Reading Fiction Because of the Author

When I pick up a new book it's often because I've enjoyed books by that author before. I've been having a grouchy spell with my reading--nothing I was reading struck me as much good--so I picked up some recent books by three different authors I've enjoyed in the past.

The first one was Megan Whalen Turner. I loved The Thief, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia, so when other book bloggers (like Stella Matutina) told me that she had a new one in that series out, A Conspiracy of Kings, I found it and read it immediately. It was as much fun as the second and third ones. If you like adventure stories and you haven't read these, go find them.

The second author was Susan Beth Pfeffer. My daughter and I both loved Life As We Knew It, as much as you can love any post-apocalyptic novel. Then I read The Dead and the Gone and told her not to bother, that I didn't like it much. After I read the third one, This World We Live In, I went out and bought the middle one for her so she could read it purely for the sake of enjoying the third one fully. She's the same age as the heroine of the first and third novels, 16-year-old Miranda, and that probably adds to my interest in this YA series.

The third author was Umberto Eco. My husband has read many of his books, so I've read a few of his essays here and there, but I hadn't read any of his fiction since The Name of the Rose, a thoroughly wonderful tale (and a best-seller when it came out). I came across The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana in the audiobooks section of the library, translated by Geoffrey Brock and read by George Guidall, and listened to it during my commute. I didn't realize what an unlikely audiobook it is until I took down our copy from the built-in bookshelves (the ones you can see at Scene of the Blog) and flipped through it to see all the comic book illustrations. And the irony, of course, is that I'd never have read it if I'd seen those, because I don't care for books that depend too heavily on anything other than text.

The first half of the novel is mildly interesting, all about memory and how a man who has read avidly all his life, Yambo, is affected by a stroke so that he remembers only what he's read, and none of the details of his personal life. The title comes from a comic he discovers to have been "the most insipid tale ever conceived by the human brain," but one that had built up in his mind until it became a symbol for memory and immortality, the "mysterious flame" of recognition when he doesn't remember what is being recognized, but feels the emotion of it.

The second half, although finally revealing what the "fog" he has been unable to penetrate previously is hiding, ultimately peters out. Yambo remembers the events that shaped him as a boy, and then apparently has another stroke, blends memory with all that he's read and then re-discovered through rereading, and dies. It's not a success as fiction; it reads as thinly veiled autobiography, and the ideas might have been better explored in his essays.

So in two out of three cases, picking books by an author I'd previously enjoyed meant that I enjoyed the new one at least as much. How well does it work for you to pick books by a tried-and-true author when you want a particular level of satisfaction from your reading?