50 Best Contemporary Novelists

Thank you all so much for your comments about review copies – I found them so interesting to read! I would have posted thanks yesterday, only we had an afternoon of thunderstorms that, of course, put our virgin media line out of commission, and we weren’t reconnected to the internet until some point during the night. It felt strangely peaceful not to be able to access the web, because so much of (my) life passes on it that it feels like an enforced holiday when it’s down. Although, to be fair, I seem to be suffering from ‘holidayitis’ at the moment, which is the chronic inability to organise my time and be productive. My son has finished his exams and is hanging out around the house, and it’s just too easy to waste time with him.

Anyway, given that an extra day to post has in no way sharpened up my thoughts about this week’s reading, I thought I’d start to compile a list of authors of contemporary fiction that I like. Lots of blog friends have been saying lately that they find themselves less attracted by current novels, and so I thought it would be interesting to remind myself who’s writing right now whose books I look out for with real interest. Feel free to disagree or suggest people I’ve forgotten. My only criteria are that the writer has to be alive and still writing – oh and, obviously for my own list, I had to have read them (that put out a lot of people I might have included by reputation alone – David Mitchell, Richard Powers, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, William Trevor, Ann Patchett).

Literary Fiction (hard to distinguish from general fiction, but I picked authors that I would prefer to read when not feeling tired, or there’s background noise going on – very scientific!)

Margaret Atwood

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ali Smith

Sarah Waters

Gabriel Josipovici

Nicholson Baker

Joyce Carol Oates

Adam Thorpe

Julian Barnes

Peter Carey

A, S. Byatt

Deirdre Madden

Jhumpa Lahiri

Justin Cartwright

Zoë Heller

Rose Tremain

Philip Roth

Michelle Latiolais

Doris Lessing

Marianne Wiggins

 

General Fiction (dominated by women writers for me, I note)

Jane Smiley

Jonathan Coe

David Lodge

William Nicholson

Barbara Trapido

Anne Tyler

Richard Russo

Penelope Lively

Kate Atkinson

Esther Freud

Salley Vickers

Julian Fellowes

Sue Miller

Joanne Harris

Jane Gardam

Alice Hoffman

Maggie O’Farrell

Amanda Craig

 

Genre Fiction

Lee Child

Sara Paretsky

Eva Rice

C. J. Sansom

Andrew Taylor

P. D. James (still alive!)

 

Fiction in Translation

Marie Darrieussecq

Bernhard Schlink

Milan Kundera

Javier Marias (would have picked José Saramago but he died last year!)

Orhan Pamuk

Roberto Bolano (ETA – been reminded he’s dead – can’t think who should replace him)

Finally, there were writers I considered but left off: Fay Weldon, Jane Urquhart, Lionel Shriver, Audrey Niffenegger, Alice Munroe, Jonathan Franzen, Peter Ackroyd, Jeanette Winterson… and I’m sure there are lots of people I’ve forgotten.

A Cheeky Question

There are some days I trawl around the blogworld and think that everyone but everyone gets more review copies than I do.

And then there’s the rest of the time in which I am altogether more sensible. Part of me really wishes that more of the tempting books I see in the bookstore just appeared through my door, but then I wise up and think how very hard it is for me to get through a fraction of my ongoing reading list, how often books I’ve bought because I was longing to read them end up sitting on the shelves or in my overflow pile for months because there is just so much I want to read, and of course how many of the offers that are made to me of review copies I turn down because I’ll only accept books that I like the sound of enough to guarantee they won’t languish unread, filling me with guilt. When it comes to it I don’t take on many review copies because I feel I couldn’t guarantee timely reviews, plus I have a complete horror of looking greedy or unprofessional (which is nonsense – of course I’m greedy about books, you don’t have to visit here more than once to figure that out!). So I end up feeling very ambivalent about it all.

(I should add at this point that the only books I’ve been offered with regularity recently are ebooks, and many apologies but I can’t read them – I don’t own an ereader and cannot imagine reading a whole novel with pleasure off a computer screen.)

All of which prompts a rather cheeky inquiry on my part – I’m wondering how long it takes other bloggers to get around to reading review copies that they’ve been sent. Do you prioritise them? Do you always read them all?

If I have been offered a review copy and formally accepted it, then I will certainly read that book as soon as possible, and review it – unless I really didn’t enjoy it. Funnily enough nothing kills my traffic like a negative review (now why does that happen? Another difficult question to answer) and so I can’t see the point of that for any of us.

I do occasionally receive books that I haven’t formally asked for. These I do try/hope to read, but often don’t get around to very fast.

It occurs to me that I could perhaps try harder to get review copies sent, but I feel very inhibited about soliciting copies from publishers. And I’m afraid that if I did manage it, they would undoubtedly come along all at once, in the manner of buses, and I would have all my reading time bound up with reviews for weeks ahead.

So what is the etiquette with reviewing books – do you review them all, and fast, or do you think it’s okay to leave them to one side for a while? Do you feel guilty if you don’t review books you’ve been sent, or do you think that’s just part of the gamble publishers take when sending review copies out? Have you asked for books to review – and been successful? That’s more than one cheeky question, isn’t it? But I’m very curious to know how other bloggers work this, and what’s considered normal behaviour.