Looking For a Good Book

If you consider yourself a reader… someone who truly enjoys a good book … then you undoubtedly have a favorite author or two.  I sure do.

But what happens when that author stops producing?  Or if your favorite author is from a by-gone era and hasn’t written anything in decades?  You probably scrabble and claw for those scraps of writing that some relative or agent uncovers and releases.  But after that … well, sometimes the outlook is bleak.

For years I was an avid sci-fi reader (back in the days when the term ‘sci-fi’ was considered insulting).  Most of my true favorites were writing in that genre, but more and more, the output is less and less.  And then I felt that the sci-fi market was glutted with hackneyed writing and nothing but serials.  Serials and series’.  Really?  Does no one write just a book any more?!  But let’s be honest… most of that probably came from publishers, trying to capitalize, not from the writers themselves.

So how do you find a new favorite?

For me, it’s just a matter of reading a lot.  If I read a short story I like, I search the author’s name on Amazon and Goodreads and wishlist their books.  Sometimes I discover the new author through recommendations of friends.  And of course there are the blogs… reading posts by other readers has been a great way for me to find new favorite authors.

And sometimes you get lucky and chance upon a book or story that wows you and you want to read everything they output.  That happened to me recently when I was reading the nominees for the Hugo Award (science fiction’s fan-based reader awards).

And now I may have run across a new favorite.  You’ll hear more about him in the coming days.  Watch for a few new reviews and see if you can figure out who my new favorite is.  In the meantime, tell me…how do you find your new favorite author?!

Looking for a good book?  …Always!