But wait, there’s more? Or, possibly, less, depending on how you look at it. Here are some more authors and books I’m dumping, in no particular order.
James Blaylock. I want to like James Blaylock; he’s a friend of Tim Powers, whose books I very much like. I’ve been buying and reading Blaylock since I was in college, and I’ve wanted very much to like his books for all of that time. They are well-written, quirky, and (alas!) all too often I find them exasperating. I spent some time over the last year re-reading a few of them, and it’s time to admit it—I don’t like Blaylock’s work, at least not in proportion to the space it takes up on my shelves. Sorry, James.
Of Tangible Ghosts, etc., by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. I like Modesitt in general; this book and its immediate sequel I simply didn’t enjoy; and there’s a third book that’s been sitting on my shelf for years.
The Runelords, etc., by David Farland. This is an epic fantasy series with some neat (if rather absurd) ideas. But the fourth book has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read since 2003. It’s time to let go.
Never the Twain, by Kirk Mitchell. This book has an amusing premise. A descendant of Bret Harte travels back in time to help Sam Clemens keep his silver strike, leaving the literary field open and ensuring that his ancestor will be the leading literary light of the age. I enjoyed it somewhat; and that was in 1987. I’ve not been moved to read it since.
Tom Holt. People like Tom Holt; he’s supposed to be funny. He might even be funny. But I seem to have a blind spot where he’s concerned. I’ve read one or two of his books, and I’ve got several others that I’ve picked up over the years; but I just can’t make myself read them. Dunno why.
John Ringo. I’m keeping a few books by John Ringo, notably There Will Be Dragons and its first two sequels (though not the fourth, for yea, verily, it sucketh) and the March Upcountry books; but the rest are going. Too depressing.
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Sorry, folks; I know I’m in a minority, but I just don’t like it much.
Orlando Furioso, Parts I and II by Ariosto. I actually read about a third of the first volume lo these many years ago. It was amusing. But I’m really not an epic poetry kind of guy. (This is likely a defect in my character, but there it is.)
Eric Flint. Another author who runs hot and cold for me. I’m keeping some of his books, but getting rid of most of them.
The Fionavar Tapestry, by Guy Gavriel Kay. I loved this trilogy when I first read it. Then it got put in a box for a long time, during which I wanted to re-read it but couldn’t find it; and then, finally I found it and did so. And boy, was I disappointed. I wrote a review about it at the time, which you can look up if you like. I’m keeping the rest of his books, though.
Shaman’s Crossing and Forest Mage by Robin Hobb. Strong books, well-written, but there’s something about them I don’t like. The third book is out in paperback, and after looking at it in the store on several occasions, I realized that I didn’t really want to read it. Well, then….
And a handful of others: Neverness by David Zindell. In Death Ground by David Weber and Steve White. The Well at the World’s End, Part I by William Morris. Hellspark by Janet Kagan. Voidfarer, by Sean McMullen. The Deathworld Trilogy, by Harry Harrison.
The View from the Foothills 
I didn’t like Good Omens, either, and it took me a little while to get over my disappointment. Not at the book, but at myself, for not liking it as everyone else seemed to. Is it possible that lots of people who like Neil Gaiman and like Terry Prachett hadn’t actually read this one, and so only claimed to have read it and liked it? So thanks for validating.
I’ll also say you certainly are an omnivore. I haven’t heard of most of these books and authors you list. But it reminds me of a post I just read this morning on Salon.com — Laura Miller says NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and energy, since it produces lots of crappy writing. That’s time and energy that could have been better spent on actually reading novels, which fewer and fewer people do. She then links to someone’s blog about her project to read 100 books (10 books in each of 10 genres) between 1/1/10 and 10/10/10, as a way to try areas of interest the blogger hadn’t considered before, and thereby force her mind to new frontiers. Good premise, but with an arbitrary deadline, doesn’t it become the crappy-reading equivalent of NaNoWriMo’s crappy writing? I came back to your archives this morning looking for that link to a Mortimer Adler video in which he said reading is hard work. Unless these 10/10/10 readers had “Celebrity Biographies” and “Children’s Classics” as a couple of their genres, how much thought could they have given each book? The blogger even said she had to google a book title before she wrote her summary, because she couldn’t remember anything about it.
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Good reading is hard work, but not every book is worth a good reading. In How to Read a Book, Adler talks about different kinds of reading, ranging from a quick inspectional reading to a remarkably detailed analytical reading. I sometimes do the latter, but seldom on novels; and you never do the latter until you do the former.
It seems to me that the blogger’s project to read 10 books in 10 genres is more the former. She’s casting her net widely, and seeing what sticks. If she can’t remember anything about one of the books after having read it, that might say as much about the book as about her reading of it. In any event, I’ve always said that the way to recognize the good books is to read a whole lot bad books.
About NaNoWriMo, sure, most of the novels that get written will be garbage, and few will ever read them. But I disagree with Miller that it’s a waste of time and energy. No one has to read them, so it can only be a waste of the author’s time. Perhaps the author enjoyed the writing. And if you can only learn to recognize the good books by reading a lot of bad ones, it’s equally true that you can only learn to write well by doing a lot of writing, much of which will be bad.
So I’m inclined to be more relaxed on both fronts.
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