Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Top Ten Tuesday: Just Write Some More, Already!

For my first Top Ten Tuesday of 2012, as brought to us by the Broke and the Bookish, I present to you a list of ten authors whom I wish would write another book.  Some of them are just bone idle, some are just too damned good and can’t be blamed for failing to keep up with my insatiable appetite for their work and some have, quite selfishly, died.  Which is a little problematic from the perspective of wanting them to pick up their pen again.

Anyway, without further ado, here is my list:

1.         Charles Dickens.  I suppose this is stretching the theme a little bit because I’m not overly fussed about him coming back to write a new book.  What I’d really like is for him to come back and finish off The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Preferably with the murderer being a ninja-trained hit squad comprising Tiny Tim, the Artful Dodger and Pip.  Or maybe a vampire Little Nell.  No-one would see that one coming, would they?

2.         J.K. Rowling.  With due respect to all the great children’s authors out there, both past and present, Rowling’s sequence of novels featuring some chap called Harry Potter changed the face of children’s publishing and gave children of that time a magical (no pun intended) reading experience.  Mini-Falaise, now three, has a few years to go before she gets to the right point but I would love her to get some of the excitement and even sense of community that the Harry Potter novels and films produced.  I know there are other writers but why change a winning formula?  So, Ms Rowling, please dust down the notebooks and get cracking.  Mini-Falaise and her cohort are waiting.

3.         Paul Theroux.  To be fair to Mr Theroux, he does have a pretty regular output.  Unfortunately for me, not all of his output concerns railway journeys and I need more.

4.         P.G. Wodehouse.  I want more Jeeves, I want more Blandings, I want more of the Oldest Member and Ukridge and Mr Mulliner and Psmith and I just want more.  His world is the cozy, happy place I go to when times are tough and things go dark and I think we could all do with a little more Wodehousian sunshine in our troubled times.

5.         Iain Pears.  Another author who is still in regular production so maybe I shouldn’t berate him like this but he’s stopped writing his art theft detective stories featuring Jonathan Argyll and Flavia di Stefano and I want some more please.

6.         Lawrence Sanders.  He wrote only two books featuring Timothy Cone, a scruffy private investigator working for a corporate intelligence firm.  I just love those stories and I wish he had done more with the character.

7.         Bram Stoker. I’m not sure I actually do wish he had written more but I bet he’s looking down at Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer and the nameless host of authors of vampire stories and thinking, “Damn, wish I’d written those Dracula sequels after all.”

8.         Sir John Mortimer.  Creator of one of the immortal literary characters, Horace Rumpole, I was truly saddened when I read of his death.  I have all of the Rumpole books and I would probably even sell a portion of my soul for there to be some more.  Maybe there are a couple of stray manuscripts hiding out in his papers.  I do hope so.  The Old Bailey needs his humanity and wit.

9.         Ian Fleming.  However many authors add to the James Bond canon, none of them can hold a candle to Fleming.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a couple more ‘original’ Bond novels.  Especially if they had the kind of gambling scenes he wrote in Casino Royale and Moonraker.

10.       J.R.R. Tolkien.  Because we could all do with some more hobbits.

8 comments:

Kristina said...

rowling is on my list and I forgot Tolkien, so sad.

http://kristina-worldofbooks.blogspot.com/2012/01/top-10-tuesdays-6.html

Song said...

J.R.R. Tolkien. Because we could all do with some more hobbits. -- Hear! Hear!

And I agree with the J K Rowling point as well.

Sarah said...

Funnily enough I just said the same thing about Dickens & Edwin Drood on someone elses Top Ten list.

This is a great list. I just discovered Iain Pears' work this year (starting with An Instance of the Fingerpost) but have never tried anything by Sir John Mortimer. Sounds like one to try.

LBC said...

I've read most of Dickens, but I feel like I could go back and read them again and enjoy them even more than I did the first time.

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Oh Wodehouse! I would love some more Jeeves.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant list. Totally agree with what you say about Fleming in particular.

Rebecca Reid said...

I thought about Dickens but um, I have a lot more of him to read still! So I'll try to get through those first...

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