From his winter home in Palm Beach, Dmitri (Nabokov) justified his decision (to ignore his father’s will) by saying, “I’m a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it, then my father appeared before me and said, with an ironic grin, ‘You’re stuck in a right old mess – just go ahead and publish!’”

Sounds like a rather unlikely story to me. But there’s nothing wrong with fiction, is there?

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

*The above list was compiled from the combined input of the following writers:

Lee K. Abbott, Sherman Alexie, Kate Atkinson, Paul Auster, Melissa Bank, Russell Banks, John Banville, Julian Barnes, Andrea Barret, Madison Smartt Bell, Chris Bohjalian, T.C. Boyle, Judy Budnitz, James Lee Burke, Peter Cameron, Bebe Moore Campbell, Ethan Canin, Philip Caputo, Peter Carey, Michael Chabon, Fred Chappell, Sandra Cisneros, Pearl Cleage, Michael Connelly, Douglas Coupland, Jim Crace, Stanley Crawford, Michael Cunningham, Edwidge Danticat, Robb Forman Dew, Chitra Divakaruni, Emma Donoghue, Margaret Drabble, David Anthony Durham, Clyde Edgerton, Percival Everett, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Franzen, Paula Fox, Alan Furst, Mary Gaitskill, G.D. Gearino, Denise Gess, Gail Godwin, Arthur Golden, Mary Gordon, Michael Griffith, Allan Gurganus, Barry Hannah, Donald Harington, Jim Harrison, Kathryn Harrison, Kent Haruf, Adam Haslett, Elizabeth Hay, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, A.M. Homes, Andrew Hudgins, John Irving, Ha Jin, Heidi Julavits, Ken Kalfus, Thomas Keneally, A.L. Kennedy, Sue Monk Kidd, Haven Kimmel, Stephen King, Walter Kirn, Wally Lamb, David Leavitt, Jonathan Lethem, Margot Livesey, David Lodge, Norman Mailer, Thomas Mallon, Ben Marcus, Valerie Martin, Bobbie Ann Mason, Dennis McFarland, Patrick McGrath, Erin McGraw, David Means, Claire Messud, Lydia Millet, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O’Nan, Robert B. Parker, Ann Patchett, Iain Pears, George Pelecanos, Tom Perrotta, Arthur Phillips, Robert Pinsky, Richard Powers, Reynolds Price, Francine Prose, Annie Proulx, Jonathan Raban, Ian Rankin, Roxana Robinson, Louis D. Rubin Jr., James Salter, George Saunders, Cathleen Schine, Jim Shepard, Anita Shreve, Alexander McCall Smith, Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Scott Spencer, Adriana Trigiani, Scott Turow, Barry Unsworth, Vendela Vida, Susan Vreeland, David Foster Wallace, Anthony Walton, Jennifer Weiner, Robert Wilson, Tom Wolfe and Meg Wolitzer

2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
It would be hard to narrow my answer down to a single book or author. Today, at 12:59 PM, I’m particularly enamoured of a little book of conversations with Natalia Ginzburg called It’s Hard To Talk About Yourself. And also a volume of poetry by David Kirby, The House of Blue Light. Tomorrow, who knows? In the long run, I’ve certainly been influenced by Primo Levi, Penelope Fitzgerald, Nicholson Baker, J.F. Powers, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Portis, John Updike, W.G. Sebald, Joseph Roth, Randall Jarrell, Charles Baxter, Flann O’Brien and so on.

3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
Probably MetaxuCafe at: http://www.metaxucafe.com/ (for its handy, one-stop-shop aggregation of other blogs), Anecdotal Evidence at: http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/ (the most bookish), and About Last Night at: http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/ (all arts, all the time).

4. Why do you read fiction?
To be amused and enlightened. And to escape the narrow ambit of my own life and see what other people are up to.

5. What makes you laugh?
Just about anything – keeping in mind Flann O’Brien’s classic line about laughter being the handmaiden of sorrow and fear.

James Marcus blogs at House of Mirth, which can be found here: http://housemirth.blogspot.com/

2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
Two books: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick. Both offer cynical, backhandedly profound, and totally inappropriate stories about love. (George Saunders does this sometimes, too, but three authors is probably pushing it . . . )

3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
I keep a list of the litblogs I read regularly on my site. As for non litblogs . . .
The Ottoman Empire at: http://ottoman.worldwidewhitney.com/blog/ In which my sister reviews movies, gets tattoos, and raises an evil genius.
AFK Gamer at: http://afkgamer.com/ I play World of Warcraft sometimes, and Foton is on a wavelength to which I can relate: Long time gaming addict, whose biggest boss battle is sometimes with misanthropy.
York Staters at: http://yorkstaters.blogspot.com/ There is a very large part of New York State that is not New York City. The region has suffered from substantial brain drain, poor economic growth and, some would say, indifference from its legislators. I am a York State expat, so I follow the subject with interest. Occasionally, I write fiction about it.

4. Why do you read fiction?
I read fiction because I like figuring out what makes people tick. Stories that aren’t limited by truth offer countless ways to do that.

5. What makes you laugh?
Irreverence. I’d like to say “clever irreverence”, but that’s not always true!

Erin blogs at Rarely Likeable, which can be found here: http://rarely.typepad.com/

2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
I have shifting influences, but the big three are Henry Miller, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Vladimir Nabokov.

3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
Honestly? Aside from the ones I write for, I visit (to read for pleasure) Appellation Beer, Brookston Beer Guide, and Beer Therapy.

4. Why do you read fiction?
To know that I’m not alone . . . But seriously, I love language and the sound of words. Literary language is music.

5. What makes you laugh?
My son laughing.

Donavan Hall’s blog is at: http://blog.donavanhall.net/, he publishes the angler, an online literary magazine for new and experimental fiction.