Alphabet Meme

Over at Stuck-in-a-Book Simon has started an Alphabet Meme: your favourite authors A-Z. I tried to resist but found myself compiling a list in my head anyway so here goes:

Austen, Jane: Pride & Prejudice
Barnes, Julian: England, England
Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Forster, E. M.: Howard's End
Gaskell, E: North & South
Holtby, Winifred: South Riding
Ishiguro, Kazuo: When We Were Orphans
James, P. D.: A Certain Justice
Keneally, Thomas: Flying Hero First Class
Lodge, David: Nice Work
Macaulay, Rose: The Towers of Trebizond
Narayan, R. K.: The Painter of Signs
Orwell, George: Keep the Aspidistras Flying
Peacock: Thomas Love: Nightmare Abbey
Q ????
Radcliffe, Ann: The Mysteries of Udolpho
Shields, Carol: Unless
Tolkien, JRR: The Hobbit
U ????
Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughter House Five
Weldon, Fay: Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen
X ????
Y ????
Zafon, Carl Ruiz: The Shadow of the Wind

For few letters I really struggled with finding the right author. J for example: I enjoyed the P. D. James book but much less so than lots of other books that didn't make it onto the list because I had lots of choices for that letter. I could have mustered battalions for A, G, H, F and W but the only J's I have read are P. D. James, and James Joyce. I admired rather than enjoyed James so, though I have read some James, I felt it would be cheating to include him. Similarly with Tolkien, he was the only T candidate. What I do think is odd is that I would have had quite a few options for W buy only one for a common letter like T. It also shows that I should read Angela Young's Speaking of Love like everyone else seems to be doing, then I would have a Y option!

Comments

[Simon T]

Hard, isn't it!
Great list - I remember really enjoying the Fay Weldon a few years ago, though with reservations. I can't remember what those reservations were, though....

[Melanie]

I found this entertaining as well! I had a hard time deciding between Gaskell's Wives & Daughters and her North & South. Love them both.