Score

Its interesting to consider my favorite authors right now as compared to 20+ years ago. At one point I would have been answering Isaac Asimov or Alistair MacLean or Robert Ludlum. And after that Michael Moorcock or Roger Zelazny. And then later Tom Clancy or John Grisham.

I took this list to especially mean authors that I'm excited when a new book comes out and am likely to read it immediately.

For authors that are no longer writing, this is harder to judge - but authors that I own and re-read with some regularity.

I’d like a list that reliably steers people to the best reading out there. It can be hard to find good reads, and some of the lists people just treat like a challenge list and check off the books they read, whether they like them or not. I don’t care if someone has read a singular book. Their opinion is worthless to me until they have read a few and can tell me which one is better than the other. I want relevant relative rankings. I love that you have read so many books. Your opinion holds more weight. I don’t care if 10 teenagers have only read Twilight or Harry Potter (or didn’t and just saw the movies). I care about the adult who has read most of the top 20 books and can rank order them usefully. Not everyone agrees and that’s fine, but I do want informed opinions. If you could grow a clone of yourself, and they’re physically the same but don’t know any books, and tell your cloned self which books to read in which order, what would they be? On this list, I want authors who’ve written multiple books you like that are reliably putting out good stuff. Not one hit wonders. That’s for a book list, not an author list.

I wish that the ratings was floating point and that you had to not reuse a rating value. So you always slotted a book between other books.

So a warning on following other peoples ratings. I generally find people's 4 stars more reliable than 5 stars. For people who use all 5 stars, that 5th star tends to be idiosyncratic.

Agreed. My 5 stars are rare though. 12%, not 20%

447 of 6404 for me. so about 7%

Nice for only 7% 5-stars and nice for over 6000 books! That's a lot. Probably get fewer 5-stars at that scale. I don't want to read that much. I spend too much time reading as it is. That's why it so important for me to have a really good list. Ideally, if I choose wisely, I'd get more 5-stars, ... but despite all the effort, ... they are still rare.