Westlake is the best for scarfing down a book a day. Thinking about it, I've easily read about 40 of his.
I burnt out badly on Wodehouse.
― jmm, Friday, 4 August 2017 03:49 (six years ago) link
Philip K Dick - 40+ novels, 2000 pages of the complete short stories, never tackled the Exegesis because life is too shortJ.G. Ballard - 20-ish novels, shitload of short stories, lots of essays & reviewsDiana Wynne Jones - 20-ish novels
I'm leaving Enid Blyton out of this
― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Friday, 4 August 2017 08:36 (six years ago) link
I am pretty sure i have read 70 Agatha Christie books.
― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Friday, 4 August 2017 08:48 (six years ago) link
Read all available Goosebumps books as a kid, so yes, it's R.L. Stine.
― abcfsk, Friday, 4 August 2017 09:26 (six years ago) link
Lawrence BlockDonald WestlakePKDMichael ConnellyStephen King
― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Friday, 4 August 2017 09:31 (six years ago) link
I've read all of William H Gass and most of JG Ballard and all of Flannery O'Connor's fiction and a silly amount of Stephen King. I'm sure there's someone I'm blanking on from when I was younger & more of a completist.
― blog haus aka the scene raver (wins), Friday, 4 August 2017 09:52 (six years ago) link
almost definitely Alasdair Gray.
― Shat Parp (dog latin), Friday, 4 August 2017 09:58 (six years ago) link
Probably Beckett.
― weird echo of the falsies (Tom D.), Friday, 4 August 2017 10:26 (six years ago) link
B.S. Johnson for me.
― devvvine, Friday, 4 August 2017 10:46 (six years ago) link
Probably Wodehouse. Maybe Westlake/Stark. I tore through the first "season" of those Stark books over a couple of years, then added some other Westlakes for good measure. (I've yet to get to the 90s Parkers -- I've been hoping the University of Chicago Press would reprint the last few. Looks like they're coming out in September!)With time, I expect César Aira and Amélie Nothomb will be up there, just because they (and their translators) keep producing a steady supply of little treats. I wouldn't call either favorites, but I'm always interested in their work.
― Rimsky-Koskenkorva (Øystein), Friday, 4 August 2017 22:06 (six years ago) link
I've read all or almost all of Nabokov, Woolf, Joyce, DeLillo, Walker Percy.I'd love to hear what you like best by Percy. I only ever read _Lancelot_, a book I recall enjoying a lot, but that's virtually disappeared in the mire of my memory. Obv _The Moviegoer_ is his most famous. Other than that, I have no idea what to look into of his work.
― Rimsky-Koskenkorva (Øystein), Friday, 4 August 2017 22:16 (six years ago) link
Besides The Moviegoer you should also read The Last Gentleman.
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 August 2017 22:27 (six years ago) link
Lancelot I'm afraid I didn't like very much, he was in full on grumpy old man mode when writing that one, iirc
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 August 2017 22:29 (six years ago) link
F. Scott Fitzgerald (everything afaik). Other than that most of Nabokov, Joyce, Proust, De Nerval and Goethe. Semi- or non-novelists prob Walter Benjamin and Barthes. Poetry: Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Rilke, Heaney and Cummings.
Single books I've re-read the most are On the Road and Catcher In The Rye; yet I've not read either in at least 15 years.
Though perhaps the answer really is indeed Blyton! God I read a lot of those when young.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 4 August 2017 22:29 (six years ago) link
F. Scott Fitzgerald (everything afaik). Even The Crack-Up?
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 August 2017 22:46 (six years ago) link
Yes. I was being completist with Fitzgerald, and while I found it unnerving to read him about his personal issues, it was quite heart-wrenching, too.
(though I've a knack for stuff like that, hence Gérard de Nerval being in my list too, constantly blurring the lines between fiction and the personal (illness) )
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 4 August 2017 22:51 (six years ago) link
Wodehouse's multiple appearances itt is encouraging. I'd wondered if the Jeeves and Wooster series was worth more than a shallow dip.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 23:01 (six years ago) link
PGW was extremely consistent, aside from maybe his very last book, the one I was trying to remember the name of before, which is known as The Cat-nappers as well as Aunts something something
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 August 2017 23:08 (six years ago) link
Rex stout is a very reliable source of delightful acidic mid century US detective whimsy when Wodehouse gets too cloying. And all the Nero Wolfe novels are sensibly slim too.
― harbinger of failure (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 5 August 2017 00:35 (six years ago) link
That sounded dismissive -- I love RS tbrr
― harbinger of failure (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 5 August 2017 00:37 (six years ago) link
Oystein - James Redd & Blecchs is correct. Moviegoer & Last Gent.
From there, Lost in the Cosmos. And then probably stop. That's enough.
― okapi paste (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 5 August 2017 00:39 (six years ago) link
OG PGW title of The Cat-nappers was Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. That one is what Xgau would call a Must To Avoid.
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 August 2017 00:54 (six years ago) link
I also liked Percy's essays on language in The Message in the Bottle, but wouldn't call it a must read, and really enjoyed the biography Pilgrim in the Ruins, by Jay Tolson, but again only read it after reading the two essential novels.
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 August 2017 01:08 (six years ago) link
There is at least one other biography by Samway, who was a Jesuit friend of his, I think, but I haven't read it.
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 August 2017 01:09 (six years ago) link
Perhaps the summary of his life in this review of Tolson's bio will suffice: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/15/books/an-inheritance-of-death.html?pagewanted=all
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 August 2017 01:20 (six years ago) link
probably franklin w. dixon or carolyn keene
; )
― j., Saturday, 5 August 2017 04:13 (six years ago) link
Honest answer is Stephen King and Piers Anthony.
― jjjusten, Saturday, 5 August 2017 04:37 (six years ago) link
Nerdy lit jerk answer is probably DFW (infinite jest counts as at least 3 books), Lethem, Will Self (fuck you he has his moments), Philip Wylie, Nabokov.
― jjjusten, Saturday, 5 August 2017 04:41 (six years ago) link
I'd have to add Richmal Crompton: I reads the William books incessantly when I was a kid
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Saturday, 5 August 2017 05:53 (six years ago) link
Patricia Highsmith and Ross MacDonald. Odd pair now I think of it. Almost exact contemporaries too.
― sciatica, Saturday, 5 August 2017 06:50 (six years ago) link
R.A. Lafferty, Harlan Ellison, and Jim Thompson (at least in sheer numbers)
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 5 August 2017 08:50 (six years ago) link
Shoot... forgot PKD
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 5 August 2017 08:52 (six years ago) link
Richmal Crompton and Franz Kafka, maybe.
― glumdalclitch, Saturday, 5 August 2017 10:06 (six years ago) link
Kudos to the person for whom BS Johnson is their most-read author...
Think I've read all of Patricia Highsmith bar a couple of late novels. Also Evelyn Waugh, other than his travel books. And I read a shedload of Graham Greene in my 20s. Although the real answer may be Herge.
― Zelda Zonk, Saturday, 5 August 2017 12:55 (six years ago) link
BSJ is also my most-read author, but then I did start a PhD on the guy, so...
― emil.y, Saturday, 5 August 2017 17:35 (six years ago) link
Thanks for the Percy tips, James & Puffy.
― Rimsky-Koskenkorva (Øystein), Saturday, 5 August 2017 18:29 (six years ago) link
forgot Highsmith! Also Elmore Leonard.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Sunday, 6 August 2017 01:23 (six years ago) link
Grant Morrison, if that counts. Currently working my way through the Penelope Fitzgerald bibliography as it's quite manageable.
I haven't burnt out on Wodehouse yet - I've deliberately saved a few of the best-regarded ones for some imagined retirement period of the distant future.
I'll always read the new Franzens, St Aubyns, Richard Prices, Michael Connellys, Janet Malcolms...
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 7 August 2017 10:53 (six years ago) link
Iain (M) Banks
― AJD, Monday, 7 August 2017 11:22 (six years ago) link
Graham Greene
― cwkiii, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:27 (six years ago) link
I've been reading for so many decades now that there's no way to answer this question accurately in terms of actual numbers for each author. Many of the authors I've read extensively I no longer go back to and haven't approached for a long time.
For example, I've probably read about 95% of Mark Twain's total output, including his novels, travel books, short stories, autobiography, speeches and those odd duck titled Christian Science (where he tried his hand at that new-fangled muckraking the public seemed to enjoy so much) and 1610, which was suppressed by his estate as too shocking, but mainly consists of fart jokes. But, I've read nothing of his since about 1992.
I've read muckle in John MacPhee's catalog of non-fiction, most of Stephen J. Gould's biology essays, big swathes of Knut Hamsun, Gore Vidal, and Dashiell Hammet. I went through a phase of John LeCarre and one of Walter Mosley. Then there's Shakespeare, Donne, Pound, Yeats and all that crew. Wodehouse is up there in terms of sheer numbers, too. I won't touch on the many Big Canonical Names I've waded around in, just because it sounds too much like bragging, when really it is only a reflection of old age and perseverance.
Without a long, hard session of retrospective rummaging, I know I'm bound to miss more names than I retrieve. And the full list would be queerly uninformative, other than by its eclecticism.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 22:01 (six years ago) link
B-b-but...!
― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 9 August 2017 01:16 (six years ago) link
really don't know
i have a friend who has read *at least* 80 piers anthony books tho, probably more by now
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 9 August 2017 01:55 (six years ago) link
much as i wish i had a better answer to this, my answer is prob isaac asimov, who i read dozens of books by ages 11-15.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 9 August 2017 01:59 (six years ago) link
no dishonor there, J.D.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 9 August 2017 02:30 (six years ago) link
Talk in the twin peaks thread has reminded me that Barth is both an unfashionable author I really like and an author I've read the most books from
― streeps of range (wins), Sunday, 3 September 2017 13:28 (six years ago) link