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.

I'm trying to do that with Jeffrey Ford and Kurt Vonnegut at the moment.

With Ford, I have just the two to get (his debut Vanitas isn't easy to find).

Vonnegut I have a little longer to go.

But yes, I also end up doing this.

I want to get all the SF Masterworks series eventually.  Seeing them all lined-up together will look great.  It's a shame I only have one so far though (and that happens to be The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut).

Edit:

Oh and yes, like Rico, I have the Penguin editions of Jorge Luis Borges.  I think there's still some letters of his to get though.


Edited by James - August 10 2009 at 16:05

russellk wrote: I've averaged three novels a week since I was a teenager. So I guess I've read a few thousand novels - I have over a thousand in my library. I read good books more than once, though.

Plus you've written some too.

All of them that I have.  Then I got stuck on a Noam Chomsky one I couldn't get through.  Now I stick to comic compilations. 

Lost count long ago. I have been known to borrow books get home and when I have started realised I have read it before. Any Genre like music for me except the old Mills and Boon.The girls can have them

Around 70 probably, or more. But around 100 if we include graphic novels!

How can anyone who is over the age of 18 not have read 100 books? It's really not very much, even if you're like me and unable to sustain the 2 books a week anymore.

russellk wrote: ^ Henry, it is estimated that only 3% of adults read novels regularly. More than 80% of adults have not read a novel in the last decade. Makes it hard to tell them stories.

Well, I certainly felt as a "3%" in high-school.


Edited by Ricochet - August 12 2009 at 18:57

Ricochet wrote: russellk wrote: ^ Henry, it is estimated that only 3% of adults read novels regularly. More than 80% of adults have not read a novel in the last decade. Makes it hard to tell them stories. Well, I certainly felt as a "3%" in high-school.

Change that percentage to 0.003%, and you have my School in a nutshell...

Yeah, even at the college level, I find a lot of people prefer to find a synopsis of books for classes and such online rather than reading.  I took a comparative literature course on science fiction a few semesters ago, I'd estimate that less than 10% of us actually read the books.  I'll admit, some of them I didn't make it through, but only because I found them incredibly distasteful *cough* J.G. Ballard's Crash and Atrocity Exhibition *Cough*, but I tried each.

As far as the favorite author question goes, I'd have to say either Douglas Adams or Frank Herbert or Heinlein or H.G. Wells or Vonnegut or Philip Dick. 

BaldJean wrote: 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).

Funny that you mention Hoffmann. I just re-read "The Sandman", which is by far the scariest story I know. (OK, perhaps together with Poe's "Ligeia"...) For those of you who are not aware of it, there are several excellent English translations! Last year, I greatly enjoyed Hoffmann's novel KATER MUERR (which has been translated as TOMCAT MUERR or somesuch, by Anthea Bell, who also translates the Asterix series into English). Magnificent stuff - no wonder it inspired Schumann so much.

I could not possibly tell you how many books I've read. When I was a child I read at least five a week. Now I'm 49, and the habit has never gone away. My favourite novelists are Rabelais, Proust, Georges Perec, Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Geerten Meijsing, Murasaki Shikibu, Nagai Kafu and Junichiro Tanizaki. Favourite poets: Su Dongpo, Basho, Buson, W.H. Auden and Ted Hughes -- in addition to a fair number of classics by Dutch, English and German poets...

Edited by fuxi - August 13 2009 at 03:41