Must Read Authors

As befits someone who reads a lot and is constantly amassing new books to read, I have a long, long list of must read authors.  I thought it would be fun to try to narrow it down to not just authors I love, but authors who I anticipate their books with great interest and try to read them ASAP when they come out.  Since there are actually a pretty enormous group of authors for whom that is true, to narrow it down, I'm going to give myself a few parameters:  (1)  they have to have written at least 3 books, and (2) I have to have read all of their books.  There are other authors who I love but I'm still working on catching up on all of their books - I'll cover those in a future post.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably recognize most of these names as I've discussed them in my posts on various genres, among other things.  A few I even talk about enough that I've already given them their own tag, so I'll start with those and go roughly in order from there.

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2011

If you've been following this blog for a while, then you'll know that I contemporaneously made a top 10 list of my favorite books I read each year for many years, all the way back to 1999 when the internet barely existed!  But since I started this blog, I've been slowly re-visiting my top 10 ten lists from years past, both to share them with those who weren't original recipients of those lists, and out of curiosity to see how the lists hold up over time.   Today I'll be looking at 2011.  As a reminder, these are books that I read in 2011, not necessarily books that were published in 2011.

Here is my 2011 list, listed in alphabetical order by author's last name.

A Dog's Purpose - W. Bruce Cameron
America, America - Ethan Canin
The Passage - Justin Cronin
Room - Emma Donoghue
A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Faithful Place - Tana French
The Wrong Mother - Sophie Hannah
Roses - Leila Meacham
The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
The Help - Kathryn Stockett

5 Star Review: One Night at the Lake by Bethany Chase

Less than a month after my last 5 star review, I've got another one for you!  Bethany Chase was already one of my favorite authors of chick lit/contemporary women's fiction after just two novels.  Her first book, "The One That Got Away," was a 5 star book on my 2015 10 favorites list, and her second book, "Results May Vary," was a 4.5 star book that just missed my list for 2016.  Her latest, "One Night at the Lake," comes out on June 18, 2019.  So when I got an early copy from Netgalley, I just couldn't wait to read it!  And I've been waiting a long time - it was originally slated to be published in 2018 under a slightly different title, so it was one my anticipated books of 2018 and then  after being pushed back, again on my list of anticipated books of 2019.  I'm happy to say it didn't disappoint, and only affirms her place as one of my favorite authors.

Books with "Girl" in the Title

I'm currently reading a historical novel called "The Girls in the Picture" by Melanie Benjamin, and it got me thinking about how there are just so many books with the word "girl" or "girls" in the title.  And ironically pretty much all of them are referring to women, not girls!

Presumably publishers do this because it draws people's attention to books?  I've previously written about how book marketing should refrain from calling books "the next 'Gone Girl'".  And it certainly seems like after "Gone Girl" was published, not only were authors trying to write in the same unreliable narrator style, but also to give their thrillers a name with the word "girl" in it too.   In a book I recently read and enjoyed, "The Banker's Wife" by Christina Alger, the author even gets a little dig in at those books, describing the main character as reading "the kind of book she’d read a million times before, a book with ‘Girl’ in the title and an unreliable narrator."  Which was on point, but also funny to me as there are also a lot of books with "wife" in the title!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take a look at some other books I've read with the word "girl" in the title and see how they stack up.  This isn't even all of them, as I've left of some of the less memorable ones, and there are also tons of books with the word "girl" in the title on my to read list too.  It turns out that in addition to thrillers, there are a lot of historical novels with "girl" in the title too, plus a smattering of contemporary fiction, and a lot of forgettable chick lit too.  I'll try to put them roughly in order of how much I liked them (high to low) within each genre.

5 Star Review: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Two months into the year, I have my first 5 star book to share with you!  It's a novel called "Daisy Jones & the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and I loved it - a real wow book!  It comes out this Tuesday, March 5th, and I highly recommend you add it to your list!

Don't you love that cover?  It just has such a 70s album cover vibe!  Which is appropriate since this book is about a fictional singer and band in the late 1970s with lots of turmoil - think the movie "Almost Famous" crossed with Fleetwood Mac, though with plenty of original elements too.  (In fact, I had the Fleetwood Mac song "The Chain" stuck in my head while reading it!)  Lyrucs are included for some of the fictional songs - I only wish I could hear them for real.

What I Read On My Winter Vacation

I came back yesterday from a wonderful week in the Bahamas with my family and our close family friends.  And, as has become a tradition on the blog, I'm going to share with you what I read while we were on vacation!

Me reading poolside

From the Top 10 Archives: Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2010

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my top 10 favorites lists of years past.  Each list consists of my favorite books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  Today, I'll look at my list from 2010.  Full disclosure, I actually cheated in 2010 and put 11 books on the list!  😉 It's often a challenge to narrow my lists down to 10, but this is the only year I did it - made an exception because I read two books by the same author that I loved so much I just decided to list them as one entry!

Here's my list from 2010, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
After You - Julie Buxbaum
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
In the Woods - Tana French AND The Likeness - Tana French
The Host - Stephenie Meyer
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton
One Day - David Nicholls
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
Lottery - Patricia Wood

For more about these books, read on!