You know, I just wanted to mention another handful of authors, because some of my favorites don’t have a huge number of titles out (yet), so they didn’t make my previous post. This list isn’t in any particular order either because good Lord, how could you ever sort them out and pick a favorite, much less order them from top to bottom? ALL of these authors are on my buy-anything-and-everything-they-write list. I just walked downstairs and gazed at my selves for a moment, and here are the auto-buy authors that jumped out at me. I wouldn’t have expected there to be so many, but here they are:
1. CJ Cherryh. I didn’t like the Rusalka trilogy, and in the future I may possibly dislike something else she writes so much that I give it away. But basically, I am certain to buy whatever she writes.
2. Martha Wells. Especially since I’m finding her books wonderful to re-read, even though I only read them for the first time about a year ago. Some of hers are going to be moving into comfort-book territory pretty soon.
3. Steven Brust. Despite TECKLA, and the rather strange format of TIASSA, I’m still right there for HAWK when it comes out later this year.
4. Sharon Shinn.
5. Barbara Hambly, especially as she seems to be concentrating mainly on her historical Benjamen January mysteries and the Ysidro vampire stories, both favorite series of mine.
6. Andrea K Höst. I doubt that will surprise any of you.
7. Patricia McKillip. Of course.
8. Robin McKinley. Also of course.
9. Laura Florand. Of course.
10. Elizabeth Wein. I don’t always want to read them *right away*, but I always want to pick them up knowing that when I have time, I will put them on the top of my list.
11. Nicola Griffith. The Blue Place trilogy was good enough I’m really looking forward to whatever else she writes — especially with all I’ve heard about Hild.
12. Guy Gavriel Kay. I notice he does have a couple titles out that I wasn’t aware of, though, particularly The Last Light of the Sun
13. Ilona Andrews. I’ve really enjoyed all their books, not just the Kate Daniels series. Plus they are such fun, quick reads that I don’t have to put off reading them.
14. Patricia Wrede. I haven’t loved all her books. Some of her early ones in particular are, uh, not up to her later quality, shall we say. Still, I’m happy to pick up and try anything she writes, and I don’t see that changing.
Plus, there are a whole handful of authors who only have out a couple books, or three, or four — not enough to be on an auto-buy list, but that doesn’t mean I won’t snatch up their next few. Merrie Haskell, say. And Sage Blackwood. I’m sure there are others. Oh, Dan Wells, though I wasn’t super-crazy about Partials, but I did like it and I’m interested to see what weird thing he might do next. (I don’t mean Partials is weird; it’s his “normal” series.) Oh! Brian Katcher, even though contemporary isn’t my thing — but then neither are romances, and that doesn’t stop me putting Laura Florand up there on my auto-buy list.
Also, I will soon go back to Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky series and read that, and I could see Bear turning into first a pick-up-backlist and then an auto-buy author for me.
So, anyway, yeah, I don’t see myself running out of stuff to read anytime soon. Especially since a whole lot of the books I pick up are actually by authors I know nothing about, just because of recommendations by you all and blog posts I happen to see.
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Ursula le Guin comes out top of my buy-anything-she’s-written-list. I agree with you about Orson Scott Card, didn’t like Alvin, only bought two. Michael Scott Rohan’s Winter of the World put him on my list. Patricia McKillip’s Harper of Hed series has been read until it’s falling apart. I’m buying others of hers bit by bit. I used to have Ngaio Marsh till I downsized to a 1 bedroom flat. In the 60s and 70s I bought all of Andre Norton’s Science Fiction books, and absolutely everything by Rosemary Sutcliff, most now out of print.
Re. Tolkien, I’ll buy anything by Tom Shippey and Verlyn Fleiger.
You know, I’m REALLY glad I sized up to more-space-in-library rather than being forced to size down. Though the Kindle helps with that, too. I’ll have to look up Shippey and Fleiger.
Shippey’s first book on Tolkien, THE ROAD TO MIDDLE-EARTH, was the first I’d found in a long time that had lots of new insights. his second is mostly the first with some revisions. He studied the same things Tolkien did, so he looked at the fiction from that angle.
Fleiger is one I’ve been dipping into and seems very good, but I haven’t been able to sit down and pay attention to it.
GGKay is an auto buy, and LAST LIGHT OF THE SUN is perhaps my favorite of his later works. It’s Alfred the Great and Vikings, and Cymry and Celts and fathers and sons.
If Heather Dixon ever write/publishes something else, I’ll buy it, after ENTWINED.
and Andrea Host is auto-buy.
speaking of Farjeon, as we were in a lower comment thread, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard has some kinship to PUCK OF POOK’s HILL – it’s a frame story around self-contained stories, fairy-ish or historical and with a strong sense of place. I like some of them quite a bit. She’s probaby best known (if at all) these days as the author of the poem that became the hit song “Morning Has Broken”. I first found her novel length fairy tale retellings of Cinderella and Tom Tit Tot (Rumplestiltskin). I liked them very much as a not-quite teen, and still enjoy them.
I have Shippey’s Tolkien commentaries, if you’re interested in looking at them. I’ve never read Flieger, though I’ve noticed her name. But I doubt that any sort of writing-about-writing will ever get near your auto-buy list. Actually, didn’t your this-is-really-cheap Kindle reflexes kick in when I told you about Tom Simon’s WRITING DOWN THE DRAGON? If you develop an unexpected urge to read essays about Tolkien, you have those to hand.
I have very few auto-buy authors, although I seem to have drifted into it for the sf author John C. Wright. I’ve mentioned my two favorite living fantasy authors, Patricia McKillip and Tim Powers; they’re both auto-buy — though I still wait for the paperback more often than not.
Craig, yes, I wouldn’t mind borrowing the Shippey, if you happen to remember next time you come down. And I read Simon’s WRITING DOWN THE DRAGON — I like nonfiction when I’m working on something, and I thought that was quite interesting.
I usually don’t wait for paperbacks anymore — unless buying a hardcover would mean splitting a series. I’ll even do that, though, for authors I’m especially impatient to read and don’t plan to put off (like Ilona Andrews).
Elaine, the Martin Pippin sounds useful for when I have a little time but don’t really want to read a whole book. And it sounds like I should find ENTWINED sometime.