Tyler's comment on a recent post called my extensive reading of Orson Scott Card's works "impressive". I choose to interpret this as impressive in a good way. And it's got me thinking about authors that I've read a lot of. So, I'm making a list, and you're free to play along. I'm excluding children's books (so no Dr Seuss, Sandra Boynton, or Magic Treehouse) but I'm obviously allowing young adult books. The list is dominated by (science) fiction novels, which isn't surprising. I read a decent amount of non-fiction, but those books are less likely to bring you back to the same authors again and again. (Unless William L. Shirer happened to write about the rise and fall of the first two reichs, or David McCullough continues on to write about every year since 1776.)
While I'm not sure what my list would look like if you asked me to come up with my ten favorite authors, I'm pretty sure this isn't it. I don't think more than 3 of these authors would make that list, though don't ask me who the other seven would be. I also can't shake the feeling that this list isn't accurate, so leave me a comment if you can think of someone that I've forgotten about. (Something tells me that five minutes after hitting 'publish' I'm going to think of someone embarrassingly obvious.) And after all that ado, here's the list:
1. Orson Scott Card, 39 books. It's like when you start eating your kids Halloween candy, and suddenly there is this enormous pile of candy wrappers, and you're thinking, "Did I really just eat 39 little candy bars? It didn't seem like that many. But they're so good, I just want more. Except that a couple of them were terrible." And then you eat more, even though Card's Homecoming Saga was painful.
2. Robert Jordan, 11 books. The first 11 books of the Wheel of Time. It's a zillion pages, and no, I don't want to read the prequel. The series was good, but it didn't really leave me wanting to go find more of his work.
3. Brandon Sanderson, 10 books. The last 3 in Wheel of Time, 4 Mistborn, 2
Way of Kings, and I've started Steelheart. Unlike Robert Jordan, reading his books did make me want to read more of his books.
4. J.K. Rowling, 8 books. Harry Potter, including the Tales of Beedle the Bard.
4. Arthur C. Clarke, 8 books. 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001, Rama (4
books)
6. C.S. Lewis, 7 books. Narnia. And I think they should be read in
the order they were written. So there.
6. Isaac Asimov, 7 books. 4 robot books, 3 Foundation books.
6. Bill Bryson, 7 books. I think.
9. Michael Crichton, 6 books. Better books than movies. Actually, I think I've only seen 1 of the movies.
10. Dan Brown, 5 books. Apparently he's only written 6 total.
10. Agatha Christie, 5 books? 2 Marple?, 2 Poirot?, And Then There Were None. If anything I've read more than 5 of her books.
10. Lloyd Alexander, 5 books. Maybe I should add up the number of pages or something, because the 5 Prydain books combined only took a week or two to read.
10. Douglas Adams, 5 books. I'm pretty sure I read all of the Hitchhiker books, though I definitely was losing interest quickly as the series went on.
Notable authors who didn't make the list, but who I didn't forget: Tolkien (4), Clancy (3), Ludlum (2?), Grisham (2?), King (2)
edit: Added Crichton and Alexander, after they were mentioned in the comments and I realized that I have indeed read books by those guys. Added Adams when a different Douglas reminded me of him.
6 comments:
Five seems a low cutoff to me. Here are some ideas where regardless of quality of the author I would have figured we'd see more than five. Brandon Mull, Gerald Lund, Anne McAffrey, Piers Anthony, Lloyd Alexander, David Eddings, Terry Brooks. Less your genre, but given their ubiquity and low cost of entry Leslie McFarlane or Earl Stanley Gardiner might have quickly snuck in there. I think I could come up with more given a few minutes.
Well, after 3 minutes of thought and 10 minutes on wikipedia, here's what I came up with:
OSC - 29 books (though probably not all the same as your 29 books)
Michael Crichton - 12
Robert Jordan - 12
John Grisham - 8 (all in one month. I don't reccommend that)
Brandon Sanderson - 7
JK Rowling - 7
Arthur C. Clarke - 7
Douglas Coupland - 5
Chaim Potok - 5
Honorable mentions, 4 books apiece: Amy Tan (they are all the same book), Tom Clancy, JRR Tolkien.
Suz: Good list. I'm assuming that you, like me, are missing Douglas Adams.
Ben: You're not the first person to assume I'm a bigger fantasy nerd that I actually am, because I've never heard of most of the authors you've listed. (Mull, Anthony, Eddings, McFarlane and Gardiner.) I've heard of Lund, McAffrey and Brooks but never read anything by them. Lloyd Alexander has been added to the list, however.
I'll add that it's not surprising that my list looks so much like Suzanne's, as I spent the first 20 years of my life raiding her bookshelf for reading material.
Neither Gardiner nor McFarlane wrote fantasy. The former is the author of the Perry Mason series and the latter of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
I still think it's suspicious that there's no absolutely author on your list who churns out lightweight stuff so fast that's consumed with so few brain cells that it doesn't even register. Louis L'Amour or Clive Cussler? But perhaps you just avoid such things?
You're right, there should be 6 Douglas Adams books (at least; probably 8) as well as 6 or 7 No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books. And about 40 Babysitter's Club books. I notice you never pillaged those.
Thanks to my book club, Craig Childs, John MacPhee, and Ellen Meloy will soon make the list.
Great post. And I highly recommend Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series. I just finished reading it to Ada and she just loved it (that was after reading the series once on my own).
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