During the export from Goodreads to this new blog of mine, I was reminded of a feature that they dropped a few years ago, the "most-read authors". it'd look through your library and give you a count of the books you'd read by each author.
Obviously, quantity is not a reliable indicator of impact, inasmuch as I'm sure there are authors I've read only 1 book of and can remember a great deal. Nevertheless, it's unlikely that I'd keep reading an author unless I enjoyed it. So, having pulled through all the book reviews, I made a list of the authors where I'd read at least 5 of their books. I'm going to go through all 6 dozen or so of them over the rest of this year and give you my thoughts. Obviously many of these authors are still alive and I may read more of their books in the future, so this is a snapshot of my reading as it was during the migration.
This entry is the first handful of authors where I have read at least 5 books. I'll do the next batch of 11 next week. The tentative schedule is to move onto the authors where I've read between 6 and 9 books in August, the 10-12 bracket in September, the teens, 20's and 30's in October, the 40's in November and round out the series around my birthday in Early December.
Alan McDermott
I found alan's Tom Gray books on Kindle back in 2013. I don't remember much detail after all these years, but do know for certain I had a fabulous 3 days with the original trilogy. They're vigilante military-style thrillers, and although I'm pretty sure I'm conflating them in my head some with the Brainrush series, I do remember that I liked them a lot at the time.
Becky Chambers
Becky's "Wayfarers" sci-fi saga was incredibly gripping. Not for its high action or anything like that, it was almost slice-of;life in its portrayal of characters. But the writing, the universe she's created, the characters and their stories were just astoundingly readable. I want to start all over again now I've written this. I was sad that book 4 was the last set in that universe, for it's rare for every single of a volume of a series to get top billing from me. But these did.
Ben Aaronovitch
Ben made a huge splash with his paranormal "Rivers of London" books. I enjoyed them to a degree, although as time has gone bye I can't say I really remember a great deal about them.
D. Rus
I blew through 5 of the "Play to live" series in July 2016. I hadn't read too much Litrpg before then, so the genre was new and shiny. Book 1 particularly captivated me, but I was getting a bit jaded by the fifth one.
David Gerrold
If you'd asked me to list the 5 books of David's I had read for you without looking, I could only have named the star Trek "Trials and Tribble-Ations" novelisation and "The Man Who Folded Himself". Those aside, I wasn't particularly blown away by his other works. NO 5 stars in the bunch at all, unfortunately.
Dayton Ward
All but 1 of my Ward reads are trek, apart from "Mars Attacks: The Armageddon Directive", which I gave 3 stars to but can't remember a word of now. My favourite Ward was Next Generations "Pliable Truths", which handled some retcons and modern Trek pretty neatly.
Dean Wesley Smith
Again, it's largely Star Trek here. best of a pretty average bunch was the third Captain's Table entry called The Mist.
Douglas Adams
A man who needs no introduction, HHg2g was a pillar of my childhood. I heard it on radio reruns, I had the tapes, I played the inform computer game ... I even, I think, know where my towel is. The books are just delightfully silly, and Adams was taken too soon. I was so pleased that he managed to have a part in the latter radio series from the readings he did, although as an audiobook narrator the guy really should not have given up the day job.
Edward M. Lerner
It's interesting that I only gave 4 stars to all 3 of the Lerner books that I regularly reread. "Fools' Experiments" tackles the genesis of computer intelligence, "Small Miracles" does it in a slightly different way with nanotech, and "Countdown to Armageddon" is a time travel story. All of these have I reread at least 2 or 3 times each.
Eric Frank Russell
Wasp is my favourite of EFR's works. I've enjoyed a few of his others over the years too. Very thinky and wordy works.
Harry Dayle
I'm not overly convinced all 5 of these are by the same guy, but perhaps they are and I'm just being odd. The outstanding memory path here is the Dark Web stories, which I quite enjoyed at the time. Hackery technothrillers.
And that's it for this update. Look out for the next set of authors I've read 5 books from next week.