This is actually last week’s 7 on Sunday prompt, but I liked it a lot more than this week’s so I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I missed it last week since I was focused on my Stacking the Shelves for February so it seemed only fair to go back and fit this one in. One of the benefits of having a “priority authors” list each year is that I discover some amazing new authors that I’d never tried before, often despite them having tons of books already on my TBR. The downside is that I often only have the chance to read one book by each before the end of the year so I end up with a lot of backlist books that I haven’t read yet. Even authors who are not new-to-me or who were not on my priority list often have a bunch of books that I’d never read or sometimes even heard of before. There have definitely been a few cases where I read a book thinking it was an author’s debut only to realize they already had multiple published books out. If I’m planning to read more than one by the same author, I often try to read in publication order whenever possible even if the books are completely separate from each other, but sometimes I end up just starting with the one that seems most interesting and using that to decide if I want to try more. It actually took me some time to figure out which authors have backlists that I’d like to complete even though I’m sure there are a ton more! It didn’t help that I also had a post last year about authors I’d want to read more from, and most of those were the authors I would have picked here!
7 on Sunday is a new weekly project that was started by Grace of G-Swizzel Books, with a weekly topic for videos and/or blog posts! The official Goodreads group with topics can be found here
1) Catherine Ryan Howard – This was an author that I read for the first time last year because of her book 56 Days and even though I had a few of her books on my TBR for years, I didn’t necessarily realize they were by the same author. I think I had a little mixed with Catherine Ryan Hyde. I absolutely loved 56 Days and I’m now really looking forward to trying more of this author’s thrillers! I have 4 books on my TBR that were published before 56 Days plus the two books that have been out since that one. I actually recently bought two more of her books (Run Time and The Nothing Man) that I’m very excited to read this year.
2) Dorothy Koomson – I read The Ice Cream Girls by this author all the way back in 2016 and ever since then, I have meant to read more by this author but her books were hard to find here. Dorothy Koomson is a UK author and many of her books were just not available until more recently, when I think many of them got reissued. I actually got a friend of mine in the UK to send me a few of her recent thrillers for my last birthday, but there are a ton more. I literally have about 15 books by this author on my TBR dating all the way back to the early 2000s. To be fair, her more recent releases are the ones I’m most interested in, but I would like to read her older titles too.
3) Karin Slaughter – I have only read two books by this author so far, but I have a ton more on my TBR. The main reason I’ve been holding off reading some of this author’s backlist is the majority of it is two series: Grant County and the Will Trent series, and I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I’m less interested in police/detective series in general but I love Karin Slaughter’s writing so they may be worth trying. I also wasn’t sure how essential it was to read the series in order and the internet has given very mixed opinions about it. I’m very interested the last few Will Trent books and even bought a few, but I’ve been hesitant to start any since they are mid-series.
4) Kristin Hannah & Diane Chamberlain – I tend to group both of these authors together because I find their careers and my reasons for choosing their books very similar. I have only read 3 books by each of these authors but I have an absolute ton of their others on my TBR. In both cases, I’m very interested in trying their more recent releases, and have a milder interest in some of their older titles which are romances. I have nothing against romance in general but given that these were published in the 1990s and I tend to struggle more with older books, I’m not sure how motivated I’ll be to go all the way back to the start of their backlists.
5) David Bell – I had this author on my priority list a couple of years ago with the specific intention of catching up on his backlist, but I only succeeded in reading one. This author is the perfect example of someone that I keep adding to my list despite the fact that I hadn’t read any at the time. I ended up reading is 2017 release Bring Her Home, and still have 5 books released since then plus around 6 that were published before that I need to catch up on. I definitely want to close that gap a little, especially because his premises always sound interesting.
6) Karen M. McManus – Technically, I may be cheating by adding this author to this list since the only thing I’ve read is her first book, but I decided to include her since I have a pile-up of 6 more releases that I haven’t read yet! I’m not entirely sure it counts as a backlist since they are more recent books (2019 and later) but this is an author that I constantly feel behind on. I had her on my priority author list a few years ago but only got to one book and even then, only the year after she’d been on my list. I would love to catch up on her books by the end of this year!
7) Lisa Jewell – This is definitely the author on this list that I’ve read the most from so far! I’ve read a total of 5 of her books so far, but I started with The Family Upstairs back in 2020. Since then, I’ve kept pretty much up-to-date with her new releases (although I haven’t read The Night She Disappeared yet), but still have several backlist books on my list too. This is another author whose genre changed partway through her career, and I’m most interested in her thrillers. I might try some of her other books too, but I’m a lot less interested in those.
Abyssal Librarian 