... an author that you're reading for the first time? Not a first-time author ... maybe a first-read author...
Anyway, I just started Peter Mathiessen's 'The Snow Leopard.' I've never read Mathiessen, and it got me thinking about how often we read authors for the first time, or, put another way, how hard it is sometimes to read someone other than an author we really like.
This is toughest for me with fiction authors. For example, I'd read Michael Chabon if he wrote directions on how to poke a stick in your eye, and I'd love it. But it's often hard for me to make the leap to a fiction author I'm not familiar with.
That said, I will read Milan Kundera (thanks to recommendation from Jeff) and Cormac McCarthy for the first time this year. I have an old Robin Cook novel hanging around. I plan to pick up something from Philip Roth (thanks again to Jeff). That's it for new fiction authors.
How do you find/try new fiction writers? Anybody you'd recommend to me or others reading this?
My book club read Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being" a couple years back. We also read McCarthy's "The Road" just a couple of months ago. I'll be interested to hear what you think of both authors. McCarthy's writing was just amazing, even though the subject was rather depressing.
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