I didn’t mean it to be, but I ignored this draft long enough it’s now perfect for The Broke and The Bookish‘s Top Ten Tuesday weekly linkup, this week’s being top ten favorite authors!. Except I only have a top six. Forgive me?

I’ve considered the idea of listing my “favorite authors” for a while, but here’s a secret about me: I hate favorites. I’m bad at picking favorites, I’m bad at sticking to favorites. I know my favorite color is yellow, but I clam up at questions about favorite music, foods, memories, etc. I know what I like, but I still never have an answer. (And when I get really stuck on something, I often get sick of it before it’s been around enough for the high status of “favorite.” Like the ampanada place across the street: loved them, but right now, can’t stand them. (The empanada place way down the street it a totally different story. I’m too lazy to walk there enough to get sick of those!))

Anyways.

Books are easier for one reason, and only one: Goodreads. Using Goodreads means I’m consistently tracking what I’ve read and what I like and what I would recommend. I still could never answer, ‘What’s your ONE favorite book?”, but I can go on lenthy schpeals about a bunch of my favorites from a genre or whatnot.

Authors is trickier. I just haven’t read enough! I’m only 24! But I’ve also read too much. How could I possibly have a favorite?

But it’s like I said: I know what I like. And I know the authors whose books I have finished and thought, I will read the next thing you write, no matter what.

I know which authors I like enough to find their blogs and check their Goodreads and hunt for hints and reassurances that they are, in fact, working on something new. These are those authors.

I will read anything you write

Rainbow Rowell // Rowell’s books suck me in and spit me out at the end ready to start the next. I read Fangirl right at the end of 2014 and immediately found and devoured E&P. Landline didn’t leave me quite as in love as the others, but I’m still so ready for Carry On and anything she creates afterwards. @rainbowrowell
My reviews: Attachments, Fangirl, Eleanor & Park, Landline, 2014 Favorites

Neil Gaiman // Gaiman definitely falls into that same category, where everything I’ve read, I have loved. Weirdly, I still have one of his books on my shelf, unread, but it’s not a question that I’ll get to it (just when). I made the mistake of buying his latest, a short stories collection, on audiobook, and while I will finish it, I keep forgetting I have it. But his next novel, whenever it happens? I’m all over that.
My reviews: Neverwhere (Ocean at the End of the Lane is my favorite so far, but I never reviewed it.) also, Fortunately, the Milk.

Margaret Atwood // …Actually, how legitimately can I claim I’ll read anything someone writes if I haven’t even read a fraction of their backlist? Atwood has written so much that it will take me years to get through even half. She’s on this list because I plan to. (And because Handmaid’s Tale sold me for life.
My reviews: The Tent

Helene Wecker // Thankfully, not every author I’ve fallen hard for has an impossible backlist to make me feel inadaquate about how much I’ve read. The Golem and the Jinni, Wecker’s debut novel, was such a stunner that she would have to seriously screw up the next one to lose my heart. @helenewecker
My reviews: The Golem and the Jinni, Favorites 2014

Liane Moriarty // Moriarty is a bit different than the above for me: I may never bother to read the rest of her backlist. But her last three books have been lovely additions to the women’s fiction genre, and I anything she writes in the future will go straight on my Library holds.
My reviews: The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies

Jojo Moyes // Moyes, on the other hand, will go straight on my pre-order list.
My reviews: The Girl You Left Behind, One Plus One, Honeymoon in Paris, Favorites 2014

Wait, those were all…

Fiction, yes. This post is pretty predominently about fiction. I’ve been trying to read more non-fic the last few years, but haven’t really gotten to an “I have favorites!” place yet. But there are a couple of non-fic authors I will possibly always read, not because they are favorites, per se, but because I want to learn from them. Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans (Year of Biblical Womanhood review) and Shauna Niequist (Bread & Wine review) are three whose next books I will preorder—or have already done so.

What readers would you follow to the moon—or, let’s get crazy, to something outside their usual genre?