Do you have any favorite authors you aren’t caught up with? I DO!!! (Notice that I use the word “favorite” to describe the authors. I am finding that as I get older, I simply will not spend time reading a mystery book that I don’t thoroughly enjoy. Thus the word “favorite!”)

I have several authors right now who I absolutely would love to catch up with, my problem is that I now read more slowly than I did before. By trying to focus on just those favorite mystery authors with whom I want to catch up, I won’t have time to try reading an author with whom I’m not familiar, or even have time to slip in a book my another favorite author. (I sure wish that all of my life’s “dilemnas” were like this!)

I would love to make a 2010 resolution: “I will catch up with the following authors!” But I hate to make a new year’s resolution that I know I won’t be able to meet. My intentions are good… I am going to try, try, try to catch up with the following favorite authors of mine: Susan Albert Wittig, Carola Dunn, Monica Ferris, and Hazel Holt. They are all authors who I really (really!) enjoy, but somehow I just didn’t keep up to date with their heroines/sleuths.

This is not to say that I don’t have other favorite authors who I am (also) not caught up with. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t have other favorite authors who I am already caught up with.

For example, I love Patricia Moyes… but I am so far behind with her mysteries that I am slowly making my way through her Inspector Tibbett mystery series, one book at a time. I slip the Inspector Tibbett books into my reading queue whenever I feel like I miss the Inspector. I do the same with Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford mystery series.

I’m caught up with authors like Alexander McCall Smith (I know he’s not technically a mystery author), Dorothy Gilman, Ann Granger, the Charlaine Harris series that I follow… and the list goes on and on.

I am, however, caught up with a lot of authors. Of course this means that any time one of them puts out a new book, I simply have to read it. There lays the problem… Too many books, too little reading time! (And what very little time is left over: housework!)

So>>> Hopefully I won’t start out 2011 with the same problem of being way behind with some of my favorite authors… and if I do (since this isn’t a commitment like a “real” resolution would be!), at least two of my 2010 chosen favorite authors (Susan Albert Wittig, Carola Dunn, Monica Ferris, and Hazel Holt) won’t make that list!