Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I'd Put on My Auto-Buy List

There being a great number of authors in the world, and there being an unfortunate number of limits on reading time in any single life, the idea of an auto-buy list strikes me as a bit overwhelming. There probably aren't ten living authors I'd dare promise to read everything they write, especially if they're prolific. Which raises the question: Can we include authors who have died?

I'm going to say yes, just to make my life easier.

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Unfortunately, my three favorite authors—G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Orson Scott Card—have all got loads of books I've yet to read. It seems disingenuous to pledge to buy everything they write when I've not made it through half their respective oeuvres. (But I do have two of Card's Bean books on deck, waiting only till I've re-read Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. So, there's that.)

And then there's J.K. Rowling. Crazy as I am about Harry Potter, I've not read The Casual Vacancy. Nor do I think I'm likely to.

Here, however, are a few authors whose work I've read all (or nearly all) of and liked well enough to at least seriously consider anything they wrote in future.

1. Jane Austen. Absolutely. I'd just go wild for another of her sweet romances set amid intimate social comedies.

2. Shannon Hale. I've not read her Midnight in Austenland or the graphic novels. Yet. But I think I've read everything else, and I'm ever hoping for more of her bright, humorous storytelling and textured worlds.

3. Stephenie Meyer. Though I'm afraid of sequels to the fantastic The Host, which ended in a very good place. Her outstanding concepts and emotionally resonant characters really get at me; I'm never through with a Meyer book till I've read it five times.

4. Ally Condie, though she has some earlier works I've not read. Anyone who can make me love a dystopian series has got something worth searching out. The quiet mood of her prose and her Cassia's artistic, contemplative nature sold me on the Matched series and interested me in anything else she has to say.

5. L.M. Montgomery. I've still got a couple of her lesser-known novels to track down, but who wouldn't take more of the creator who wrote Anne, Emily, Pat, and Valancy? Not to mention Gilbert, Teddy, Jingle, and Barney? I'd love to hear more from her Prince Edward Island world.

6. Laura Ingalls Wilder. I adored all her prairie tales as a kid. More Ingalls family stories would just make my year.

...and now I'm running out of ideas. There are so few people of whom I can truthfully say I've read anywhere near all their work. It's not true of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky; it's not true of Cornelia Funke or Elizabeth Goudge. It's not true of George MacDonald or Rick Riordan or Evelyn Waugh or Frances Hodgson Burnett. Until it is, I think I'm stuck with a short list.

Who would you put on your own auto-buy list?