A selection of books I've read/will be reading soon, from authors I've met along the way.
Know what most of the books my recently-read and to-be-read list have in common?
I know the authors.
It’s true. Both my current reads are from women I know through The Debutante Ball: I’m reading Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook in hardcover; MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche in iBooks. Also in my iBook TBR pile is Deb Ball author Erika Marks’s Little Gale Gumbo. Sitting on my bookshelf I have Audition by my fellow Stages on Pages author Stasia Kehoe, and Leverage by Joshua Cohen, whom I met through Stasia.
Those are just the books I have on deck and in current rotation. Scan through everything I’ve read in the past several months, and you’ll find 90% of the books are written by people I know. (The other 10% is mainly Harry Potter.)
Pretty much if I know you, I’ll read you. And if I like what I read, I’ll devour your work voraciously until the end of time. Eileen Cook, Sarah Pekkanen, and Matthew Quick weren’t even on my radar until I met them through the Deb Ball; now that I’ve experienced their brilliance, I will read everything they write. (Speaking of which, I just clicked over and pre-ordered Matthew Quick’s Boy 21. I know nothing about it except that Q wrote it, and that’s enough for me.)
What about you? When you meet an author, be it in person or online, do you tend to run out and buy his or her book? Will you take a chance on a genre or a book that sounds like it wouldn’t normally be your thing if the author is someone you enjoy? What percent of your TBR list is stacked with books by authors you know?
EliseAllen.com is the personal and professional web presence of Elise Allen, writer of Young Adult and Childrens' fiction, as well as television, features, and internet programming. Her Young Adult novel, Populazzi, will be released August 1, 2011.