How many books have you read?

Dean wrote: Does anyone ever get that Prog-head need to be a completist? I remember reading 2001 - A Space Odyssey, then the Sentinel, followed by Lost Worlds of 2001 and every Clarke book I could find, then later 2010, 2061 and 3001. Once I'd discovered Dune I then bought every novel Herbert wrote, the same for Robert Sheckley, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick, John T. Sladek, Iain M Banks, Michael Marshall Smith, Ken MacLeod, Peter F Hamilton, Storm Constantine and Neil Gaiman. I've recently discovered the comedic fantasy novels of Tom Holt ... that's another 28 books I'll end up adding to my collection.

the only SF writer I would want to be a completist of is Stanislaw Lem, though by far not all of his works were SF, and he himself hated to be called an SF-writer. some of his works have not been translated into German yet though (and even fewer into English), though the list of German translations is almost complete, and we have all of his books. I am not much of an SF-fan, but Lem transcends the genre. the only other SF_writer I really like besides Lem is Phlip K. Dick, especially his latter works. I am not counting such classics as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or H. G. Wells because they wrote lots of books outside the genre too.
there are several authors we have the complete works of, mostly by being complete editions; it is the easiest way. examples are Goethe, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe or E.T.A. Hoffmann (a writer of fantasy and horror stories and novels of the romantic era. he was also a caricaturist and composer; a true multi-talent. I highly recommend his novel "Die Elixiere des Teufels", "The Elixirs of the Devil". many horror stories or novels draw on the concept of the doppelganger, "The Elixir of the Devils" is the only novel I know of where a person has TWO doppelgangers). of others we slowly acquired book after book. Friede is a great fan of the Nero Wolfe whodunnits of Rex Stout; she already had all Nero Wolfe books when we met (somewhat over 70), though she does not have any other books by Rex Stout.
help, we need a bigger house! we are running out of space for all the books we own

Dean wrote: From what I remember I don't think Merriam-Webster dictionary is going to help much with Finnegan's Wake.

Then it's hopeless.

But I still want that book!!

Joycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoycejoyce

Edited by Ricochet - August 09 2009 at 12:19

Dean wrote: Does anyone ever get that Prog-head need to be a completist? I remember reading 2001 - A Space Odyssey, then the Sentinel, followed by Lost Worlds of 2001 and every Clarke book I could find, then later 2010, 2061 and 3001. Once I'd discovered Dune I then bought every novel Herbert wrote, the same for Robert Sheckley, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick, John T. Sladek, Iain M Banks, Michael Marshall Smith, Ken MacLeod, Peter F Hamilton, Storm Constantine and Neil Gaiman. I've recently discovered the comedic fantasy novels of Tom Holt ... that's another 28 books I'll end up adding to my collection.

I'm not a completist. I'm a maniac of a completist. It happens not only with my prog-rock music, but also with literature. I've practically added a new shelve (sp?) to my (parents') home library, with new authors, but also with new books of authors I've picked and read from there.

I have, right now, the full Gabriel Garcia Marquez bibliography. Dostoievsky's also full. Salinger full. Kafka as well, except a volume of posthumous short stories that, as a book, got out of print before I even discovered Kafka.

The Faulkner collection's building up, but I already have all the big novels. The Joyce collection misses only Finnegan's Wake, but that book was never translated in Romanian, so I'm thinking of getting it in English (along with the Merriam-Webster dictionary ).

I've purchased five anthological volumes of Borges' writings (from essays to poetry), so I guess there's not much left to complete there.

Completing is in progress with writers such as Virginia Woolf, Mario Vargas Llosa, John Steinbeck, Haruki Murakami, Jose Saramago, Milan Kundera.

I've got seven of Henry Miller's writings, including the Tropics and the S-P-N trilogy, but I don't know how hopeful towards completing it to be, I haven't seen a new item translated in two years.

--

And only from here on comes the rest of what I've read, with a lot more to start reading. But since I'm a completist, half of the spirit of reading/discovering something new is cut by the spirit of having most of what I like very much. Which is probably bad, but I can't help it.


Edited by Ricochet - August 09 2009 at 12:13

Dean wrote: Does anyone ever get that Prog-head need to be a completist? I remember reading 2001 - A Space Odyssey, then the Sentinel, followed by Lost Worlds of 2001 and every Clarke book I could find, then later 2010, 2061 and 3001. Once I'd discovered Dune I then bought every novel Herbert wrote, the same for Robert Sheckley, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick, John T. Sladek, Iain M Banks, Michael Marshall Smith, Ken MacLeod, Peter F Hamilton, Storm Constantine and Neil Gaiman. I've recently discovered the comedic fantasy novels of Tom Holt ... that's another 28 books I'll end up adding to my collection.

I can only say it happened to me once with Jack London. I picked up Martin Eden sometime last year then I decided to almost everything he published.

Does anyone ever get that Prog-head need to be a completist? I remember reading 2001 - A Space Odyssey, then the Sentinel, followed by Lost Worlds of 2001 and every Clarke book I could find, then later 2010, 2061 and 3001. Once I'd discovered Dune I then bought every novel Herbert wrote, the same for Robert Sheckley, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick, John T. Sladek, Iain M Banks, Michael Marshall Smith, Ken MacLeod, Peter F Hamilton, Storm Constantine and Neil Gaiman. I've recently discovered the comedic fantasy novels of Tom Holt ... that's another 28 books I'll end up adding to my collection.

In my house there's about 900 books (my mother is doing a pedant archive) and I have read around 40% of them. Plus a number of them that are not in our home library, so I guess a figure is around 500.

However, I'm often re-reading my favourite ones, not once or twice: my top 50 favourite books had been all re-read ( re-readen? re-red? ) a dozen of times.

There are only a few that I can describe as "bad".

A few hundred, I suppose.

In answer to the favorite author question, mine would be Vonnegut.

It's hard to say but in the past 3 years,I've seemed to have a surge of reading and I would say 30-60.Also do you consider comics?

And about intelligence and prog.............insert Phil Collin's career  change joke here...


Edited by mrcozdude - August 09 2009 at 04:44

Considering prog takes intelligence to appreciate, I would imagine prog  fans would read more....