18. A book by an author you've only read once before

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Sometimes we get caught up in all of the new and shiny books coming out that we forget to revisit favorites. Use this week to revisit an author whose work you enjoyed and want to read more of. Maybe it's the newest release by the author, maybe it's a book from their backlist that you may like. Either way, enjoy revisiting an old friend!

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Suggestions:
Because this is a highly personal prompt, it's hard to give suggestions. If you aren't sure which authors would qualify, try going to your Read list and scrolling through the authors. You can sort your Read shelf by author, so the books you've read by each one will group up.

ATY Group Listopia

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Optional Questions:
1. What are you reading for this category?
2. What work had you previously read by this author?
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?

[Pam]

The 2 authors I'm considering are Claire North - The Pursuit of William Abbey and Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I liked Claire and I'm willing to give Olga another chance!

[Dana]

I'm planning to read Roses of May for this prompt.

[Christy]

I dunno, maybe people could help our fellow readers by giving suggestions of their favorite lesser-known work from an author many people have read once? Like if your favorite Alice Walker book is The Temple of My Familiar, that could help lots of people, since most have only read The Color Purple by her.
I would contribute that I really enjoyed The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, whose most popular book is Cloud Atlas.

[Ron]

P.D. James. I read An Unsuitable Job for a Woman which is #1 in the Cordelia Gray series only to figure out that her Cordelia Gray series is a spin-off to her Adam Dalgliesh series, which starts with Cover Her Face. So in 2020 I will back up and start with Dalgliesh #1. Unsuitable Job was a fun and easy who-done-it, so I'm ready to become a P.D. James fan.

[Jill]

I am going to read an Elinor Lipman book. I read The Family Man earlier this year and loved it so I am glad for another opportunity to read her writing, I think I will read The View from Penthouse B.

[Serendipity]

If I start the Louise Penny series I could count the second book here. Scythe and Unwind are both on my TBR and I’ve only read one but him. Two books by Karen Walker Thompson are on my TBR so if I read one this year or next I could fit in the other one. Or perhaps the second in The Shadow of the Wind series. Options are good.

[Jackie, Solstitial Mod]

I have *so many* options for this prompt it's ridiculous. I'm terrible at following up on series.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

I'm the same, Jackie! I started and didn't finish 6 series this year alone!

[Johanne]

Ha yeah, me too. I have a seperate shelf for ongoing series, there are 18 at the moment...

[Johanne]

... and those are just the series I want to continue.

[Lauren]

I'm planning on reading The Great Hunt since I've only read the first book in the Wheel of Time series and I want to read more lol.

[Angie]

I have quite a few options here. I've been meaning to read something else by Octavia E. Butler. Since a lot of her works are series, the trick is picking which series I want to start. I'm thinking I'll go with Wild Seed.

Other author possibilities include Ron Chernow, Nnedi Okorafor, Haruki Murakami, or Martha Wells.

[MaryAnn (EmilyD1037)]

The book I chose is: My Bondage and Freedom by Frederick Douglass and John David Smith. It will be coming out in EB in Nov. The other book I read was Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Himself. I liked the first book.
Not to discount his story, but I have read horror stories about slaves (esp. women) and didn't find his story as bad as most.

[SadieReadsAgain]

I've got a lot to choose from on my physical/Kindle shelves. Some front runners are

Five Quarters of the Orange
Her Fearful Symmetry
Little Fires Everywhere
The Heart's Invisible Furies
This Is Not about Me
What Alice Forgot
Where Angels Fear to Tread

[Stacey]

I chose Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis for this category. I'd previously read her terrific short story collection, Normal People Don't Live Like This almost five years ago, which if I recall, I selected solely on the basis of its intriguing title. Rainey Royal was a character featured in that collection. It'll be fun to see what Landis has whipped up for Rainey in this novel.

[Sarah]

My book of choice for this topic is The Ice Child by Camilla Lackberg
I picked up The Girl in The Woods due to its size (for me the bigger the book, the better) with no knowledge of the author or what the story was about.
I found the characters to be fully developed with back-stories that were mentioned but not delved into. I looked the author up and discovered she has a whole series of books with these characters.
Normally I would find the first book and read the whole series in order but I found The Ice Child at a book sale and I had to get it. I guess I'll be reading this series from the end to the beginning lol.

[Chelsey]

1. What are you reading for this category?


2. What work had you previously read by this author?


3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I actually think I liked this one more but the ending sucked.

[Maple]

1. What are you reading for this category?
Second Hand Curses

2. What work had you previously read by this author?
NPCs

3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I liked these books equally the same, but I think I liked NPCs just a little better. Hayes definitely has some unique story ideas, and I love the wit and humor he brings into his writing. I am happy to keep reading the stories he puts out. One thing I enjoyed about Second Hand Curses is how he incorporated lesser and well know fairy tale characters into his plot, but not as the central character(s).

[Kim]

1. What are you reading for this category? Books of a Feather by Kate Carlisle
2. What work had you previously read by this author? I read A Cookbook Conspiracy (A Bibliophile Mystery, #7) in 2015
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? Apparently, more - since I gave the previous book 3 stars and this one 4 stars.

[Jill]

What are you reading for this category?
I read Arrest the Bishop? by Winifred Peck

What work had you previously read by this author?
The Warrielaw Jewel

Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I liked this as much as the first one. I wouldn't say they were among the best of the Golden Age mysteries but they were enjoyable. This author only wrote the two mysteries, but she did write other books, which I do intend to try at sometime

[Kathy]

1. What are you reading for this category?
Romola by George Eliot

2. What work had you previously read by this author?
Middlemarch

3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I liked it but not at much as Middlemarch. This one was set in 1490s Florence so it was a little harder to understand since I don't have the background knowledge.

[Melissa]

1. What are you reading for this category?
The Splendid Outcast: Beryl Markham's African Stories
2. What work had you previously read by this author? (one of my favorite books I've ever read) West with the Night
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
Parts of it yes but mostly no -- the beginning section of stories were as good as anything in West with the Night, but the drippy wartime romance stories were definitely not up to par

[Aine]

What are you reading?
The growing season by Helen Sedgwick Read: 16 Feb 2020

What book did you read before?
The Comet Seekers - also amazing

[Severina]

1. What are you reading for this category?
I read Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

2. What work had you previously read by this author?
I had read Dreams and Shadows, which I did not love.

3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I was not actually a big fan of the first one, but "Sea of Rust" sounded so intriguing that I had to pick it up. And I'm glad I did, because I adored it.

[Brittany]

1. What are you reading for this category?
The Nickel Boys
2. What work had you previously read by this author?
The Underground Railroad
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I did. I believe I gave both 4 stars.

[Susan]

Tarkin by James Luceno because my kid read it and wanted to discuss it with me. We decided that in the range of Star Wars books it was a 4, but in the world of all books it was a 2. I read Luceno's Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel last year as a buddy read with my kid, and it was clunky, so Tarkin was better.

[Marie (UK)]

1. I read The Life She Was Given 04/03/2020
2 previously read What She Left Behind

3. I enjoyed the previous book more. Some of this was really drawing emotionally and i was very disappointed with the ending.

[Steven]

Angie wrote: "I have quite a few options here. I've been meaning to read something else by Octavia E. Butler. Since a lot of her works are series, the trick is picking which series I want to start..."

Wild Seed was what I read for this prompt. I really enjoyed it. Now I just have to figure out how to make the rest of the series fit into some of the prompts

[Emily]

I read The Satapur Moonstone, the 2nd book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey. The other book I had read by her is the first book in that series, The Widows of Malabar Hill. I liked the first one better.

[Sherri]

I read Tidelands by Philippa Gregory for this prompt. I didn’t enjoy the book. I wanted to like it but wasn’t very interested in the plot. I didn’t like most of the characters.

[Evelyn]

1. What are you reading for this category?
Misconduct by Penelope Douglas
2. What work had you previously read by this author?
Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
Not the same as the previous book.

[Andrea]

For this challenge, I read The Paladin: A Spy Novel by David Ignatius. Back in 2014, I read my first book by this author, The Director. Both are CIA tales that seem to be more journalistic than thrilling, but they both deliver dreadful "What if?" scenarios.

[Wendy]

For this category I'm reading (and almost done with) Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. My first book by this author was the incredible In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex about the true story that inspired Moby Dick. Mayflower is interesting in it's own right--it's not so much about the Mayflower (the title was probably a marketing decision) but about King Philip's War in the late 1600s between the sachem of the Wampanoag people who launched a last-ditch campaign against the New England puritans who were systematically taking over their land. The book itself is very well-researched and is full of interesting/depressing details about a deadly war most people probably didn't learn about in school (I have no memory of it). It's a worthwhile read, though perhaps it doesn't have the exciting plotline that Heart of the Sea did, and reads a bit more like a straight-up history book.

[Shelley]

1. What are you reading for this category? Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
2. What work had you previously read by this author? The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? I wasn't a big fan of the Circumnavigated one and I hadn't realized until searching for this prompt that the were the same author. THe styles are completely different. Like insanely different and I would never have put them together. I think that actually leads into why I wasn't a fan of either of them, because felt like the author was trying way to had to emulate the style of someone else. For Circumnavigate it felt a lot like A Wizard of Earthsea and Space Opera just screamed Hitchhiker's Guide. She really needs to find her own voice and not strong arm stories into whatever she feels is the "appropriate" voice.


I have one more book of her's in my TBR list and I'm not sure if I want to try it.

[Traci]

For this category I picked Death by Jack-o'-Lantern by Alexis Morgan

I read Death by Jack-o'-Lantern by Alexis Morgan
I had previously read Death by Committee which was the first book in the series.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://titlesurfingwithtraci.blogspo...

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

I read The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys. I started 2019 off by reading Salt to the Sea, which I really enjoyed, but I think I enjoyed The Fountains of Silence even better!

[Laurel]

1. What are you reading for this category? Proper English by K.J. Charles
2. What work had you previously read by this author? Think of England
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? I enjoyed it more. A traditional country house murder mystery with delightful protagonists.

[MN]

Having read and throughly enjoyed Lansen' The Girls for prompt 28, I read her The Wife's Tale, for this prompt. The Wife's Tale starts very slowly, but by a third of the way through, I couldn't put it down. Excellent!

[Donna]

I read The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun several years ago and really enjoyed it. For this challenge I chose Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin

[Emily]

for this prompt I chose:

18. A Book by an Author You've Only Read Once Before: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

It was a quick and easy read, my first book by Wilde was the picture of Dorian Grey.

[Jana]

1. What are you reading for this category? I read The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware.
2. What work had you previously read by this author? I read and enjoyed The Woman in Cabin 10.
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? They were both very good. I read both for my book club, not my usual "go-to" genre.

[Heather]

I am going to read The Testaments by Margaret Attwood. previously I have read The Handmaid's Tale.

[Roxana]

1. What are you reading for this category? Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

2. What work had you previously read by this author? The Talented Mr. Ripley


3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? Not as much, but it was still a solid read.

[Alexx]

1. What are you reading for this category?
I am reading Eve of Man by Giovanna and Tom Fletcher

2. What work had you previously read by this author?
So I'm not sure if I'm cheating by doing this, but I've never read anything by Tom Fletcher (unless you count song lyrics lol). I have, however, previously read Billy and Me by Giovanna Fletcher

3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I've only just started this book so I can't say for sure, but I definitely like the premise of this book better

[Samantha]

1. What are you reading for this category? The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood
2. What work had you previously read by this author? All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read? In both cases I had an appreciation for Bryn Greenwood's writing. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was the perfect name for the book it was ugly and hard to read but also pretty wonderful to read. The Reckless Oath We Made was less intense and sort of romantic but still had a little bite to it, I really enjoyed it.

[Joanne]

I read Gus by Kim Holden which is #2 in a series. Book one: Bright Side was the other book I read by the author, and although this book was good, it can't compare with Bright Side, which was an amazing read.

[Alesha]

1. What are you reading for this category?
The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

2. What work had you previously read by this author?
Winnie-the-Pooh

3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
I mean, considering that Winnie-the-Pooh is one of my all-time favorite stories and characters, that would be a difficult feat to achieve. So, no, I didn't enjoy this one as much, but I still did enjoy it!

I was very curious to read a mystery written by the creative genius behind Winnie-the-Pooh, and it didn't disappoint! Would recommend to fans of Agatha Christie and the likes. 4 stars.

[Marie]

I read Golden Son by Pierce Brown for this. I read (and loved) Red Rising last year.

I didn't enjoy this one at all. The writing's great, but I really didn't like the plot. It made me anxious, so I just wanted to get it over with, but at the same time was avoiding reading it. I've got the final one in the trilogy later in the year, and I'm not really looking forward to that now, which is disappointing.

[Courtney]

1. What are you reading for this category?
The Cafe by the Sea
2. What work had you previously read by this author?
The Bookshop on the Corner
3. Did you enjoy this one as much as the first one you had read?
This was a little slow to take off and catch my interest but once it did, it was really good.