Reading with Style discussion

Post your Author chains for approval here. You do not need to post the book titles, just the authors. When your itinerary is approved, you will see your name in this first post. If you want to make a change, please make a new post rather than editing your old one.

Elizabeth (Alaska) (post 2) - approved!
Kate S (post 3) - approved!
Kazen (post 4) - approved!
Rosemary (post 5, chain 1) - approved!
Rosemary (post 5, chain 2) - approved!
Jayme(the ghost reader) (post 6) - approved!
Norma (post 7) - approved!
Louise (post 8) - approved!
Don (The Book Guy) (post 9) - approved!
Katrina (post 10) - approved!
Arow (post 11) - approved!
Theresa~OctoberLace (post 12) - approved!
Amanda (post 13) - approved!
Jane from BC (post 14, chain 1) - approved!
Jane from BC (post 14, chain 2) - approved!
Deedee (post 15) - approved!
Theresa~OctoberLace (post 16) - approved!
Norma (post 17) - approved!
Tanya (post 18) - approved!
Heather (post 19) - approved!
Joanna (post 20) - approved!
itpdx (post 21) - approved!
Nick (post 22) - approved!
Tien (post 23) - approved!
D (post 24) - approved!
Jenifer (post 25) - approved!
Coralie (post 26) - approved!
Sarah (post 27) - approved!
Jenifer (post 28) - approved!
Mike (post 29) - approved!
Louise (post 30, chain 1) - approved!
Louise (post 30, chain 2) - approved!
Jama (post 31) - approved!
Cory Day (post 32) - approved!
Audrey (post 33, through author 8) - approved!
Karen Michele (post 34) - approved!
Sam (post 35) - approved!
Ismaa (post 36) - approved!
Nattalie (post 37) - approved!
Erin (post 40) - approved!
Kate S (post 41) - approved!
Sam (post 42) - approved!
Cory Day (post 43) - approved!
Sara Grace (post 45) - approved!
Heather (post 47) - approved!
Sarah (post 48) - approved!
Ismaa (post 49) - approved!

Author read for the Spring Challenge:

Graham Swift

15.1 - Barry Unsworth
15.2 - Muriel Spark
15.3 - Max Beerbohm
15.4 - John Dos Passos
15.5 - Anthony Powell
15.6 - Henry Green
15.7 - Bernard Malamud
15.8 - John O'Hara
15.9 - Louis Auchincloss
15.10 - Louis Bromfield

My first chain:

Starting Author: Carol Shields

15.1 Iain Sinclair
15.2 Jáchym Topol
15.3 Hanif Kureishi
15.4 Jonathan Coe
15.5 Denis Johnson
15.6 Lydia Millet
15.7 Shelley Jackson
15.8 Brian Evenson
15.9 Eliot Pattison
15.10 Qiu Xiaolong

Author (soon to be) read for the Spring Challenge:

Amanda Ashley

15.1 - Jennifer Ashley
15.2 - Elizabeth Hoyt
15.3 - Tessa Dare
15.4 - Lorraine Heath
15.5 - Loretta Chase
15.6 - Courtney Milan
15.7 - Sherry Thomas
15.8 - Julie Anne Long
15.9 - Anne Mallory
15.10 - Sarah Morgan

And all new-to-me authors, yea!

Can I get two possible itineraries approved please? (because I can't decide!)

1. From Jojo Moyes

15.1 Carol Rifka Brunt
15.2 Craig Lancaster
15.3 Catherine Ryan Hyde
15.4 Elisabeth Hyde
15.5 Sadie Jones
15.6 Patrick Gale
15.7 Dorothy Whipple
15.8 Denis Mackail
15.9 Etty Hillesum
15.10 Marghanita Laski

2. From Edmund White

15.1 David Leavitt
15.2 Alan Hollinghurst
15.3 Paul Monette
15.4 Colm Tóibín
15.5 William Trevor
15.6 Rose Tremain
15.7 Penelope Lively
15.8 Jane Gardam
15.9 Ivy Compton-Burnett
15.10 Elizabeth Taylor

Mine are not all new-to-me authors - I decided to sacrifice the extra points to the goal of clearing more of the TBR!

Starting author Laurien Berenson
15.1 Linda O. Johnston
15.2 Elaine Viets
15.3 Judy McCoy
15.4 Penny Warner
15.5 Elise Hyatt
15.6 Diana Orgain
15.7 Laura Alden
15.8 Lucy Arlington
15.9 Miranda James
15.10 Lorna Barrett

All new to me authors

Author read for the spring challenge

Linda Fairstein

15.1 Tess Gerritsen
15.2 Jeffrey Deaver
15.3 Michael Connelly
15.4 Robert Crais
15.5 Robert B Parker
15.6 John Lescroart
15.7 Stuart Woods
15.8 Phillip Margolin
15.9 Lisa Scottoline
15.10 David Baldacci

Starting point author: Connie Willis

15.1 Nalo Hopkinson
15.2 Nnedi Okorafor
15.3 Karen Lord
15.4 Wesley Chu
15.5 Ann Leckie
15.6 Alistair Reynolds
15.7 Iain M. Banks
15.8 Charles Stross
15.9 Hannu Rajaniemi
15.10 Ian McDonald

Can't wait to get started with these authors I haven't read before.

I'm new here so starting with my current read Iris Murdoch

15.1 Nadine Gordimer
15.2 Doris Lessing
15.3 Daphne du Maurier
15.4 Galsworthy John
15.5 Margaret Drabble
15.6 A.S. Byatt
15.7 John Fowles
15.8 Christopher Isherwood
15.9 Alan Hollinghurst
15.10 Colm Tóibín

My author from the Spring Challenge is: Margaret Atwood

15.1 John Wyndham
15.2 Philip K. Dick
15.3 Chuck Palahniuk
15.4 Arthur Nersesian
15.5 Irvine Welsh
15.6 J.G. Ballard
15.7 Alex Garland
15.8 Andersen Prunty
15.9 Bradley Sands
15.10 Mykle Hansen

Mine will be a chain of Classics:

Author from Spring Challenge: George Eliot

15.1 Elizabeth Gaskell
15.2 Wilkie Collins
15.3 Thomas Hardy
15.4 D.H. Lawrence
15.5 James Joyce
15.6 Marcel Proust
15.7 Mary McCarthy
15.8 Charles Dickens
15.9 John Galsworthy
15.10 Sigrid Undset

Gah! Brain is not functioning .... had two 15.4's

Author from Spring Challenge: Tim Winton

15.1Bliss by Peter Carey
15.2 The Successor by Ismail Kadaré
15.3 Sybil, or the Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
15.4 Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
15.5 Camilla by Fanny Burney
15.6 Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
15.7 East Lynne by Mrs. Henry Wood
15.8 Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
15.9 The Countess of Albany by Vernon Lee
15.10 A Romance of Two Worlds by Marie Corelli

so, this is my all new reads list ... now to work on another one to get me through my 1001 reads list ;)

Mine will be a chain of Canadian authours that I have never read.

The authour that I read in May (I didn't participate in the Spring 2014 challenge) that begins the chain is Robertson Davies. I am reading his book Fifth Business and will be finished this week.

15.1Margaret Laurence
15.2 Jane Urquhart
15.3 Elizabeth Hay
15.4 Joseph Boyden
15.5 Richard Wagamese
15.6 Mary Lawson
15.7 Lisa Moore
15.8 Wayne Grady
15.9 Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
15.10 Steven Galloway

OR the other Option that I am considering is:

15.1 Margaret Laurence
15.2 Martha Ostenso
15.3 Alistair MacLeod
15.4 Joseph Boyden
15.5 Richard Wagamese
15.6 Wayne Grady
15.7 Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
15.8 C.S. Richardson
15.9 Miriam Toews
15.10 Elizabeth Hay

First chain, beginning with Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga (which I will finish reading soon)

15.1 Zoe Wicomb
15.2 Nadine Gordimer
15.3 Ousmane Sembène
15.4 Camara Laye
15.5 Georges Simenon
15.6 Georges Bernanos
15.7 Honoré de Balzac
15.8 Ivan Turgenev
15.9 Maxim Gorky

15.10 Rabindranath Tagore or Ivan Bunin or Alexander Pushkin (depending on availability)

All are new-to-me authors. I've had books by Honoré de Balzac and Ivan Turgenev on my TBR for ages :).

I'm adding a second chain for approval. It seems that the books on my first chain (message #14) may be better used for the RwS Summer tasks. All the authors on that chain have books in the Canon, except for Mary McCarthy, who very conveniently showed up on the end of this chain! All of these authors are new to me.

Anchor: Julian Barnes

15.1 Peter Carey
15.2 David Malouf
15.3 Barry Unsworth
15.4 Martin Booth
15.5 Katherine Webb
15.6 Lucinda Riley
15.7 Kristina McMorris
15.8 Kate Furnivall
15.9 Robert Alexander
15.10 Mary McCarthy

A second chain for approval

Spring Author: Patricia Cornwell

15.1 Janet Evanovich
15.2 James Patterson
15.3 Tess Gerritsen
15.4 Kathy Reichs
15.5 Linda Fairstein
15.6 Lisa Scottoline
15.7 Phillip Margolin
15.8 John Lescroart
15.9 Robert B Parker
15.10 Stuart Woods

Author read for Spring Challenge: Margaret Atwood

15.1 John Wyndham
15.2 Hubert Selby Jr.
15.3 Irvine Welsh
15.4 Bret Easton Ellis
15.5 Chuck Palahniuk
15.6 Rupert Thomson
15.7 Kol Anderson
15.8 Lisa Henry
15.9 Abigail Roux
15.10 Madeleine Urban

School's out so I can explore some dark titles and half of these authors are new to me.

starting from Arkady Strugatsky.

15.1 Sergei Lukyanenko
15.2 John Shirley
15.3 Bruce Sterling
15.4 George Alec Effinger
15.5 R.A. Lafferty
15.6 James Tiptree Jr.
15.7 Samuel R Delany
15.8 Melissa Scott
15.9 C.L. Moore
15.10 Clark Ashton Smith


all of these are new to me. edited to fix my links.

Starting with C.S. Lewis

15.1 Diana Wynne Jones
15.2 Patricia C. Wrede
15.3 Garth Nix
15.4 Clive Barker
15.5 China Miéville
15.6 Hannu Rajaniemi
15.7 Charles Stross
15.8 John Scalzi
15.9 Paolo Bacigalupi
15.10 Connie Willis

All of these are new to me, though several are ones that I've been meaning to get to.

Starting with Tom Reiss

15.1 Janet Wallach Title: Desert Queen
15.2 Caroline Moorehead Title: A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
15.3 Ryszard Kapuściński Title: The Shadow of the Sun
15.4 Tim Mackintosh-Smith
15.5 Tahir Shah Title: The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca
15.6 Jeroen van Bergeijk Title: My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara
15.7 Eric Hansen
15.8 Giles Milton Title: Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan
15.9 Susanna Clarke Title: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
15.10 A. S. Byatt

A couple that I have read before.
This one certainly took an interesting turn!
Edited to include titles that I have selected so far.

Starting with Nathaniel Philbrick

15.1 Hampton Sides
15.2 Irving Stone
15.3 Andy Warhol
15.4 Susan Sontag
15.5 William H. Gass
15.6 John Hawkes
15.7 Jonathon Keats
15.8 Ambrose Bierce
15.9 Arthur Conan Doyle
15.10 Agatha Christie

I've read a few of these authors before.

Due to pregnancy induced nausea, I've barely read!! I've 3 books to choose from as my starting point (yep, choices choices choices!).

Starting with Ann Patchett

15.1 Someone by Alice McDermott
15.2 Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope
15.3 I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington
15.4 As Darkness Falls (Dungirri #1) by Bronwyn Parry
15.5 The House on Burra Burra Lane by Jennie Jones
15.6 The Girl in the Steel-Capped Boots by Loretta Hill
15.7 Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears
15.8 Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser
15.9 Floundering by Romy Ash
15.10 Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

Noticed that I went from well-known US author to Aussie female author by #3 and stayed there -lol. All these are new to me. Looking forward to start!

Beginning with author Ira Levin:


15.1 Stephen King - Joyland (finished 6-4-14)
15.2 Thomas Tryon - The Night of the Moonbow (finished 6-10-14)
15.3 William March - The Bad Seed(finished 6-13-14)
15.4 Shirley Jackson - Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories(finished 7-21-14)
15.5 Ray Bradbury - Farewell Summer(finished 7-22-14)
15.6 Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
15.7 Walter Tevis - The Man Who Fell to Earth
15.8 Don DeLillo - Libra
15.9 Philip Roth - The Great American Novel
15.10 Iris Murdoch - The Bell

5 new authors, 5 tried-and-true old favorites.

Ooops, make that 4 new authors, 6 old favorites.

I started out trying to do a nostalgia chain of sci-fi/horror like I used to read in the summers when I was young, but the list got side-tracked near the end. Still looks like fun.

(Edited to add tentative titles)

I can't decide between two chains. One is mostly thriller/suspense novels and the other is more chick-lit. Can I get both approved and then will decide what I feel more like reading on June 1?

Starting point: Nicci French

1. Tess Gerritsen
2. Karin Slaughter
3. Lisa Gardner
4. Tami Hoag
5. Iris Johansen
6. Catherine Coulter
7. Julie Garwood
8. Judith McNaught
9. Lisa Kleypas
10. Sarah MacLean

**edited per mod request. Thanks for the readjustments, Liz M!
Thanks!!

My first chain (still working on a Science Fiction/Fantasy one).

Starting author Garth Nix

1. Susan Cooper
2. Rosemary Sutcliff
3. Arthur Ransome
4. Elizabeth Enright
5. Noel Streatfeild
6. Susan Coolidge
7. Charles Tritten
8. Elinor M Brent-Dyer
9. Antonia Forest
10. Eve Garnett

Thank you.

AUTHOR CHAIN- all authors

Starting: Kristin Hannah

15.1 Nancy Thayer
15.2 Elin Hilderbrand
15.3 Barbara Delinsky
15.4 Kristy Kiernan
15.5 Dianne Dixon
15.6 Amy Bourret
15.7 Beth Kendrick
15.8 Allie Larkin
15.9 Juliette Fay
15.10 Mary Kay McComas

Oops! Let me try this again.

Starting: Susanna Kearsley

15.1 Sarah Jio
15.2 Beth Hoffman
15.3 Claire Cook
15.4 Sheila Roberts
15.5 Debbie Macomber
15.6 Susan Wiggs
15.7 Elin Hilderbrand
15.8 Kristin Hannah
15.9 Patti Callahan Henry
15.10 Sarah Strohmeyer

*These are all new to me authors*

Starting Ellen Sussman
1. Nora Roberts
2. Robyn Carr
3. Debbie Macomber
4. Fern Michaels
5. Carol Higgins Clark
6. Mary Higgins Clark
7. Mary Jane Clark
8. Laura Levine
9. Leslie Meier
10. JoAnna Carl

Chain 2 Starting: Maeve Binchy
1.Rosamunde Pilcher
2. Barbara Taylor Bradford
3. Miss Read
4. Reginald Hill
5. P.D. James
6.Ngaio Marsh
7. Jill McGown
8. Caroline Graham
9.Margery Allingham
10.Dorothy L. Sayers

Both chains are all new authors to me

Starting from Adam Mansbach
1. Danzy Senna
2. Mat Johnson
3. Colson Whitehead
4. Percival Everett
5. Steve Erickson
6.Anna Kavan
7.Tarjei Vessas
8. Sigrid Undset
9. Herbjørg Wassmo
10. Vassilis Vassilikos
All of these authors are new to me, and most were never even on my radar before, but they all look great!

Alright, I think this works. Starting light, but with all new-to-me authors.

Start with Lisa Kleypas
1. Elizabeth Hoyt (pen name Julia Harper)
2. Meredith Duran
3. Joanna Bourne
4. Courtney Milan
5. Jennifer Ashley (pen names Allyson James, Ashley Gardner)
6. Anna Campbell
7. Julie Anne Long
8. Anne Mallory
9. Sarah Mayberry
10. Sarah Morgan

Author read in SPring: Virginia Woolf

1. Doris Lessing
2. Anthony Burgess
3. George Orwell
4. Kurt Vonnegut
5. Jonathan Franzen
6. David Foster Wallace
7. Joan Didion
8. Henry James

I think that's enough.

I have to make another change in the end of my chain. I even bought a book that I thought was on my chain, but wasn't, so I'm moving one to the regular challenge and adding it in:

My First Chain revisited:

Author (finished, Spring 2014)

Tan Twan Eng

15.1 Nadeem Aslam
15.2 Amitav Ghosh
15.3 Tahmima Anam
15.4 Kamila Shamsie
15.5 Mohammed Hanif
15.6 Moshin Hamid
15.7 Daniel Alarcón
15.8 Dinaw Mengestu
15.9 Ayi Kwei Armah
15.10 Zakes Mda

All of the authors are still new to me.

Starting author: S.J. Watson

15.01 - Gillian Flynn
15.02 - Hilary Mantel
15.03 - Edward St. Aubyn
15.04 - James Salter
15.05 - Bernard Malamud
15.06 - Christopher Isherwood
15.07 - Anthony Powell
15.08 - Iris Murdoch
15.09 - Edith Wharton
15.10 - E.M. Forster

All authors are new to me.

Starting Author M.L. Stedman (read in March)

15.1 Kate Morton
15.2 Susanna Kearsleyaka Emma Cole
15.3 Mary Stewart
15.4 Rosemary Sutcliff
15.5 Leon Garfield
15.6 Jane Gardam
15.7 Penelope Lively
15.8 Mary Wesley
15.9 Margaret Drabble
15.10 Peter Ackroyd

Other than Kate Morton all authors are new to me.

Starting Author read in March James Joyce

15.1 George Eliot
15.2 Wilkie Collins
15.3 Elizabeth Gaskell
15.4 Charles Dickens
15.5 Nathaniel Hawthorne
15.6 Henry James
15.7 Edith Wharton
15.8 E.M. Forster
15.9 Virginia Woolf
15.10Doris Lessing

Original chain (with one substitution): Starting Author - Orhan Pamuk

15.1 - Rabindranath Tagore
15.2 - Vassilis Vassilikos
15.3 - Ezekiel Mphahlele
15.4 - Erskine Caldwell
15.5 - Henry Green Max Beerbohm
15.6 - Anthony Powell
15.7 - Iris Murdoch
15.8 - May Sinclair
15.9 - Henri Barbusse
15.10 - Romain Gary

Alternative chain: Starting author - J.G. Farrell

15.1 - Kingsley Amis
15.2 - Martin Amis
15.3 - Henry Green
15.4 - Storm Jameson
15.5 - David Dabydeen
15.6 - Shashi Deshpande
15.7 - Graham Swift
15.8 - Edward St. Aubyn
15.9 - Elizabeth Taylor
15.10 - Sylvia Townsend Warner

OK...I think I've got my chain figured out.

Starting author: Donna Tartt

15.1 - Connie Willis
15.2 - Maureen F. McHugh
15.3 - Jeffrey Ford
15.4 - Jeff VanderMeer
15.5 - M.R. Carey
15.6 - Jo Walton
15.7 - Graham Joyce
15.8 - Caitlín R. Kiernan
15.9 - Cherie Priest
15.10 - Seanan McGuire

Here's what I'm going to try for my chain, all new to me authors.

I didn't participate in the Spring challenge, so I'm using a book I read in May.

Starting author: A.S. Byatt

15.1 - Rebecca West
15.2 - Tatyana Tolstaya
15.3 - Vladimir Sorokin
15.4 - Victor Pelevin
15.5 - Hella S. Haasse
15.6 - David Blixt
15.7 - Amanda Grange
15.8 - Janet Mullany
15.9 - Adrienne Giordano
15.10 - Toni Anderson

Here's my second chain (which is likely to be my first chain read)

Starting Author: Anita Brookner

15.1 A.L. Kennedy
15.2 Anthony Powell
15.3 John Dos Passos
15.4 Ismail Kadaré
15.5 Jim Crace
15.6 William Trevor
15.7 Colm Tóibín
15.8 Roddy Doyle
15.9 Beryl Bainbridge
15.10 Elizabeth Taylor

All right, trying again...:)

Starting Author: Donna Tartt

15.1 -- Connie Willis
15.2 -- Maureen F. McHugh
15.3 -- Nicola Griffith
15.4 -- Catherynne M. Valente
15.5 -- Jeff VanderMeer
15.6 -- Jo Walton
15.7 -- Graham Joyce
15.8 -- N.K. Jemisin
15.9 -- Nalo Hopkinson
15.10 -- Hiromi Goto

Here's my new chain. I got lucky and was able to get back to 6 of the authors in my original train, so that's not too bad!

Starting from: Charlotte Brontë
15.1 - E.M. Forster
15.2 - Edith Wharton
15.3 - Mary McCarthy
15.4 - Bernard Malamud
15.5 - Christopher Isherwood
15.6 - Anthony Powell
15.7 - Iris Murdoch
15.8 - William Trevor
15.9 - Sarah Hall
15.10 - Helen Humphreys

All still new-to-me authors.

Reposting based on my comment in the questions thread.

Starting with Cherie Priest

15.1 - Kat Richardson
15.2 - C.E. Murphy
15.3 - Adrian Phoenix
15.4 - Jeanne C. Stein
15.5 - Jenna Black
15.6 - Allison Pang
15.7 - Diana Rowland
15.8 - Carolyn Crane
15.9 - Ann Aguirre
15.10 - Sara Creasy

Thanks!

Starting with Pieter Aspe (read during the spring)

15.1 - Wulf Dorn
15.2 - Ursula Poznanski
15.3 - Sebastian Fitzek
15.4 - Cody McFadyen
15.5 - Simon Beckett
15.6 - Frank Schätzing
15.7 - Sergei Lukyanenko
15.8 - Andreas Eschbach
15.9 - Rebecca Gablé
15.10 - Peter Prange

All new to me authors :)

it seems as if I have to make an adjustment to my list... I can't find anything by R.A. Lafferty that's not going to cost me an arm and a leg. >.< so, here's the modified list. the change starts at #5 and these are all still new faces.

1. Sergei Lukyanenko
2. John Shirley
3. Bruce Sterling
4. George Alec Effinger
5. Melissa Scott
6. James Tiptree Jr.
7. Samuel Delany
8. Frederik Pohl
9. Michael Bishop
10. Pat Murphy

Second Chain for approval:
Spring Author: Joseph R. Garber
1. John Gilstrap
2.Brad Taylor
3.Andrew Peterson
4. Andrew Britton
5. Brad Thor
6. Ben Coes
7. Mark Greaney
8. Tom Wood
9. Barry Eisler
10.Gayle Lynds

Second Chain.
Read Mary Wesleybut not for the Spring Challenge. (chain has been edited)
1. Elizabeth Jane Howard
2. Angela Huth
3. H E Bates
4. Nancy Mitford
5. L.P. Hartley
6. Rebecca West
7. Sylvia Townsend Warner
8. Ivy Compton-Burnett
9. William Trevor
10. Edna O'Brien