Awesome Author Challenge 2010

Alyce at At Home With Books came up with a great challenge I will be participating in in 2010. It's the Awesome Author Challenge! Here's what Alyce has to say about this challenge:

The idea behind this challenge is to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the "Awesome Author Challenge" title.
The Rules:

The challenge starts January 1, 2010 and ends December 31, 2010.

Crossover from other challenges is allowed.

Choose the level at which you would like to participate, post about it and come back and leave a link to your post in Mister Linky.

Titles and authors do not have to be predetermined, and can change at any time.

Books can come from any genre or reading level, the only requirement is that you have heard great things about the author, but haven't yet read any of their works.

The Levels:
Easy: Choose three authors and read at least one title from each author.
Moderate: Choose six authors and read at least one title from each author.
Challenging: Choose ten authors and read at least one title from each author.
Over-Achieving: Anything over ten authors.

I'm choosing Challenging and here are some of the authors I plan on trying:

1. Elizabeth Kostova - read The Swan Thieves 5/11/2010
2. Kate White - read Hush - 4/20/2010
3. Alyson Noel - read Evermore - 8/7/2010
4. Carrie Jones
5. Kate Brian - read Private 1/7/2010
6. Carrie Ryan - read The Forest of Hands and Teeth - 6/13/2010
7. Ann Brashares - read My Name Is Memory 6/3/2010
8. Nick Hornby
9. Candace Bushnell - The Carrie Diaries - 6/25/2010
10. Laurie Halse-Anderson - Fever, 1793 and Prom - May 2010

That's who I'm thinking at the moment, mostly young adult authors it seems, but young adult is so big right now and so great. I may end up going with over-achieving but we'll see. I tend to find new authors while blog hopping so that's why I may add.

Go and check out the other participants at At Home With Books and join in too!