Love-Spanish.com: What Authors Do You Like?

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

What Authors Do You Like?

Introduction

This post deals with talking about likes and dislikes in general, and writers you like or dislike in particular.

SCENARIO

Imagine you are talking to a relative, a friend or a colleague. You are talking about personal choices on books/ reading. At some point, the other person says to you something like: "what authors do you like?"

In Spanish, the other person could choose to be less formal and say:

¿Qué autores te gustan?

Alternatively, he/ she could choose to be more formal and say:

¿Que autores le gustan (a usted)?

OUR TIP

The question is an invitation for you to say what authors you like/ don't like. When stating what you like/don't like, you DO NOT need to be concerned about the level of formality in the other person's question. Your main concern should be about communicating what authors you like/ don't like. Perhaps you want to say that:

You like a specific author (single item);
You like specific group of authors (plural items);
You like a list of authors;
You don't like a specific author (single item);
You don't like specific group of authors (plural items);
You don't like a list of authors;

Here are some examples of how you could say what authors you like/ don't like:

Me gusta Stephen King (I like Stephen King);
Me gustan algunos autores de ciencia ficción (I like some science fiction authors);
Me gustan algunos autores de ciencia ficción y Dean Koontz (I like some science fiction authors and Dean Koontz);
No me gusta Stephen King (I don't like Stephen King);
No me gustan los autores de ciencia ficción (I don't like science fiction authors);
No me gustan los autores de ciencia ficción ni Dean Koontz (I don't like science fiction authors nor Dean Koontz);