Author author

I need a new author. 

I have a giant stack of non-fiction books to read on my bedside table (The Big Rumpus, Mother Reader, Child of Mine, Fire With Fire, Writing Down the Bones) but I just finished the last fiction book in the pile. 

And I have been searching Amazon.ca for new authors, but I've come up dry.

There was a time when I took a certain (probably perverse) pleasure in reading Beckett and Brecht and Pynchon but I now find books like this a little too Thinky.  And when I want to think, frankly I prefer to read non-fiction.  But right now, I want to read a piece of fiction about characters going through the same things I am going through. 

Before my daughter was born, I derived a lot of satisfaction from reading so-called "chick lit".  Helen Fielding, Sophie Kinsella, Isabel Wolff, Jenny Colgan, Laura Wolf, and Marian Keyes books lined my bookshelves.  But then, post-bebe, the issues of finding the perfect man, the perfect shoe no longer seemed very important (finding the perfect handbag, however, is still Very Important).

I want something light and fun but that tackles the realities of motherhood.  I've read I Don't Know How She Does It, Diary of a Mad Mom to Be, Babyville, and even (gasp) Amanda Bright @ Home (and I did not even gag).  I really enjoyed India Knight's My Life on a Plate and Don't You Want Me although they are about single mothers so Finding The Guy figures into them a lot.

I was pleased to find that Jennifer Weiner's newest book Little Earthquakes focused on women with infants.  I had liked Good in Bed and In Her Shoes even though I didn't really connect with any of the characters.  But I really liked Little Earthquakes because of passages like this:

"I'm a mother," she whispered again.  She waited to feel changed, transformed, turned inside-out, and rendered completely different.  So far she didn't.  She conjured up a picture of her mean Aunt Joan, who'd showed up at her tenth birthday party and pulled her aside before the cake and presents to hiss that she didn't need such a big slice of cake and wouldn't she like an apple instead, and waited for the magic of maternity to wash her mental slate clean.  Nope.  Nothing doing.  She found that she still hated Aunt Joan...which meant that motherhood would leave her unchanged.  She'd be herself basically, only with less sleep and a new scar.  Oh, dear.  Becky hit the morphine button hopefully, figuring that if she could't have emotional tranquility, she could at least have narcotics.

I need someone else to write a book like this.

I know that Shopaholic Baby will be out at some point and possibly a Bridget Jones sequel where she marries Mark Darcy but I need something to read now.  And I'm either too immature or shallow for the Sue Miller, Anne Tyler, Maeve Binchy type of books.  And I will never be ready for Danielle Steele.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.  If not, I may have to take up a new interest in Dropping Bombs on People or Cats Solving Mysteries or Uncovering Ancient Conspiracies or People You Will Meet in Heaven If You Vote Republican just to find something new to read.