Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week book bloggers are given a prompt and asked to answer it in the form of a top ten list. This is my absolute favorite blog meme and if you aren't already taking part you should be.

This week's prompt: Top Ten New-To-Me Authors in 2012

Most of the books I've read this year have been written by authors I had never read before. Some of them are authors that I would like to read more of while others are authors I could do without reading again. Instead of listing my ten favorite authors like the prompt asked, I'm simply going to list the ten authors I read for the first time this year and give you my opinion of them.

1) Jasper Fforde: The first time I heard about Jasper Fforde was about six years ago in one of the computer labs at my college. Someone had left behind his first Thursday Next novel, The Eyre Affair, and I picked it up to read the back, intrigued by the blurb. And then I did nothing about it for over half a decade. Friends and fellow bloggers raved about him and told me I should read his books, but for some reason I never did. Then I saw The Eyre Affair at a library book sale a few months ago and told myself that I needed to buy it. I read it this past week and loved it. My review will be up soonish but for now I will simply say that I will be reading more of his work in the years to come.

2) Chris Genoa: Another author that I found at that same library book sale, but this time one that I will probably never read again. I know that as Foop! is his first novel I should probably cut him some slack and give his other stuff a try, but I honestly just don't want to.

3) John Irving: This is another name that I had heard bandied about before as a worthwhile author to read. Reading A Prayer for Owen Meany had me practically salivating for more of his books, which is why I've picked up The World According to Garp and will be reading it in a short while. He's a fairly prolific writer so I won't run out of his novels anytime soon.

4) Max Brooks: I keep meaning to write a review of Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which I read on Don's Kindle a few months before I came back to blogging. I would love to read more of his work, especially if it contains zombie goodness. :)

5) Tom Rachman: My review of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists will be coming soon. While the writing was beautiful, the sadness of the novel didn't exactly have me clamoring to find more of his novels after I read it. I'd have to say that I'm currently on the fence about reading more from this author but am totally open to people prodding me, telling me that I should get right on that.

6) Charles Benoit: I was completely blown away by Charles Benoit's You and am dying to read his other novels. As a fellow Rochesterian that I've met once before (I only read this book because he came into the bookstore that I work at and suggested it to me) I'm currently trying to work up the lady cojones to ask him if he would be willing to do an interview for this blog. You'll all be the first to know if I do.

7) Stanislaw Lem: Regardless of how I felt about some of the stories in Star Diaries, the book was actually a really fun, thought-provoking read and I'd be curious to read some of Lem's other work, especially Solaris.

8) Robert Heinlein: Despite some issues that I had with Stranger in a Strange Land, I'm looking forward to digging into more of Heinlein's work. One of Don's friends, Andrew, has gifted me with audio books of some of his other novels, so if I don't get a chance to read them I can still listen to them.

9) Louise Rennison: I loved Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging and, while I doubt that I'll end up reading the entire Georgia Nicolson series, I will definitely be reading a few more of them in the future.

10) Chrystia Freeland: I recently finished Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else and loved the way that Freeland wrote and would definitely read books by her in the future. A review of the book is forthcoming.

Out of your own top ten list for this week, who was your ultimate favorite new-to-you author in 2012?

-Gabe