I cant look anywhere these days without finding a meme – Nature Network (a good one! mutated), Facebook (wild-type), FriendFeed , Google Reader (banned type) - I'll try to do them all but this one positively appeals so I will do it first (and maybe never get around to the others). Via Peter of Detectives Beyond Borders, Norman (Uriah) of Crime Scraps, and Crime Fiction Reader of It's a Crime, one can limber up for the inevitable "book of the year" posts that loom by addressing this task:
List all the authors that you have read for the first time this year, italicise those that are debut novels [to the best of my knowledge], and award stars to those authors you will read again (or have read again since). I am not going to add an exclamation mark to those I did not like, though. As I already have a list of books reviewed this year, this should be relatively easy to do, so here goes (links are to my reviews of the books):
Meltdown by Martin Baker
No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay **
Through the Ruins of Midnight by Colin Campbell *
A Greater Evil by Natasha Cooper *
The Serbian Dane by Leif Davidsen **
The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards **
Die with Me by Elena Forbes
A Small Weeping by Alex Gray
The Shadow in the River by Frode Grytten **
The Sweetness of Life by Paulus Hochgatterer **
The Final Murder by Anne Holt **
The Exception by Christian Jungersen **
Unseen by Mari Jungstedt **
The Simian Curve by Mark Lalbeharry
Sun Storm by Asa Larsson ***
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson **
Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis **
Trial by Blood by John Macken
The Mystery Writer by Jessica Mann **
Requiem by Jack Ross
The Butterfly Effect by Pernille Rygg *
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield **
Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell *
The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel *
A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley *
Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir *** [has written children's books]
Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin ***
Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten ***
An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson *
Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker **
The Southern Seas by Manuel Vazquez Montalban
Lullaby by Claire Seeber
I'm not "tagging" anyone, but if anyone feels like undertaking this meme, let me know and I'll check out your choices.
This is definitely the Rolls Royce, or Lexus, of lists with all those links.
Some very interesting rankings and I see you gave one prize winning Larsson 3 stars.
One Larsson, yes, Norm;-) Thanks for the very kind comments.
I find this format more compelling than the plain old best-books lists, though I may do one of those, too. This is a nice twist. And I like the adaptations everyone is making: your asterisks, Norm’s exclamation points. I ought to come up with some signifying punctuation mark of my own.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
This looks like a grand idea. And I’m definitely going to be adding a bunch of the titles on your list to my ever-growing wish list.🙂 One of my favorite new authors this year is Patrick Davis. His novel The Silent Note is a really wonderful and unique romantic mystery.
http://www.silentnotethebook.com/
I’ve just written a similar post Maxine
http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2008/12/crime-fiction-discoveries-in-2008.html
Thank you, Ruth, I’ve looked at the website and it does look interesting. Perhaps not dissimilar to The Thirteenth Tale (on my list)?
I’ve always been keen on the ampersand, I should have used that!
I’ll definitely be reading your post later, Kerrie, thanks. I wonder how much crossover there will be between us and each of us with Norman?
Hi Maxine. You’re very welcome. I’ve not read The Thirteenth Tale yet, but reading your review makes me think they might be somewhat similar. It also makes me think I should be adding this one to my list of books to buy.🙂