Monday, July 28, 2014

Ten Authors I Own The Most Books From

Hosted by the Broke and Bookish the topic for July 29:

Ten Authors I Own The Most Books From

Ack I can't stand it !!! That ends in a preposition!   +++ Divide by Cucumber Error +++
Ten Authors From Whom I Own the Most Books ?

Ten Authors Who Take Up Way Too Much of my Shelf Space!


Hummm ... so here I am sitting with my laptop, a WiFi connection and some spare time, and the question for this week really involves being at home able to burrow around in my bookshelves. Well, I will do the best I can ...

The top spot is easy ...

1) Terry Pratchett - we have 41 Discworld books (I have read all but the most recent - Raising Steam), plus I have Johnny and the Bomb (I have read all three but I only own one), The Dark Side of the Sun, Strata, Good Omens, The Long Earth, and Dodger. I am also pretty sure I have Truckers, Diggers and Wings kicking around somewhere too. That makes at least 50 books from one author. Good grief!


2) Dame Agatha Christie, probably - she wrote tons of books, I have read lots of them - but I am not sure exactly how many I own. For me Christie mysteries don't actually have a lot of re-read value so most of time I checked them out of the library. On the other hand, I acquire books like ships acquire barnacles so I know that I have several I picked up at book fairs and the like. I can picture a bunch of them on a shelf so I am pretty sure there are at least 20 of them.

3) This one is rather embarrassing ...Edgar Rice Burroughs ... not just the Tarzan books but also the Barsoom series (the ones that people think of as the John Carter of Mars books), the Pellucidar series (At the Earth's Core etc.), the Caspak series (aka The Land the Time Forgot), and at least of couple of the Venus series as well. There are at least 40 of them. I read these books like candy when I was in high school. It probably warped my brain.


4) Andre Norton - I read these like candy in high school too. I have a bunch of them. At least 32 based on the titles I can remember off the top of my head. 

5) My husband has dozens and dozens of David Weber books - all of the Honor Harrington books and most, if not all of the related ones, the Safehold books and several others as well. There is a massive pile of them on the bookshelf upstairs - more than 30.

6) I know that I have at least 17 books by Donna Andrews - the Meg Langslow books and a couple of the Turing Hopper books as well. 

7) Somewhere in contention might be Sue Grafton - I was reading her Kinsey Millhone books for ages but at some point I stopped.  I know that she is up to W, but I have no idea where I left off - somewhere in the double digits.  I know that I stopped reading Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books fairly early on - there is only so much stupid that I can take at once and frankly I didn't like either Joe or Ranger - the triangle business was a major turnoff for me - or Stephanie after a while (her learning curve went flat).

8) Humm ... I have 15 Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter books. These I have re-read several times.

9) Oh yes - somewhere in the house is a big pile of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. Like with Christie, I have absolutely no idea how many.


10) Of course! Barbara Mertz aka Elizabeth Peters aka Barbara Michaels- one author several names - lots of books.  I have two of Barbara Mertz's nonfiction volumes about ancient Egypt (they are excellent, if a little dated, scholarship), I have at least 19 Michaels books and at least 29 of the Elizabeth Peters books. 

So - authors with only 7 books or so, not even in contention. :)
Oh - if we include my son's collections - he had a bizillion Geronimo Stilton books. Any time there was a book fair we acquired more and more of them. I have no idea how many he has now on the shelves waiting for his little sister to be ready for them.

I am sure that once I finish this I am suddenly going to realize that I forgot someone entirely. I wasn't counting Shakespeare - he would be on the list if you counted each play individually but I have most of them in a Riverside edition (though I confess to owning several loose volumes as well) - actually, thinking about it he probably is a contender.

This was tough going based on memory. I wonder how well I did.

I just noticed that some people are counting multiple copies. I think that is cheating so I am not counting them. Otherwise Jane Austen would probably be on this list - I think I have six copies of Pride and Prejudiced alone. 

3 comments:

  1. +JMJ+

    Great list! You're lucky to be in a family of avid readers and book collectors. =)

    I read A Princess of Mars by Burroughs earlier this year, thanks to the recommendation of an older friend, who said that ERB was the J.K. Rowling of his day.

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  2. I don't think counting multiples is cheating. If you own the book, you own the book, right? I had difficulties with the preposition ending the sentence too.

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  3. Great list, I love your picks! Shakespeare! I didn't think of him, either, but I probably only have about 12 loose copies, and the complete set (Bevington, in my case; my Shakespeare prof preferred it.) Andre Norton - I read those like candy in middle and high school, but mostly library copies. Christie, definitely; I've got most of hers in one form or another, though a lot are in three-in-one volumes. One of these days, I really need to read the Terry Pratchett books. I hear they got better after The Colour of Magic, the only one I've read.

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