn't considered until I read him.

Jules Verne - one of my first SF authors. An amazing number of his predictions were right.

H. G. Wells - another of my first SF authors.

Homer - Two classic epics that have been rewritten under various guises for thousands of years.

Julius Caesar - (not in Latin) If you want to know about military tactics and army movements, this is on of the first masters.

Did I mention Damon Runyan? He's funny. I like funny.

William Faulkner - was the quintessential writer of the 1930's, a good storyteller and a neat view of the South.

Christopher Marlowe - whose plays were every bit as neat as Shakespeare's.

Robert Herrick - a really cool, dirty, old man.

John Milton - You read and read and read and still don't come to the end.

Andrew Marvell - His images come to life in his words.

Lord Byron - If only because his life was so interesting and he was so passionate that it came through the words.

Robert Browning - Only some of his stuff caught at me. But it stuck.

Saki (H. H. Munro) - very different stories and a wicked sense of humor.

Jane Austen - stories of an interesting period told with gentle, subtle humor.

And that's all I can think of today.

Summer has come to Arkansas and we are getting body heat temperatures an high humidity. These combined with almost calm winds make the out of doors oppressive. When it cools a little in the evening, there are enthusiastic mosquitos who come to dine on me. But the blackberries are in season and that is a bit plus