This idea was started by Shana at The Bionic Bookworm, who hosts a weekly meme called Top 5 Tuesday. Shana’s idea was to come up with a book that you love for each letter of the alphabet. She spread the letters out over the weeks of July, and since then I’ve seen a couple of bloggers decide to tackle the entire alphabet in one go. Thanks to Mogsy and Lynn for inspiration!
I’m adding a slight twist to my list, however. I decided to see if I could come up with a book by a female writer for each letter of the alphabet, and it actually wasn’t that hard. In fact, for some letters I had a hard time picking which book to feature! (Also, I did not research all these writers ahead of time, so if I’ve made a mistake in regards to lumping a trans or non-binary writer under the title of “female,” my apologies, an do let me know.) In cases where I’ve reviewed these books on the blog, I’m also linking my reviews. Here we go:
A – An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris
B – Borderline by Mishell Baker
C – Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
D – Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
E – Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
F – The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
G – Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher
H – The Hunger by Alma Katsu
I – Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
J – The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
K – Keeper of the Bees by Meg Kassel
L – Lake Silence by Anne Bishop
M – The Mermaid by Christina Henry
N – The Nine by Tracy Townsend
O – Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke
P – Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik
Q – The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
R – Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
S – The Sky is Yours by Chandler Clang Smith
T – Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
U – The Underwater Ballroom Society edited by Stephanie Burgis & Tiffany Trent
V – Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe
W – The Witch’s Kind by Louisa Morgan
X – The Museum of EXtraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Y – The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Z – Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Fun idea Tammy! I haven’t read a lot of these, but many of them are on the list.
It was fun, and also hard to narrow down. Some letters I have crazy amounts of good books for, like “S”.
Oh yeah I bet. And probably not a lot of options for like Q. Well.. maybe not, since we read Fantasy. I’m sure there’s lots of Queen something something lol. But you know what I mean.
Q was pretty easy, you’d be surprised how many book titles start with “The Queen of….” lol
Fun list – I’ve read 7 of them and have several more on my TBR stacks. Great that you were able to feature all female!
It was actually quite easy! I read more female authors than I think:-)
Ooh, I might have to do my own version of this. I’m glad to see Mishell Baker amd Rebecca Roanhorse on your list. 🙂
I’d love to see more bloggers do this, it was a bunch of fun:-)
We share a fondness for many of the same authors! And now I’m curious about some of the others you’ve listed. Fun tag!
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Hope you find something new to read:-)
Moreno-Garcia is an author I really want to try. The Hunger sounds really good as well. I read my first Christina Henry and would definitely read more of her books! Polaris was fun too. 🙂
That cover for Underwater Ballroom Society might be one of my favorite recent covers. Love it.
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I agree, I love the cover for Underwater Ballroom, it’s a clever idea and the stories go so well with it:-)
I love your twist! It makes me wonder if I can come up with a list for male authors and a list for female – I think it would give me some leeway with certain letters if I knew I could choose two 😀 But some letters would also kill me, like X, lol!
It was surprisingly easy. And I’m working on my “male” list and I’m actually struggling to find a couple of letters that I easily found for the female list. Go figure!
Really liked that your focused on female authors. I so love these lists. You, Mogsy, and Lynn have given me some great book recs through these lists.
It was so easy to come up with female writers, and next I’m doing a male writer version, and I’m having a little more trouble, lol.
Wow, you did an amazing job, Tammy! I’ve read a couple, but I want to read more. The ones that stand out are the Hoffman and the Charlaine Harris!
Oooh, An Easy Death is amazingly good. So different from her Sookie Stackhouse series, much darker and more mature.
This is a fantastic list – and I love that you managed to fit a book in for ‘X’ – why didn’t I think of that. Doh!
Lynn 😀
I didn’t know what else to do! I’ve never read X-Men anything and that seems to be the best choice for X, lol.
Amazing list, I’ve added a few to my TBR!
Thanks! I’m trying to boost some of my older books that are really good, but most people maybe haven’t heard of them. It’s so easy to focus on current books.
I really enjoy seeing these lists, perhaps because I love books and book covers. But they also always seem to resurface books I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t gotten around to. I’ve only read one book on this list, Queen of the Damned, but I do at least own several others, and quite a few more I’d like to one day track down and read. Great idea splitting yours into female and male writers. I look forward to the next one.
My male list will be up tomorrow. It’s so hard to pick, because obviously there are multiple books I love for each letter (except Y and X, those are tough!).
There are a lot of great books on this list! I’m going to be reading both Zoo City and Certain Dark Things this Fall, very much looking forward to both of those!
I hope you love both of them, Lisa. Certain Dark Things is SO GOOD.
This is such a fun idea! I’m not sure I could come up with one for every letter of the alphabet but I’m definitely tempted to try. 🙂
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It’s easier than you think, plus I discovered you can organize your “read” shelf on Goodreads alphabetically. It makes it super easy to see if you have all the letters:-)
What a great list – I really like this idea … have started scribbling down some ideas for my own A-Z list maybe … 😀
I can’t wait to see your list if you do one:-)
Oooh great choices Tammy! I’m also in the middle of compiling a “female SFF authors” list, because someone tweeted a couple of weeks ago about how adult books are mostly written by male writers, and that kind of got me riled up. 😛
Ha ha, I’d be riled up too! I hope you post your list, I’d love to see it:-)
Weirdly enough I haven’t read a single book on your list (though I have read other books by Charlaine Harris) A lot of these are on my TBR tho!
A lot of these are a little on the obscure side, I’ll admit:-)
Read only a tiny few of those authors! 🙂
This was such a fun idea, and I was really happy to see Trail of Lightning on your list! I still need to read Do You Dream of Terra-Two? but I have a feeling it will be a fave once I get to it!
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