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