What influences your choice of books, the author or genre, or both?
I read adult and children's literature, traditional literature and poetry.
I do not read horror, celebrity, modern biographies or detective stories,
I prefer historical fiction and contemporary fiction human interest novels.
However, I am mostly author-driven. The authors I have chosen keep me well supplied with books.
I get exasperated by well meaning people who wish to give me books, or tell me what I should read. I believe thay are trying to reinforce their belief that the books they have read are good. That may or may not be so, but I already have a pile of over a hundred books to read.
I find authors whose work has really inspired something within myself and tend to work my way through their works, then tend to find authors similar to them. Sometimes I randomly google particular subjects that I find interesting or thought provoking and look for novelists and poets who have dealt with such topics and go from there. I tend to focus more on the classics or classical ancient literature.
I have found loads of books I want to read while searching for agents - looking mainly at the areas they represent. I recently discovered Thirteen Treasures on Darley Anderson's site and so far I've spent more time reading than researching. Ah well, there's nothing spoiling...
Oh, I like every kind of books! There's always some story of some genre that calls my atention. So... I guess that's it. What influences my choice are always the book's descriptions, the plot. Famous author's names are not reliable. For example: Stephen King. He wrote the best book I ever read - but he also wrote the worse.