What to Read Until Your Hold Comes In

If you recently placed a hold on one of the latest bestsellers, chances are you are still eagerly anticipating the email or phone call letting you know that your hold is available for pickup.

So what do you read while you wait?  Check out Novelist Plus to find reads similar to the hottest new books. You can find it under Reference Databases on our website. Here are a few of Novelist's suggested read-alikes for the current Publishers Weekly fiction bestsellers:

Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris -- try River Marked: the latest in the Mercedes Thompson series by Patricia Briggs

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King -- try The Name of the Wind: book one of the Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss

Innocent by David Baldacci -- try Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich

Calico Joe by John Grisham -- try The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The Witness by Nora Roberts -- try Escape to Love by Alice Wootson

Robert B. Parker's Lullaby by Ace Atkins -- try A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block

Unnatural Acts by Stuart Woods -- try Live Wire by Harlan Coben

Guilty Wives by James Patterson & David Ellis -- try Smash Cut by Sandra Brown

The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark -- try Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani -- try Her Father's House by Belva Plain

Here's another thought: all of the authors on this bestsellers list have written many other books. Take another look at their previous titles -- you may find one you missed, or want to revisit.

What Was Your Favorite?

2010 is drawing to a close, and as the new year approaches, the Best of 2010 lists are popping up all over the place. Publishers Weekly chose their top 100, with 10 overall front-runners, and 90 picks from specific genres. Of note among the genre favorites were: Faithful Place by Tana French, Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny, and Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell. Amazon's Omnivoracious blog released The Top 10 (and More) (pictured above) in November. And most recently, the New York Times Book Review published their Top 10 Books of 2010. You can click on the link to check them out.

Personally, I enjoyed a couple of books that popped up on these "best of" lists -- Tana French and Louise Penny are two writers I just discovered this year and they now rank high among my favorites. I'm looking forward to reading a few others, though I probably won't get to them until the new year. But I try not to feel like I should read a book simply because it has been deemed important by the powers that be. Personal recommendations carry far more weight, probably because they usually yield better results. My favorite read of 2010 was suggested by a colleague and was published years ago. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon is where dark and gothic intersect, rife with plot twists and layers of complexity, and simply beautiful.

NPR has a whole slew of "Best of" lists broken down into amusing categories, including Sex, Drugs, and 'Life' - The Year's Best Guilty Reads. I don't know if Rick Springfield's memoir would normally catch my interest, but Susan Jane Gilman's annotation of it was a fun read. In that light, I look on all of these "best of" compilations not as any kind of definitive 2010 canon, but as a source of inspiration for the next time I find myself without a good book on my nightstand.

And now for the vote that really counts: what was your favorite book of 2010?