The Temporary Moratorium

https://reflectionsfromthebellcurve.blogspot.com/2018/11/goal-for-year-69.html

In the post above, I declared I'd only read authors new to me from my last birthday until my next. If you're a reader, I'm curious to know if you've ever tried to do something like this for any period of time. What did you observe during your temporary moratorium on authors familiar to you?

* When browsing in the library - a frequent pastime of mine (NERD!) - I have to remain mindful of my pledge. Just over the ensuing few months since making that pledge, more than one library drive-by has gotten me all the way to checkout before realizing I'd grabbed a title by a favorite author.

* I'm really glad my pledge included an exception for book club selections. That allowed me to greedily devour "World's Fair" (1985) by EL Doctorow and also to re-read the astonishing "Yellow Birds" (2012) by Kevin Powers, arguably the best novel ever written about the Iraqi fiasco.

* It's not hard to find authors new to me. But, so far at least, it also has not been easy to find books by authors new to me that blow me away enough that I even want to recommend them here. And since I long ago decided not to publicly bash any author on this blog, my post output featuring authors new to me has been limited since November 23. Oh well. Got someone you think maybe I haven't tried and a book by that same author you want to recommend? Bring it on.

In the meanwhile, tell me and others what your experience was like trying only new authors for a time.