Mark:
David Foster Wallace. Achieving fame as an author of American fiction, Wallace has become just as famous for his highly observant non-fiction and crystal-clear expressions of human thought processes, anxieties, and joys. Literary critics praise Wallace for clarity of expression and logical English style, which probably result from his background in philosophy and experience constructing logical arguments. Whenever I read a piece by Wallace, I come away feeling my cognitive antenna have been polished and I’m more aware of the workings of the world around me.
David Foster Wallace revolutionized English style for the hyper-information age, trying to provide a way for the English language to serve readers’ understanding in a world where there is too much information to understanding all at once. I see much in common with the world of academia, in which our knowledge in different fields is exponentially deepening even as the number of those fields expands. Although Wallace is deceased, I feel his hyper-informative style notably lives on in articles in the popular US blog Wait But Why, created by Tim Urban.
Sally:
Terry Pratchett, J.R.R. Tolkien, G.R.R. Martin, Aldo Leopold, Martin Prechtel, David Abram, Bill Plotkin, Neal Stephenson, Carlos Castaneda, Hank Wesselman, and many others …
Catherine:
Jane Austen and Walt Whitman.
Yuki:
I remember when I was a student, I liked to read books written by George Orwell, William Gerald Golding, and Scott Fitzgerald.