Friday 8 May 2020

Thirty Authors I Want to Read

Can't Wait to Read. Hmm. Well, as another blogger mentioned, any book that's still on my shelves unread is something I can apparently wait to read. And when it comes to upcoming books, I currently don't have any authors and series where I have to read the next thing they put out. So I'm going to go a little sideways here and do a list of authors that I haven't read and that, if not quite can't wait to read, are authors I really want to get around to sooner or later and might provide me with my next can't wait to read. And if not, they'll enrichen my sense of the genre's history and breadth, and hopefully entertain me immensely. Here's the list, roughly from oldest to newest.

 1) George MacDonald - Arguably the start of fantasy as a genre rather than various fairytales
2) Hope Mirelees - Here for Lud-in-the-Mist, an early classic that's influenced by Neil Gaiman among others.
3) Clark Ashton Smith - The forgotten member of Weird Tales' big three of Howard, Lovecraft and Smith
4) Poul Anderson - Just starting it on him thanks to Christmas gifts, Anderson wrote a huge variety of fantasy works that heavily influenced gaming worlds of the 70s and 80s
5) Mervyn Peake - Frequently cited as an influence by many of today's authors, Peake's Gormenghast series is acknowledged as one of the genre's greats
6) CJ Cherryh - So admired in Sci-Fi she has an asteroid name after her, Cherryh has a number of fantasy works that are on my bucket list
7) Tim Powers - One of the fathers and masters of steampunk and the secret history style of fantasy
8) Bill King - One of the greatest exponents of gaming fiction, I was very excited to get The First Omnibus: Gotrek & Felix on Netgalley the other day
9) Tad Williams - One of the biggest names from the explosion in Epic Fantasy in the 80s/90s
10) Ellen Kushner - Author of some of the classics in Fantasy of Manners, if not the inventor
11) Lois McMaster Bujold - Her fantasy works mightn't be as well known as her Sci-Fi, but they're cult classics beloved by many people I trust
12) Martin Scott - His Thraxas series is held up as one of the classics of detective/fantasy style
13) Isabella de Allende - One of the biggest names from the Magical Realism genre
14) Steven Brust - His Vlad Taltos books are a cult classic series that still get regularly recommended
15) G Willow Wilson - Better known for her work in the comic industry, she did win the World Fantasy award in 2013 
16) Haruki Murakami - Extremely well known and with several works that fall into the fantasy genre
17) Sofia Samatar - I've heard many good things about this author, another seemingly anonymous World Fantasy winner
18) James Islington - Whenever I hear books compared to Robert Jordan, his work come up first
19) Django Wexler - Author of one of the more highly regarded recent works of military fantasy
20) Ann Leckie - The Raven Tower sounds like one of the most original and interesting fantasy works of recent times 
21) Mark Danielewski - Slipping out of genre a little but one of my friends lent me House of Leaves a while back with rave reviews
22) Samantha Shannon - Priory of the Orange Tree is one of those books that gets a lot of talk about from people I trust
23) Sarah Maas - One of the huge names in YA fantasy, I've seen plenty of criticism to go with the praise but figure I should see what it's about
24) Tamsyn Muir - Gideon the Ninth gets great reviews and sounds like a hoot
25) Arkady Martine - Again a little out of genre but reviews of A Memory Called Empire have me intrigued
26) Amar al-Mohtai - Here for her part in This Is How You Lose The Time War, which I am very excited about
27) Tade Thompson - Not fantasy (I think?) but very highly spoken of for Rosewater
28) Jo Walton - I love the concept of the Thessaly Series and have been half-thinking about it for a while
29) Madeline Miller - Her reimaginings of Greek myth have a huge amount of hype and I'm  intrigued
30) Natasha Pulley - The Watchmaker of Filigree Street has come highly recommended to me by my best friend, which is reason enough to have her here 
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3 comments:

  1. Jenna @ Falling Letters8 May 2020 at 21:40

    Hi Peat, I found your blog while browsing #WyrdAndWonder on Twitter. George MacDonald was also on my TBR for a long time - I finally read The King of Elfland's Daughter last year. Lud-in-the-Mist remains on my TBR for the same reason as you (its influence on Neil Gaiman, etc.). I have read and enoyed Murakami and Danielewski. House of Leaves is a trip. Looks like you have a solid list to choose from!

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    1. Peat9 May 2020 at 07:53

      Hi Jenna! Thanks for the comment. I'm pretty excited by the list I put together, gotta say. I'm considering reading House of Leaves next but I'm somewhat daunted by the size of it, and it's not often I say that.

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    2. Jenna @ Falling Letters9 May 2020 at 13:57

      Personally, I am someone who is daunted by anything over 400 pages, haha. But once I started House of Leaves, it was pretty easy to slip into and keep reading. It's not as dense as a conventionally designed 700 page novel.

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