15 July 2010

Serious Gaps in My Reading

While giving an unneeded check to my Reviews by Author page (hey, I was bored) I noticed some serious gaps in my reading. I, O, Q, X, and Z are blank.  That's right, I have not read a book written by an author whose last name begins with any of these letters.  I find this extremely disturbing for some reason. I checked the Reviews by Title page, and I am happy to report that only the letter X sits with no books listed. But still, that's one letter too many.  These empty spaces in my reading are like missing puzzle pieces - much too annoying and bringing out my OCD-ish side.

I am determined to get these blanks filled in, but I need some help.  Do you have any suggestions for authors with last names beginning with I, O, Q, X and/or Z?  How about titles that start with the letter X?
Posted by Trisha at 5:41 AM

24 comments:

  1. I, too, am missing most of those those. I am actually missing A, I, Q, X, Z.

    For O I read Michael Ondaatje, Dori Ostermiller (was in the BBC bag I think?), and Catherine Orenstein.

    I also track reviews by title, and I am doing better there - missing only Y and Z.
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  2. I must be missing something in my brain, because it would never even occur to me to check something like that. I am just a simpleton, reading stuff without a thought in my tiny head!!!
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  3. Linda Olsson for the O's. Maybe Ishiguro for the I's?
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  4. Wesley the Owl by Stacy O'Brien was really cute if you like animal stories.

    Anything by George Orwell.

    For Q's there's Anna Quindlen, which is not terrible as far as chic lit goes.

    I have a Z author that I've read (Vincent Zandri), but I would in no means recommend reading him.

    If none of these work, you can always browse the library catalog by author name. Interesting, I never realized where my gaps were either.
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  5. I looked through my blog list and this is what I came up with.

    For I - Ishiguro. I would highly recommend Never Let Me Go.

    For O - Either George Orwell or Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa wrote The Housekeeper and the Professor and it was one of my very favorite books of last year.

    I don't have any suggestions for Q. I have a Q author listed on mine, but the book was just okay.

    The only X author I've read is Xinran and that was okay. It was nonfiction-ish from Tibet, I believe.

    And for Z, I have a lot of suggestions. Zola, obviously (I'll bet you expected that one!), Zamyatin's We (a classic dystopia), and while I personally didn't like the book, everyone else seems to love The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I have several other Z authors but those were the best of them.

    As for books beginning with X I think that's the only title letter I'm missing. Last year in the A-Z challenge they allowed X to be anywhere in the title, so I never had to find one. I know there are ones out there, but none of them ever sounded interesting to me.
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  6. I'm a bit OCD as well and last year I did a challenge where I read an author for every letter of the alphabet, here's my list...

    http://ow.ly/2bTXU

    I definitely recommend Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is fantastic.

    I read Xinran's The Good Women of China purely to fill that letter for the challenge and it was such a great read.

    For Z, definitely read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. It's one of my favorite books of all time.

    Hope that helps!
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  7. I = John Irving!!!!!

    Q = Daniel Quinn...My Ishmael is one of my favorite books of all time.

    Z = Markus Zusak and Carlos Ruiz Zafon (that counts, right?)
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  9. Ha! I'm anal in just this same way. I'm putting my review archive together, and the empty letters bug me. I was once-upon-a-time involved in an A-Z reading challenge, and I failed miseragbly. But I got "X" covered! Ha!
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  10. I completed the A-z challenge last year and here are some I liked...
    Greg Iles writes great thriller/mysteries
    Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper & the Profesor)
    Xinran (Sky Burial)
    Paul Zindel (The Pigman- It's an old YA book but I loved it)
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  11. All the authors I could think of have been mentioned. Have fun!
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  12. For I try Robert Inman. He is a southern writer.
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  13. I just checked by Reviews by Author page and here are my suggestions:

    Iyengar, Sheena: The Art of Choosing (nonfiction)
    O’Brien, Tim; Oates, Joyce Carol; or Orlean, Susan
    Zusak, Markus: The Book Thief (Read this book!)

    I don't have any for Q or X.
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  14. Maggie O'Farrell would be a good choice to get some Os. After You'd Gone is my favorite, but The Hand That First Held Mine is good, too. =)
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  15. I only filled the X gap when I read Xinran's The Good Women of China earlier this year - where I'd highly recommend.
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  16. I heartily second Amanda's Z suggestion of Zamyatin's We.
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  17. Thank you all so much for all of the suggestions! This is great!
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  18. Hey .. check out my handy tabs at the top of my blog where I have books listed by author last name and title! I'm working on both A to Z challenges so I have something for every letter.
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  19. Check out the A to Z reading challenge for ideas!

    For Z, I recommend Zola, a 19th century French Naturalist author, and also Zusak (spelling?) who wrote The Book Thief. Here's my reviews of their work, respectively:

    http://bibliofreakblog.com/fiction/nana-by-emile-zola/

    http://bibliofreakblog.com/fiction/book-thief-iby-markus-zusaki/

    I'll probably be reading more Zola for the challenge. For X I'm going to read Malcom X, and cheat slightly for Q by reading Queen Noor's memoirs, Leap of Faith.
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  20. I'm also missing I, Q and X (and Y, as it turns out), so I can't help you with those. For O, I read Susan Olding's essay collection, Pathologies, which I highly recommend, and for Z, I read The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow, which was an interesting read. For titles, I've got even more gaps than you -- I'm missing Q, V, X, Y and Z!

    Oh and if you read Quindlen, I'd recommend One True Thing, which I think is her best book by far (although I haven't read her nonfic or her latest novel).
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  21. I'm late but I second (or twentieth) Ishiguro. Fantastic. Also Zusak or Zafon. Seems there was another Z person I recently read? Banana Yoshimoto for Y--she's fantastic.
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  22. Do you have any suggestions for authors with last names beginning with I, O, Q, X and/or Z? How about titles that start with the letter X?

    Authors I - Ishiguro, Kazuo; Iles, Greg
    Authors O - Ollestad, Norman; O'Flynn, Catherine; Oates, Joyce Carol
    Authors Q - Quindlen, Anna
    Authors X - I'm using Malcolm X (his autobiography)
    Authors Z - Zusack, Marcus

    Title x = The Xibalba Murders by Lyn Hamilton (not the best book but it is an X). Could also consider an X Files Book.
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  24. You know what happened? Although my blog does have books lists under both titles and authors, they only include books since I started blogging. So, I went to my LibraryThing -- looked at it alphabetically by author A-Z, and Z-A), and found that for some reason several books didn't have the author's name listed. So I spent quite a bit of time fixing that! By the way, none of the books I own have an author by the last name starting with "X". You've gotten a lot of other good suggestions already :-)!
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