> it's easier to be exposed to all the good fiction
Exposed or actually read? If you read on average 1 book per month and are aged 50, that's at most 600 books you've read.
There are thousands upon thousands of books that have received awards and are worthwhile (obviously that is subjective but even if you consider 10% to be "worthwhile", there is still a huge corpus), so to say you've been exposed to all the good fiction is unlikely.
I think you need more influences if you are out of ideas. Or you're not trying hard enough.
Do you need to read a whole book to make a decision on whether you like it? I get ideas from various places then read a few pages to get a feel for a book, super easy with kindle samples, or if you're not in lockdown stand and read a few pages in the bookshop.
As for worthwhile, I don't find awards to be strongly correlated with my enjoyment, or reviews for that matter. Actually the best resource I've found in a while is the bestsciencefictionbooks.com website.
In any case, I constantly look for new things to read, and read many things that are just ok, but I just don't have as many strong positives anymore.
Exposed or actually read? If you read on average 1 book per month and are aged 50, that's at most 600 books you've read.
There are thousands upon thousands of books that have received awards and are worthwhile (obviously that is subjective but even if you consider 10% to be "worthwhile", there is still a huge corpus), so to say you've been exposed to all the good fiction is unlikely.
I think you need more influences if you are out of ideas. Or you're not trying hard enough.