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Blogocentric Formulations #831997 added October 22, 2014 at 7:35pm
Restrictions: None
Notable Novelists You May Not Know
 
PROMPT: Sell us on an obscure or relatively unknown author that you like.
I'm going to choose a couple different authors for this prompt, because I can't narrow it down to just one.
Warren Ellis isn't exactly what you would call "relatively unknown" at least in a general sense. He's a very prolific and accomplished comics writer, and has also contributed to video games (Dead Space) and movies {Red, Red 2). He's also a novelist, but has only written two novels to date. I don't often curse (much) in my blog, but there's no other way to describe Ellis' writing than completely fucked up. If guys like Chuck Palahniuk are your thing (see also: "I am Jack's hallucinatory antagonist"  ), you won't be disappointed by Ellis. The one book I read of his was so delightfully freakish and twisted, that I nearly read it in one sitting (see also: "Marathon Reading Sessions" ). If you like that kind of material, I simply cannot recommend this book any more highly:
| ASIN: 0061252050 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 12.74
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Peter Clines is a writer I'm excited to see grow. He writes a post-apocalyptic mutant series, and also a standalone horror novel about an unusual/creepy apartment building. I wasn't a huge fan of his mutant series, and the standalone definitely goes off the deep end toward the end, but this guy reminds me of early Stephen King in the sense that he's not afraid to embrace the truly bizarre and strange. I think he's probably an author I'll be following for some time, eagerly checking out his new works and seeing if he develops into the next unique voice in horror. My favorite of his books, the apartment building one, is:
| ASIN: 1618684981 |
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Amazon's Price: Price N/A
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Ben Fountain won all kinds of acclaim (and a PEN/Hemingway Award) for his first published work, a collection of short fiction. He published his debut novel in 2012, and has been receiving much acclaim for it as well. It centers around an army unit that's briefly back in the States and being paraded around at a Dallas Cowboys football game as national heroes. It does a really fantastic job of contrasting civilians' impressions of the soldiers with how they feel about their own actions, and really establishes each character (especially the titular character of Billy Lynn) as a unique individual struggling to find their place in the world as young men - basically still kids - who have had to grow up and become men in combat more quickly than they anticipated. It's a fantastic novel and I can't wait to read more work by this author. But until he writes another book, I'd encourage you to check out:
| ASIN: 0060885610 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 10.59
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I'm really trying to read more unknown or obscure authors. Maybe some of that is because I want to publish something myself and see them as more likely analogues than those authors who crank out bestseller after bestseller and are raking in seven- and eight-figure advances. But the other part of it is that there are some really unique, exciting new voices waiting to be heard. There are some series that I'll see through to the end, but generally speaking, I kind of feel like once I've read a couple books by an author, unless they're really and I just can't get enough... why trudge through their entire bibliography when I can be dedicating my reading time to finding something new and interesting?
The downside, of course, is that not everyone is "The New Stephen King" or "The Next Michael Connelly," so there are inevitably a lot of near (and far) misses in terms of work that I check out and just don't like. But in general, that hasn't discouraged me as it's a small price to pay for the great reward of having something new to recommend to other people. There are few greater pleasures in life than being asked for a reading recommendation and telling someone to check out an author they've never read, rather than just saying, "Well, the latest Alex Cross book is pretty good." Or, "I bought the latest Star Wars book and it's not bad." |
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