Dead authors

I noticed today that all my favorite authors are dead. Then I noticed that almost everything I read at all is written by someone dead.

I decided to do a count, and in the past 3 years (counting back from today) I’ve read something like 95 books, and only 19 of them (by 16 authors) were written by people still alive today. And most of those living are in their 70’s or 80’s.

What does this mean? Well, probably that you have to be dead for a while before your book will be widely read, in most cases. Or maybe it’s that lately I like to read older books. Or maybe, my taste leans toward an older style? I don’t know.

So rarely have I looked forward to the release of a new book, because almost always the author I’m reading is gone. But, it hardly matters. There is so much that I haven’t read, that I’ll be able to keep discovering ‘new’ authors (who are already dead) for years and years to come.