Booking Through Thursday (From 1/21/2010): Author Unknown

Well, another Thursday is upon us, and that means it is time for yet another Booking Through Thursday prompt. What will it be this week, you ask? Here you go…

Prompt: Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading—but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not J.K. Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway—everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

This is a very compelling question because, at least for me, I have a lot of favorite authors who have seemed to have fallen off the public’s radar but who are excellent authors. These would be your Ramsey Campbells, your Robert Blochs, your Jack Ketchums, your Brian Keenes, your Richard Laymons. Granted, these are all authors in the horror genre, but they are all authors that are doing excellent work … they just are not on the public radar like, say, Stephen King or Dean Koontz.

Then there is Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist (which is the book that started all of this way back in August of 2000). Carr blew me away with The Alienist and made me want to share my reviews and thoughts on books with others, and yet, as far as I know, Carr is off of everyone’s radar. Though, it probably hasn’t helped that he hasn’t published anything in the last eight or ten years, but anyone who wrote The Alienist doesn’t deserve to disappear like that.

Finally, and this is the author I would really stump for, is Kit Berry. Berry came to my attention after a July 2007 post about books labeled “The Next Harry Potter.” I expressed some dismay about pitting books in comparison to (and competition with) Rowling’s books, and a number of the author’s on the list also expressed their displeasure at the label. One of those was Ms. Berry, who also sent me a copy of her book for review and I promptly fell in love with her series and have been promoting her books whenever I can.