Here's my list (going alphabetically through my Google Reader list:
Definitely:
- Steve McConnell's stuff is always backed by research and therefore much more valuable than most thoughts or ideas ( http://blogs.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/rss.aspx )
- Dan Weinreb is rational, thorough, a bit of a legend in my niche, and I'm a bit of an ITA fanboy ( http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/feed/ )
- Bill Simmons (sports writer) is hilarious and my only remaining connection to sports spectatorship ( http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/feed?query=Bill_Simmons )
- pg ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulGrahamUnofficialRssFeed )
- yegge is funny, and pay-per-post would be a bargain! ( http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default )
Maybe/Conditional: - pmarca if he would stay on topic ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/pmarca )
- defmacro if it caused more documentation and features to be written for weblocks ( http://www.defmacro.org/rss/news.xml )
- Ted Neward is new to me but climbing the charts (http://blogs.tedneward.com/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom )
- Jeff Moser is coming on strong ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/Moserware )
- Kevin Kelley is on the bubble ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/thetechnium )
Based on previous writing more so than current:
- raganwald from a couple years ago - the Ruby stuff means less to me than his older topics ( http://feeds.raganwald.com/raganwald )
- Joel a couple years ago, not Joel now ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/rss.xml )
That's 12 out of 172. 5 were conditional and 2 would be mainly to access archives. So about 2-5% of authors I read are people I'd pay to read. What about you?