Your most-read authors

[wolverine]

1.  Louis L'Amour 35-40 some multiple times and most before I was 14

2.  Robert Jordan 15

3.  Bernard Cornwell 13

4.  Stephen King 10 or 11 I think

5.  Steven Erikson 8

 

Seems kind of odd that if someone asked me about authors I like the only one from that list I would mention is Cornwell.  Not that I dislike the others though either.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah looking at collected volumes individually Wolfe should crack the top 10 and Cook should be no 2. 

[Larry.]

Eh, not sure on numbers since I don't track such things much these days, but some authors I've read/own more than others:

Henry James (pretty much own everything, fiction and non-fiction alike, published by Library of America, so with 2-5 works/volume, around 30-40 works?)

Most everything by Gene Wolfe

All fiction and a lot of non-fiction by Umberto Eco (in several translations and the original Italian)

All of Borges' available works in Spanish

All of Roberto Bolaño's published (posthumous mostly) work in Spanish

Most of Mario Vargas Llosa

Probably a dozen or more of Ursula Le Guin's novels/collections

Virtually all of Tolkien's posthumous Middle-Earth writings and verse translations/compositions

And although it's a single story, I have roughly 20 translations (2/3 of which I understand to one degree or another) of Le Petit Prince, one of my all-time favorite stories.  One more than the translations of the Bible that I own.

[TheRevanchist]

12 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I used to read a lot of poop.

Yeah, everyone does that. I have in list for example Dan Brown, having read all his six books. I found the last 2 terrible, and the first four amazing, but I was a teen when I read those 4, so likely they are shit too.

[Contrarius+]

Ehhh. I'm not trusting this, because GR doesn't have a lot of the books I've read -- and because I don't believe that some of these authors actually *wrote* that many novels -- but here's what GR says:

 

author    books read
1    5561    Dick Francis    40
2    589    Orson Scott Card    33
3    16094    Lois McMaster Bujold    29
4    10746    Jim Butcher    24
5    359194    Josh Lanyon    21
6    12980    Stephen R. Donaldson    19
7    2063919    Michael J. Sullivan    17
8    246590    Carol Berg    16
9    26    Anne McCaffrey    13
9    27704    Steven Brust    13
9    4841825    Marion Zimmer Bradley    13

 

eta -- well, okay, I looked at the lists for the first three individual authors, and aside from a couple of LMB novellas, that count is actually accurate. Who knew? (But forget the page counts -- you'll notice that the OSC books supposedly total 589 pages, and the McCaffrey books total only 26!)

Edited May 14, 2016 by Contrarius+

[Chise]

By sheer amount of volume, Kir Bulychev [Кир Булычёв] (russian dude, wrote fantasy/sci-fi humor) wins by a landslide. I've read his serials, stand-alone shorts, novels, even some of his non-fiction that one time. And the tiny sad english translated collection too

For the "this is trash, but I read a lot of it anyway to clear my head" amount of pages, another russian person, Darya Dontsova. She writes most brainless murder/detective stories, and pre-Kindle those yellow books were very much everywhere. There was no escaping them!!

[Teng Saudi Hui]

Stephen King, 19

Rick Riordan, 16

Jim Butcher, 7

GRRM, 7

[Mandy]

I'm just shocked some of the authors listed on this thread wrote the number of books listed!!

[Leofric]

I have no idea. 

My Goodreads page is far from up to date as I never even finished uploading all the books I own,  let alone all the books I've read.   But it currently shows as most read:

Louis L'Amour - 73

Edgar Rice Burroughs - 56

Stephen King - 41

Bernard Cornwell - 38

Robert A. Heinlein - 36

Dick Francis - 33

Glen Cook - 31

Agatha Christie - 30

Robert Adams - 27

John D. MacDonald - 25

Alistair MacLean - 22

Anne McCaffrey - 21

George R.R. Martin - 18

Isaac Asimov - 17

Raymond E. Feist - 17

Larry Niven - 16

Robert E. Howard - 15

Robin Hobb - 15

Gregory McDonald - 14

C.J. Cherryh - 14

S.M. Stirling - 13

Guy Gavriel Kay - 12

Georgette Heyer - 12

Andre Norton - 11
Paul Kearney - 11

 

 

 

[Raja]

On 5/12/2016 at 7:35 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

Robin Hobb

What's a good book to start with? I've been looking to read something by her, but she's got so many books that I'm always a little daunted. 

[Helenas Musikautomat]

Assassin's Apprentice kicks off her major series. The majority of her other stuff is later work in the same series. I mean, the way they ar written, you could theoretically start with any of the trilogies within the series, but Assassin's Apprentice is where it all begins, as it introduces the protagonist and most of the recurring characters.

You could also start with her Megan Lindholm stuff. If so, from what I have read so far I recommend The Reindeer People, which is the first book in a rather lovely duology dealing with a nomadic tribe and incorporating it's fantasy elements through shaman magic.

Thinking on it, one thing Hobb manages especially well is romantic sub-plots

[Raja]

I was looking to read something that's not part of a series - any recommendations there? The duloagy sounds interesting. I'll check that out. 

Thanks

[Mandy]

Robin Hobb wrote all these trilogies that are connected and go together.  

I'd read the Farseer Trilogy, then the Liveship Trilogy (my favorite), then Tawny Man Trilogy.  I could never finish the Rain Wilds Chronicles but I like the idea of them.  I don't recommend the Soldier Son Trilogy; I find it hard to put into words, but I found them strangely offensive if I'm completely honest.  I disliked them a LOT, and not because the writing was bad.  I have no idea what she was trying to convey or if there actually was an underlying message at all, but the books made me http://67.media.tumblr.com/44b904756e6b5053d2e15b0be7f3c418/tumblr_inline_nu2gkjahfs1s1wopc_1280.jpg

Edited June 15, 2016 by Mandy

[Helenas Musikautomat]

7 hours ago, Raja said:

I was looking to read something that's not part of a series - any recommendations there? The duloagy sounds interesting. I'll check that out. 

Thanks

Well as Robin Hobb you will probably struggle to find stand alone, but most of her work as Megan Lindholm is in the form of standalones. My favourite was probably Alien Earth, which actually has some precursors to ideas she uses in later novels (Beastships v Liveships for example). Wizard of the Pigeons was alright but not great. There is also Cloven Hoofs as a standalone, which I haven't read. 

I do recommend Reindeer People though, it is a duology but it isn't really all that long.

If you are in the mood for short fiction, there is a book titled "The Inheritance" which has short fiction as both Hobb and Lindholm and is rather nice.

2 hours ago, Mandy said:

Robin Hobb wrote all these trilogies that are connected and go together.  

I'd read the Farseer Trilogy, then the Liveship Trilogy (my favorite), then Tawny Man Trilogy.  I could never finish the Rain Wilds Chronicles but I like the idea of them.  I don't recommend the Soldier Son Trilogy; I find it hard to put into words, but I found them strangely offensive if I'm completely honest.  I disliked them a LOT, and not because the writing was bad.  I have no idea what she was trying to convey or if there actually was an underlying message at all, but the books made me http://67.media.tumblr.com/44b904756e6b5053d2e15b0be7f3c418/tumblr_inline_nu2gkjahfs1s1wopc_1280.jpg

Nadiya!  

I've not actually read Soldier's Son. But there is of course her final trilogy, the last book of which is currently in progress.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 15/06/2016 at 5:53 AM, Leofric said:

George R.R. Martin - 18

Hold on... are we talking foreign language editions, because I'm pretty sure Martin hasn't written 18 books (there's 5 ASOIAF plus 2 Dreamsongs plus Dying of the Light plus Fevre Dream plus Tuf Voyaging plus the Armageddon Rag plus Windhaven... that only gets you to 12. Or does that include Wildcards?).

[Jo498]

3x dunk and egg? not full books, though.

[williamjm]

4 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Hold on... are we talking foreign language editions, because I'm pretty sure Martin hasn't written 18 books (there's 5 ASOIAF plus 2 Dreamsongs plus Dying of the Light plus Fevre Dream plus Tuf Voyaging plus the Armageddon Rag plus Windhaven... that only gets you to 12. Or does that include Wildcards?).

You're missing his share of Hunter's Run among the novels.

I don't know which books Leofric was including, but you can easily get up to 18 if you go through all the collections of his work that have been published, as well as Dreamsongs and Tuf Voyaging, there is Songs of Stars and Shadows, Songs the Dead Men Sing, A Song For Lya, Nightflyers, Sandkings, Quartet, Portraits Of His Children. Of course, there is a fair amount of duplication between the stories in those collections.

[Darth Richard II]

Might also count all collections he's edited too.

[Gabriele]

On 5/12/2016 at 9:26 AM, Jo498 said:

I have to go with rough estimates here. For number of books (and probably pages as well because the hardcovers have around 400+ pages) it is probably the somewhat trashy late 19th century German adventure writer Karl May. I must have read more than 50 (there are about 80, depending on how one counts) of them

Of more "serious" authors, Dostoevsky is probably the winner in page count; as I read his big novels (most at least twice, and they are sometimes close to 1000 pages) and several (not all) of the shorter ones.

I've got an almost complete collection of the works of Karl May.

I'm not sure if Dostoyevski, Thomas Mann, or Balzac wins the "more serious" category. They all take up lots of shelf space and I've reread most of the novels. 

Fantasy would be the Malazan world, followed by Tolkien and David Gemmell. Historical fiction is a draw between Sir Walter Scott and Dorothy Dunnett, with Dumas and Cornwell following closely. The Rome series by Colleen McCullough is a good competitor as well, and if Harry Sidebottom continues to pop out Roman stuff, he'll give her a merry chase soon.

[Clueless Northman]

Funnily, it seems to be a tie, with all other authors coming way after - either because I haven't yet read as much of their works or just because they didn't write as much.

Stephen King - binge-reading during college and high-school, so the bulk of the 1st half of his career - kind of stopped after Gerald's Game and Insomnia because the level was dropping considerably

JRR Tolkien - binge-reading in the 2000s, so I include his non-published works and HOME, since HOME is 80% or more his writing, and Christopher Tolkien is mostly an editor

Surprisingly, both would amount to a similar 23 books / more or less 9.300 pages count

Edited June 19, 2016 by Clueless Northman