I participate in a monthly book club and this month’s book was supposed to be Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. However, after reading it the hosts of the book club didn’t feel like they would necessarily recommend it, so this month’s book club is Liane Moriarty in general with a slight focus on NPS. I’d never read anything by Liane Moriarty though I have heard a great deal about her. I decided for this month that I’d read NPS (since that was the original plan) and that I’d also read Big Little Lies since it’s super hot right now (with the show and everything). And all of that got me thinking about the purpose of this post: how to read new-to-me authors.
I think this is a universal thing, right? We don’t always “find” an author when their debut book has just come out–we usually find them somewhere in the middle of their career when they have a few books already published. This has happened to me with Emma Millls, Victoria Schwab, and Neil Gaiman (just to name a few examples). The question is, when you find someone, what do you do next? I react in a couple different ways:
Reading their published works in order
This is kind of a no-brainer when it comes to a series. For example, with Susan Dennard I was obviously going to read the Truthwitch series in order because duh. But what about when someone has a bunch of standalones? This was the case for me with Emma Mills. I loved her covers and the premise of all of her books sounded good to me. So for her, I decided to start with her first official book, First & Then, and go from there. Even though they were standalones, I wanted to read her books in order in case there were any easter eggs from book to book (I don’t think there have been). Regardless, for some reason it felt important for me to read her books in order.
Not reading their published works in any specific order
For an author like Neil Gaiman, I’ve been jumping around. I’d read Anansi Boys way too young and remember almost nothing about it. Recently, I’ve been jumping around between his adult and young adult books. I think I want to read pretty much everything he’s written eventually, but I don’t feel that same urge to read his works in order.
How do you like to read books from new-to-you authors? Do you do a mixture of the above like I do? Do you do something completely different?
Here’s a list of authors I’ve been meaning to read, let me know how you think their books are best read:
- Kristin Hannah
- Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Julie Buxbaum
- Erin Watt
- Nicholas Sparks
- Ruth Ware
What's She Reading? 