Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
We all have different taste in authors, one reason that I wasn't really looking for recommendations.
I like a number of Guy Gavriel Kay's books, though not all. I don't really try to rate authors, or rather it's more of a binary thing - do I want to read more books by that author or not. It does seem to me that a lot of authors only have so many good books in them. Some only write one good book, others a handful. A few are simply good story tellers and most of their books are good.
The thing that surprised me was how few new authors I've run across in the last 5 years that I liked. I think it goes back to my long standing issues with discoverability and finding new authors. Way back when, there were a ton of established authors I had never heard of, so I had all those authors and their backlists to read. Then I found a publisher (Baen) who's taste in books was pretty close to mine, so until he died, I had a steady stream of new authors that he found and published. I really had expected by now that we would have all sorts of curated lists of new books, book reviews and the like. Perhaps they are out there, but I haven't found them.
Perhaps, it's simply one of the regular dry periods and in a year or two things will pick up again.
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One of the reasons why your OP (with its "looking for new books and authors to read") attracted my attention is that I've always tended to follow authors, so finding new authors that appeal is something I look forward to. For me the "voice" can be almost as important as the rest of it. So while it's true that sometimes the attraction fades, in general I've found that following authors has served me pretty well.