Authors A-Z Challenge

A good few years a go a friend challenged me (and herself) to do an A-Z of authors. There were some restrictions though. For each letter it had to be an author we hadn't read before and it had to be fiction. The second rule was basically because she was very much a non fiction read and this was her way of expanding. At the time I mainly read fantasy and sci fi so it was also a good way for me to try more general fiction authors. Initially we were supposed to do it within a year. Things happened though. We worked together at the time which allowed us to keep each other going. Not long after we moved to different jobs and I fell away from it as I didn't think she was doing the challenge any more either. Last year we were messaging each other back and forth and she mentioned it again. So I decided to start again. To cut a long story short I have finished it and here is my list.

A - White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

B - Death of A Ladies Man - Alan Bissett

C - The Other Hand - Chris Cleave

D - Stone Junction - Jim Dodge

E - Mr Toppit - Charles Elton

F - Dead Lovely - Helen Fitzgerald

G - UFO In Her Eyes - Xiaolu Guo

H - Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemmingway

I - Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

J - Dubliners - James Joyce

K - How Late It Was How Late - James Kelman

L - Hospital - Toby Litt

M - Company of Liars - Karen Maitland

N - Jezebel - Irene Nemirovsky

O - The Museum of Dr Moses - Joyce Carol Oates

P - The Collected Dorothy Parker - Dorothy Parker

Q - Ishmael - Daniel Quinn

R - Midnights Children - Salman Rushdie

S - Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

T - A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

U - Witches of Eastwick - John Updike

V - Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne

W - The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe

X - Miss Chopsticks - Xinran

Y - Revolutionary Road

Z - We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

There were a couple of letters that gave me very little choice in what to read such as Q and X (at least my local book shop gave me very little choice). I enjoyed doing this challenge but I don't think I will do it again. I found that when I was going book shopping I was picking out books mainly based on this challenge. When I can go guilt free shopping again (I will work my way through my tbr pile) it will be nice just to saunter round picking out what catches my eye. I don't regret doing it though. There are a lot of books there that I enjoyed. I don't think I can possible narrow down my favourites. My least favourites were The Bonfire of the Vanities and Ishmael. I think my friend gave up on the challenge again but I'm happy that I kept going.