Ten books

[mmcirvin]

Various bloggers have been asking and answering the question, "Which authors have you read more than ten books by?"

You can probably guess which ones are on my list because I talk about them a lot. They're pretty much all SF/fantasy authors (some write other things too). Off the top of my head:

Isaac Asimov
Arthur C. Clarke
Philip K. Dick
Stanislaw Lem
Terry Pratchett
Rudy Rucker

There are probably others. Most people who compile these lists seem to have many, many more ten-book authors than I do. I don't actually read a lot compared to people who read a lot.

I can think of many more who are probably somewhere in the seven-to-nine-book range. (I think that whether I've read ten books by Robert Heinlein depends on whether the full-length novels reprinted in The Past Through Tomorrow are counted separately.)

I'm not sure whether or not I read ten of Tove Jansson's Moomintroll books or Michael Bond's Paddington Bear books in my childhood. I think I've read eight or nine by C. S. Lewis. I don't think my relatively recent Gutenberg-fueled L. Frank Baum Oz project ever got to ten.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I think I've read nine by Vonnegut.

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

Matt immediately pointed out that I had undoubtedly read more than ten books by Terrance Dicks, and I cried. I don't think our youthful excesses should be held against us.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question whether Shakespeare plays should count, or books by "Carolyn Keene"/"Franklin W. Dixon" and their ilk.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

This meme is kind of annoying to me, because of the filtering for authors who have piles of books. Popularity, age, clout. Only then do you have to like them enough to read lots of their work.
In short, what jwgh said.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Hard to remember if a given author fits. Asimov: Foundation trilogy, end of eternity, nemesis, some crappy foundation prequel, three robot novels, a couple books of short stories. Okay.

Definitely Pratchett, Zelazny, Wolfe.

Tim Powers: anubis gates, skies discrowned, last call, exp date, earthquake weather, declare, dinner at deviant's, road down the hill etc, stress of her regard, on stranger tides. Yes. (That makes all but one of his published books, and the other one is an early limited-print-run book that never got a wide publication.)

Heinlein is in the 7-9 range, I think. Don't think I've read 10 PKDick books.

Poul Andersen? Maybe 10. Couple different books of short stories, maybe 4 fantasy books, at least four science fiction.

Stephen Donaldson, god help me. 3 books first chrons of thomas cov, 3 books second ditto, 2 books mordant's need, daughter of regals etc., one book third chronicles of thomas cov.

Frank Herbert, ditto ditto.

Neal Stephenson, I don't think so. Two stephen bury books. Big u. zodiac. snow crash. crypto. diamond age. first book of baroque trilogy. Will be to ten when I read the other two books, go figure.

CS Lewis, certainly. All of Narnia, till we have faces, buncha apologetics, experiment in criticism.

Franklin W. Dixon, if "he" counts.

Does Dr. Seuss count?

(If so, do comic book writers count? I think I've read 10 trade-paper collections of Alan Moore comix - watchmen, 4 promethea, 4 swamp thing, v for vendetta, 2 top 10, 1 tom strong. Think I'm short of that mark wrt. Kurt Busiek.)

Depending on how you count, I've read five or six books of George Orwell (animal farm, 1984, the four-volume collection of journalism), which I think is tops as far as non-genre writers go.

[miss-corvette.livejournal.com]

haha.. if i answered that question, i think the answer would be completely misleading. i think the only person whose books i have read more than 10 of is John Grisham.. and that between the age of 14 and 20... i don't read that rubbish anymore.

do you contribute to Gutenberg? you're a very charitable person! you contribute to wikipedia too! both are two of my favourite web resources. thank you from the bottom of my heart!