Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I'd Be Grateful To See New Work From

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! With Thanksgiving just a few days away, this week is a thankful-themed freebie! So here are ten authors I'd be very thankful to read new work from.

Allie Brosh: Like what seems like the entire internet, I loved her Hyberbole and a Half blog, which got made into a hysterically funny book. There was a sequel planned, but it got cancelled. Brosh seems to have stopped writing, and what I've been able to find makes it seem like her life has changed quite a bit and maybe she's in a better place without sharing her work with the internet. But I miss her and would love to see new work if it was the right choice for her!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah, which I loved, came out in 2013. She's published some essays in the meantime, but I want more fiction!

Elif Batuman: The Idiot was a very promising debut novel, and Batuman's voice is one I'd love to read more of, so I hope a follow-up is coming soon!

Michael Chabon: I'm still catching up on his back catalog, but his last novel was 2016's Moonglow, which I very much liked, so I'm curious to see what he publishes next!

Alexander Chee: I loved The Queen of the Night and while I have his other novel, Edinburgh, waiting on my shelves to be read (and he did just publish a nonfiction book last year), I would love to read another work of fiction from him!

Libby Cudmore: I so enjoyed reading The Big Rewind, I'm ready for her next one!

Jeffrey Eugenides: He releases work at the speed of a snail but it's so good when he does and I'm just waiting for more!

Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl was incredible, but she hasn't published a novel since that one in 2012! It's been almost ten years, so I am looking forward to reading the next one as soon as it appears!

George R.R. Martin: GIVE ME THE WINDS OF WINTER NOW PLEASE AND THANK YOU!

Kazuo Ishiguro: His Nobel Prize was well-deserved on the strength of Remains of the Day alone it was such a masterpiece. I'll be honest that his most recent, The Buried Giant, was more miss than hit from me, but he always has interesting ideas and I am eagerly awaiting new work!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I'd Be Grateful To See New Work From

Book 25: The Big Rewind

"I glared up at her. If there are vampires anywhere in the world, they're in this end of Brooklyn, sympathy-sucking leeches living every day like it's their own private reality show, latching on to anything that might get them a moment of attention, a warm body, a subway seat on a ten-minute ride."

Dates Read: February 28-March 1, 2016

Rating: 8/10

I remember making mixtapes. When you were a kid growing up when I was a kid, there were two ways to get songs onto your tape: a dual tape deck (covetable, and eventually something my family had, but not until later) or the good old radio. I don't know how many nights I sat there in my bedroom, waiting for a song to come on so I could add it to my mix. Obviously this made for some haphazard tracklists because things were in the order you could get them off the radio, so I never got much into the mixtape as artform. I am an obsessive playlist curator on my iTunes today, though, which is for all intents and purposes the same thing.

Mixtapes as artform are at the heart of Libby Cudmore's The Big Rewind. We're going back to Brooklyn...but this time, the modern-day hipster-infested version. Jett Bennett is subletting her grandmother's rent-controlled apartment and working temp jobs while she tries to figure out what to do with her life now that she has her Master's in music journalism but no one seems to want to pay her for her writing. When she gets a mixtape in her mailbox meant for her neighbor KitKat, she goes to drop it off...and discovers KitKat's body, murdered by a blow to the head. Jett works to try to solve the crime, the only clue to which is the mixtape, and is inspired to go back through her own collection of mixtapes from lost loves, reaching back out to them along the way.

The Big Rewind was obviously inspired by Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, with both books featuring main plotlines in which the music-obsessed protagonist reconnects with ex-lovers as they try to figure out where they're going with their lives. But it's not a gender-swapped rip-off: there's the mystery of what happened to KitKat to move the plot forward, and Jett is a very different person than Hornby's Rob Fleming. But the parallels are clear, and if you enjoyed Hornby's, you should enjoy Cudmore's, too. 

This is a perfect summer/beach read for 20- and 30-somethings. It's entertaining and moves quickly, blending together light mystery and light romance with bright, witty prose. The reason I throw an age range on there is that the book very much reflects the world as it would exist to a mid-to-late 20s resident of Brooklyn: it's peppered with references to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, Reddit, etc, that might just fly right over the head of people who use social media primarily to post family photos and political memes. As someone who spends a lot of time online myself, it feels very organic and natural, but for someone who experiences the internet as a less integral part of their life, it might be confusing. That being said, I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it. This is Cudmore's debut novel, and I'm excited to see what she does next!

Tell me, blog friends...when was the last time you made a mixtape?

**I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, William Morrow Books, through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

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Book 25: The Big Rewind