A Year of Discoveries

You know, this year and last year have really stood out for me for Discovering Prolific Well-Known Amazing Authors I Have Never Read Anything By.

I mean, Martha Wells, right? And then Andrea Höst. My two favorite authors for this year and I never read anything by Wells until last year or anything by Höst till this year. I mean, that just seems unbelievable. And yes, yes, of course you could argue that she is not all that well known, but she OUGHT to be.

And then Laura Florand. Who, I know, counts as semi-prolific so far, but she is clearly heading toward no-kidding-honest-to-God-prolific status at a pretty brisk clip.

And now Elizabeth Bear and Sherwood Smith. I mean, I know I’ve only read one novel by Bear so far. And I think I won’t actually read The Shattered Pillars until the third book of the series comes out, which means so far I’ve only read one book by her. So it’s a little early to judge, right? But Range of Ghosts was really, really good and I’m definitely picking up others of hers. I’ve got All the Windwracked Stars on my Kindle right now, in fact, and I have to say, what a great title!

Kristen at Fantasy Book Cafe recommended that series — anybody else got a specific Bear recommendation?

And now Sherwood Smith, and thank you, everyone who has recently recommended other Smith books, I definitely appreciate some pointers considering the wide variety of books she has evidently produced so far.

That’s five new-to-me authors, each with a big backlist, just since late last year. That’s kind of amazing. It also makes me wonder who else I’m missing, you know?

My brother made a great suggestion that unfortunately may never occur to Amazon staff: that it would be highly useful for Amazon to re-tool its recommendations like this:

If you loved these three books, you might check out these three book bloggers.

Wouldn’t that be clever? Because we all know discoverability is a big issue now and will only turn into a bigger issue in the near future. And for me, strong recommendations from other authors, personal friends, and particularly book bloggers whose personal taste I share is by far the number-one way I discover new authors.

Browsing online? Not at all. Browsing in a brick-and-mortar store? Not that either, because I live too far away from all bookstores.

Nope, for me it’s almost entirely recommendations. I mean, just today I added It Takes Two to Tangle by Theresa Romain to my wishlist strictly because it was recommended by Laura Florand on Twitter, in terms that make me think it’ll appeal to me. I hope I will read it pretty soon, in fact.

Though probably not, like, this week or anything, because I think I will be reading some more books by Bear and Smith first. Lotta backlist to get through for each of them!