Crime, Mysteries & Thrillers discussion
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Why Such An Unbalanced Selection?
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I will have to investigate this list further next week. This looks interesting. I think i agree you on this one.
What's more, few of these came from non-English speaking authors. It's a highly anglo-centric list.
Joanne Fluke included but not Martha Grimes? Hmmmmm
I noticed on the 100 Mysteries ... list that some of the authors were indicated in parenthesis as being a "Goodreads Author". What does that mean & is there a list on the site of such authors? I tried a search in the members list for a few of them & found none so that apparently isn't it.
Dave wrote: "I noticed on the 100 Mysteries ... list that some of the authors were indicated in parenthesis as being a "Goodreads Author". What does that mean & is there a list on the site of such authors? I tr..."I think this just means they are active on Goodreads.
More info here Dave.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/program
Marie-Jo wrote: "What's more, few of these came from non-English speaking authors. It's a highly anglo-centric list."Yes it is. I think we have to put that down to who uses Goodreads. Though I have to say as the person who adds people to this group we have a lot of members from India, various Asian countries, and Europe so I like to think we could come up with a more diverse list. The list is also quite heavy recent releases. I haven't read "Gone Girl" yet, because my sister hated it, so I was a bit put off. However, it clearly has made an impact on readers, as it is included on this list.
The list on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&...
This list only has 1 Louise Penny title.
Marie-Jo wrote: "What's more, few of these came from non-English speaking authors. It's a highly anglo-centric list."I agree that more diversity would be good but the list is geared to people who read in English and that limits the choices available. There are surely many great books in other languages but it's pointless to recommend them if a translated version isn't available.
Take Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series, for example. "The Bat' was originally published in 1997, I think, but the translated version just came out last year with books 3-10 following soon after. Book 2, "The Cockroaches," isn't available yet in the US, at least.
Three of the top six are Stieg Larsson? Fail.
I, too, would like to see a bit more diversity: more books not originally published in English, books not just by a handful of authors, etc. I have nothing against the bestselling authors/books, but I prefer lesser-known writers, because it seems like they write more interesting, less formulaic books. Writers like James Patterson seem like they write the same books over and over again, just with slightly different locations, maybe different careers, and the characters have different names; most of the characters' traits are similar, though.
I certainly agree with including Christie & Penny, but 6 of each? Far better imho to limit any given author's work to at most the two best and make room for some of the great work that was bypassed.