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If I haven't read a book before, it's new. It doesn't matter if it was written a century ago, a decade ago, or an hour ago -- it's still new to me. I can't imagine not wanting to read books by authors who are not going to outlive me. Think of how many writers that takes off the table ... William Shakespeare, John Milton, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, "Doc" Smith, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, S.S. van Dine, H. Beam Piper, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Dashiell Hammett, Baroness Orczy, and literally thousands more. What a dull world it must be where one cannot read Homer because he's been dead for thousands of years, and there's no sequels in the works.
I'm glad I don't restrict myself to works by living authors, and I don't require that all books I intend to read have been recently written. I'd hate to have missed out on so many great stories.
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