Today, Booking Through Thursday asks us:
Which is worse?
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or
Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?
This is a tricky little question!
I think I have to chose the second one – reading a disappointing book by a loved author.
It’s very exciting to me to find a new book/author that I love and to then not like their other books would be disappointing…
But for me it’s worse to pick up a favorite author’s new book and have that happy anticipation drain away. Maybe because I have developed more of a relationship with a favorite author than with one I’ve just had a single fun outing with.
That said, no author can please all the people, all the time, so I probably won’t hold it against them too much. 
April 30, 2009 at 9:57 am
I tend to be forgiving with a favorite author. I figure they can’t be great every time.
April 30, 2009 at 11:13 am
That is true, but I still am willing to give my favorite authors the benefit of the doubt, whereas a new author I have no problem not reading another book they have written.
May 4, 2009 at 12:12 am
I would say the first…probably because the only authors who haven’t churned out a dud once or twice are those who haven’t written many books…and, then, usually, you can find at least some bit of what you love about the author in those “duds” as well. What’s truly sad is when the falling quality of a writer’s work is evidence of a greater personal decline–as in the later novels of great writers like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom drowned their talent in alcohol.
Nonetheless, as a reader I find it maddening to read something just great by somebody, get really excited, rush out to find more, only to find little or none of the spark found in the first book. There’s a great book of essays called Karma Traces by a writer named Eliot Weinberger. Reading it was truly a revelation for me, and heavily influenced by blog writing. Alas, everything else I’ve found by him…meh…but, Karma Traces remains as good as when I first found it….