I don’t often read the same author twice. With so much talent out there, I like to diversify and seek out fresh voices. There are a few exceptions, though.
Here is the Most List: authors I have read more than ten times.
- Anne Tyler
Every reader has that book that changed everything. For me it was The Accidental Tourist. I grew up in a family of readers. I browsed the stacks of the local library. The covers beckoned: I can still remember the fear I felt looking at the cover of Go Ask Alice and the interior design of The Amityville Horror, where flies on the chapter page signalled how scary the proceeding events would be.
Nothing held my attention, though, until I discovered the novels of Anne Tyler. What was it about these stories of quirky people facing midlife crises that so enthralled me? I think it was the charm of the setting and characters. There is something old-fashioned about her sensibility, with a thin gauze over even dark topics. There is one book, Earthly Possessions, that features a depressed woman who runs off with a bank robber. Another, A Slipping-Down Life, has an unbalanced fan marrying her favorite musician. In another writer’s hands, these would be dark stories. But Anne Tyler somehow makes it all seem innocuous, like something you would see on Nick at Night.
2. Armistead Maupin
Shortly after I burned through half a dozen Anne Tyler books, I found my next addiction. The Tales of the City series had the same quirky charm of Anne Tyler but a more adult sensibility. It was like moving from PG to R content.
A six-volume giddy soap opera, the most irresistible quality is its tone: a raucous, joyous celebration of ’70s San Francisco. The volumes are full of inside jokes (one character, an heiress, ends up in Jonestown) and a feeling of community.
Since then, I have continued to read anything that Maupin publishes. I have also now lived for twenty-three years just down the hill from the real Barbary Lane. At some point I realized that his vision of San Francisco is pure romanticism. Good writers can sell the idea that fantasy is real. He certainly did that for me.
3. Harlan Coben
The latest author to entice me into repeat business is Harlan Coben. My sister handed off her paperback copy of Gone for Good in 2003 and I have been hooked ever since. If there is a better suspense writer out there, I haven’t found them.
What is it about him? For one, he is a master of premise. In the opening scene of Gone for Good, sitting on his mother’s deathbed, the protagonist discovers that his long presumed dead brother may be alive. In Tell No One, the protagonist receives an email attachment with a surveillance video image of his wife on a train platform in Europe. The twist? His wife died many years ago.
There is also no one better at writing hooks. The tension builds, the twists turn, and then he hits you with a shocker. My favorite was a scene in which the protagonist, after going through a devastating loss of his wife’s pregnancy the previous year, finds a hidden credit card. On the bill, there is a charge to a company that sells fake pregnancy bellies for movie and tv productions. Is it possible his wife was never pregnant?
Alas, Coben’s popularity has also led to overproduction. I wish his greedy publisher would let him take some time off to hone his craft. The quality of recent titles had declined. Some read like second drafts of what promises to be a thrilling book. Others offer twists at the end that all but derail the narrative. Give the guy a vacation. I would be more than happy to wait a few years to see him return to form.
Books Smitten 