Monday, May 16, 2011

Waiting on Writing: Good Authors - Good Books

While reading the just released In the Garden of Beasts from Erik Larson, it got me thinking about how long it takes to write good non-fiction... and when some of my favorite non-fiction authors might have new work.

A good starting off point for this inquiry is my Nov 2009 post Blog Topics List: Redux Part Duex... Stuff of Interest & Authors Enjoyed, with focus on the people noted as book authors (and a few more added)...

Erik Larson - writes historical fiction (least that's how I'll describe his work) with lots of detail and narrative around events in time. Published Thunderstruck Sept 2007 and then In the Garden of Beasts May 2011 - 3 1/2 years apart.

Jeff Jarvis - writes on business topics and published What Would Google Do? Jan 2009. New book Public Parts scheduled for Sept 2011 release some 2 1/2 years later.

Susan Casey - writes sports-related with a bent towards adventure prose. Penned The Devil's Teeth May 2006 (which I felt like put me in an elite club for having read) and then published 4 1/2 years later in May 2010 her bestselling The Wave.

Michael Lewis - writes books that sell lots and lots of copies on a variety of topics... from High Finance to Parenthood to Major League Baseball. Last published The Big Short in Mar 2010 and has Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World scheduled for Oct 2011 release. While this does sound to be a follow up to The Big Short, it is interesting to see that release would be only a year and a half after it.

Eric Weiner - travel writer who released The Geography of Bliss Jan 2008. Not sure when his next book will be out, but looking forward to it after 3 plus years now...

J.R. Moehringer - someone I've come across more recently and just last year read his 2006 memoir The Tender Bar. Last book was the co-written with Andre Agassi biography Open, published Dec 2009.

Bill Bryson - prolific travel writer who last did At Home in Oct 2010.

Other authors who I look forward to seeing their next books (hyperlinks to past work) include S.L. Price, Chris Jones, Austin Murphy, John Grogan and David Von Drehle.

The point of all this... there's great non-fiction work out there, but it can take a while to write a new book. As evidence of this, the excellent Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken, released in Nov 2010 eight years after she published Seabiscuit.