Better Know an Author by Reading Their Books in Publication Order

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Laura Sackton is a queer guide nerd and freelance author, identified on the web for loving winter, despising summer season, and going overboard with extravagant baking tasks. In addition to her work at Book Riot, she opinions for BookWeb page and AudioFile, and writes a weekly e-newsletter, Books & Bakes, celebrating queer lit and attractive treats. You can catch her on Instagram shouting in regards to the queer books she loves and sharing photographs of the walks she takes in the hills of Western Mass (whereas listening to audiobooks, in fact).

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I really like a guidelines, and I really like a studying venture, so studying by way of an total creator’s catalog is mainly irresistible to me. I’ve an total tab on my studying spreadsheet with the whole works of authors I’d prefer to learn in their entirety in my life — Mary Oliver, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Dionne Brand, to call a couple of. Reading an creator’s oeuvre is satisfying, nonetheless you do it, however this 12 months, I’ve found one thing much more scrumptious: studying an creator’s total catalog in publication order.

Thanks to the We Read Jamaica Kincaid read-along hosted by Akilah White (@IfThisIsParadise on Instagram), I’ve launched into the venture of studying all of Kincaid’s works (to this point) in order. The read-along is a two-year group venture. We began in January with At the Bottom of the River, Kincaid’s debut, and although I’ve now fallen behind, the read-along will end with See Now Then, her most up-to-date work, in August 2024.

I’ve solely learn 4 of Kincaid’s works thus far: At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, A Small Place, and Lucy. I’m at the moment in the center of The Autobiography of My Mother. It’s laborious to correctly clarify what this expertise has been like. I knew virtually nothing about Kincaid going in. I beloved her debut, a guide of lush, lovely, usually dreamlike brief tales. Annie John, her first novel, is an fully completely different guide, and but I discovered echoes of At the Bottom of the River in its pages. Then I picked up A Small Place and located all of Annie’s anger and defiance in Kincaid’s personal blazing rage in regards to the methods in which her dwelling, Antigua, has been outlined by colonization and extractive tourism.

By the time I bought to Lucy, I had turn into acquainted with Kincaid’s fashion — her unbelievable characterization, the fierce and sophisticated girls in her books, her brief and musical sentences. I believed I knew a bit bit about her and her phrases, to be trustworthy, after which Lucy blew the whole lot I believed I knew proper out of the water. Kincaid shocked me and shocked me and shocked me. It was like she gathered up all of the threads she’d been weaving collectively in her arms, tugged, and let all of it unravel.

I might simply write an total essay about Kincaid and the way impactful and emotional it’s been to learn her books in the order she revealed them. But the factor is: I don’t suppose the creator issues. Not in Kincaid? Well, you have to be, she’s good, however regardless, it is a translatable expertise. Pick any creator you like, residing or lifeless. I promise that you’ll uncover one thing new for those who learn their books in publication order. Doing so feels a bit like stepping right into a time machine. You get to see how an creator has modified through the years. You discover patterns after which get to look at an artist break these patterns. You get to look at an creator attempt new issues or perhaps write variations of the identical factor again and again in alternative ways. If the creator you like writes nonfiction or modern fiction, you get to look at the instances change in their books, and, for those who’re fortunate, you get to see how the instances, maybe, change them and their work. Maybe you witness an creator attempt one thing that doesn’t be just right for you, after which, in a later guide, attempt it once more, and this time, it stuns you.

There is one thing extremely intimate about this sort of studying. It’s a strategy to get to know an creator — as a lot as you’ll be able to ever know somebody you’ve by no means really met and don’t have a relationship with — however greater than that, it’s a strategy to know and perceive their work. A physique of labor has a life outdoors of the one that made it. This is what’s so thrilling about studying in publication order. You get to look at that physique of labor in course of because it’s being assembled.

cover of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee; red with a small photo of the author, an Asian man

I didn’t learn Alexander Chee’s 4 books in publication order, however I’m tempted to reread them this manner. His debut, Edinburgh, is an astonishing coming-of-age novel about childhood sexual abuse and the legacies of trauma. His second guide, The Queen of the Night, is a sprawling historic epic about an opera singer. His third, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, is an essay assortment that features reflections on the writing of each these books. I’m wondering how every of those books will sit in a different way with me after I learn them in, let’s consider, their delivery order. What will I see that wasn’t clear to me the primary time round?

Sometimes, I learn a guide and like it a lot and so intensely that I instantly wish to learn the whole lot else that creator has written. This occurred not too long ago with Things I Have Withheld by Kai Miller. It occurred a couple of years in the past with The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine and some months in the past with Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. It was that I’d haphazardly select what to learn subsequent, perhaps do a little analysis into their work, and choose the one which sounded probably the most attention-grabbing to me. Now I add them to my listing of creator catalogues to deal with, and I am going again to the start. I do know it is going to take me years to get by way of all of those catalogues — I really like some prolific authors — however the rewards are definitely worth the wait.

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