Author You’ve Read The Most Books From?

Oystein - James Redd & Blecchs is correct. Moviegoer & Last Gent.

From there, Lost in the Cosmos. And then probably stop. That's enough.

OG PGW title of The Cat-nappers was Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. That one is what Xgau would call a Must To Avoid.

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.

There is at least one other biography by Samway, who was a Jesuit friend of his, I think, but I haven't read it.

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

probably franklin w. dixon or carolyn keene

; )

Honest answer is Stephen King and Piers Anthony.

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.

I'd have to add Richmal Crompton: I reads the William books incessantly when I was a kid

Patricia Highsmith and Ross MacDonald. Odd pair now I think of it. Almost exact contemporaries too.

R.A. Lafferty, Harlan Ellison, and Jim Thompson (at least in sheer numbers)

Shoot... forgot PKD

Richmal Crompton and Franz Kafka, maybe.

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.

BSJ is also my most-read author, but then I did start a PhD on the guy, so...

Thanks for the Percy tips, James & Puffy.

forgot Highsmith! Also Elmore Leonard.

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...

Iain (M) Banks

Graham Greene

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.

B-b-but...!

really don't know

i have a friend who has read *at least* 80 piers anthony books tho, probably more by now

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.

no dishonor there, J.D.

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