The Awesome Author Challenge - Completed

The Awesome Author Challenge was hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books, and ran (actually, it's still running) throughout 2010. As Alyce said, the idea behind the challenge was "to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the 'Awesome Author Challenge' title."

I signed up at the ten-author ("Challenging") level, and actually read a few more "awesome" new authors than ten. But this is my "official" list (in, roughly, the order read), with links to my reviews:

1. Nick Bantock: The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy
   
2. Nicholson Baker: The Anthologist
   
3. Iain Pears: The Raphael Affair
   
4. Henry Roth: An American Type
   
5. Elizabeth Peters: A River in the Sky
   
6. Lisa Gardner: Live To Tell
   
7. Kate Morton: The Forgotten Garden
   
8. Alex Kava: Damaged
   
9. Zilpha Keatley Snyder: The Egypt Game
   
10. Anne Rivers Siddons: The House Next Door
    

I enjoyed all of the books I read – some more than others, of course. I suppose if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker's marvelous novel about life, love, and poetry. And, contrariwise, if I had to choose one for the "most disappointing" category, I think it would most likely be Henry Roth's An American Type. Not a bad book and I enjoyed reading it; but it just didn't live up to my expectations (which were probably too high, but you know how that goes).

I want to say thank you to Alyce for hosting. This was a fun (and easy!) challenge, and a great idea!