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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1339233" data-attributes="member: 812">See, what I've found in fantasy over the past fifteen years is that the diminishing returns have been on the side of the NEW material. Most new fantasy is crap. 99% would be my first guess, probably to be trended upward with more investigation.So it's generally better worth my time to re-read Brust than it is to take a chance on some untried writer. That 10% I get on the re-read is still more absolute value than the 100% I get from most new books.But then again, I don't think I agree with that 10% valuation. Often I find that a re-read provides MORE value than the initial pass -- so far from being 10% of the original value I'm getting 150% or more, as my deeper exploration reveals previously unseen depths.And that's with Brust, who while a fine, fine writer isn't, say, Shakespeare or Keats or even Anne Carson -- any of whom one can read pretty much endlessly, deriving massive value each time. Certainly much more than by reading crappy fantasy novels.Broad exposure is good. So is deep investigation. A good education includes both -- the balance needing determination by each individual.See? We have flipped notions on movies vs. novels. For me, new movies are likely to be worth my time even if they're not all that great. Whereas crappy novels provide me almost no value at all.Maybe part of that is that I spent, say the first thirty  years of my life thinking about how to write stories, so I know most of the pitfalls into which bad stories fall. It's rare that I read a bad novel and find the reasons for its crappiness interesting. Whereas I've only spent about ten years thinking about how to make a movie, so even bad movies can often teach me stuff -- I haven't nearly explored all the ways in which a movie can fail.But percentages:Reading -- 50/50 re-read and newMovies -- 30/70 re-view and new</blockquote>

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