You were clearly less weird as a hatchling than I was as a child! Whether it was my knack of recalling so much of what I read (it just sticks in there) or my tendency to not only collect words, but to use the full extent of what became quite a large vocabulary (and get into fights for doing so), but I found that after the first half-dozen books, the limited world of Blyton was just boring. Cromptons' William was less overtly upper-middle-class, so I could 'get' him better, and Crompton was a marginally better writer. But I read my first Sherlock Holmes story at 11 and by 12 was getting into Lovecraft. At 13 I found Michael Moorcock but I was 18 before I got my crack at Tolkien.
I see what you mean about endings, but I always felt that Lovecraft was recounting episodes, fragments of a bigger story, so naturally his endings only dealt with his protagonists' departure from that particular scene, while the larger story went on elsewhere. Especially since so many of his narratives are cast as warnings to people who were about to do something incautious. Poe is another matter. He writes beginnings, usually the beginnings of madness or the origin of horror, rarely endings (except for the House of Usher). Stephen King writes to pay the mortgage, and like many such, is always keen to leave an opening for a sequel.
I agree about Agatha Christie, though SWMBO is a fan. I came to Pratchett by way of Douglas Adams and to Neil Gaiman by way of Pratchett.
In my first fanfiction, I tried to pastiche JKR's style for the Hogwarts sections while using a more Marvelesque style for the parts set at Xaviers'. Didn't work so well - it was easier to make the Trio act and sound like Marvel characters than it was to make Rogue, Iceman and Colossus act and sound like HP characters.
These days I write my own way, but the style differs in response to what I'm writing, so that stories featuring The Shadow and Solomon Kane read like pulps, while the Ron and Hermione 'caper' tales have a lighter style. I even dared to trepass on Pratchett territory with my 'Daleks on the Discworld' story, though I didn't try to copy his style!
I found that once I started writing myself, I was better able to grasp what other writers are up to, but also where they go wrong! Did you find that?
