Read-all authors

[saliotthomas]

Inspired by Stewart book shelves.

Or exhaustive reading of an author works.

Many types a)Because you love his work
b)for various and mysterious raison you end up having read a lot by the author
c)i love doing those point with letters like Eric
d)You wish you could but his books are very hard to come by,not translated yet or where lost in time.
e)I would love to but there is just to many of them books.
f)I read all their books but shame prevent me from openly discussing it.


For the a) raison Andrei Makine and Amin Maalouf,and more recently Margueritte Yourcenar.I'm nearly done with the two first but Mme Yourcenar is going to take more time.
Also Mika Waltari but the d)raison might prevent me from doing so quickly.I read 6 of his yet.
Richard Yates needs more investigation.
d)raison for Tolstoy,Dostoievski,Sandor Marai, Miklos Bamffy.
e)Honore de Balzac,and Donald Westlake.
b)Raison is a tricky one,I read lost of John Irving and paul Auster whom i like but would not be damned for.I guess there books are easy to come by.(wich is sometime a blessing)
For the same raison Bret easton Ellis but Lunar park prooved so efficently the limite of the man that i shall not get close to his books soon.Oh not.
f)I have 3 on this list.

I'm sure i forgot a lot..

[Colette Jones]

I'm not sure there is an author who I have read all their books, but there are those I intend to or hope to.

a)Because you love his work: John Irving, Brian Moore, Richard Yates, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, Graham Greene
c)i love doing those point with letters like Eric:
f)I read all their books but shame prevent me from openly discussing it: Stephen King, up until 1990 or so.

[nnyhav]

Completeness is only noteworthy when the author in question has cut a broad swath.

I did an accounting a yearanahalf ago: Stochastic Bookmark: My top ten, and what of them I haven't read
Since then I've added (or subtracted) Nohow On and The Poor Mouth, but Nabokov has added Verses and Versions, with The Original of Laura still to come, and there's more Queneau poetry now in translation. I've also read all of Calvino save for Italian Folk Tales, all the Donald Barthelme that's out there, all the Penelope Fitzgerald save for her non-fiction (e.g. The Knox Brothers), all Bolaño's prose as it appears, most Cynthia Ozick (but not her first and last novels [last 2 come to think of it) and come to think of it, Burgess] ... and going back, there's Poe ... (and going back to my youthful indiscretions, beyond Kafka there were Vonnegut, Brautigan, Hesse [,Huxley] ...)

Why these and not others, of whom I chose to read the majority but not everything, like Melville, Conrad, Graham Greene, Saramago, Laxness, Kawabata? and the ones I restrict further, however much I enjoy those, like Henry James, Woolf, Faulkner, Gil Sorrentino, Bernhard? There are also some writers I haven't cracked because they seem to demand an all-in commitment (e.g. Robertson Davies). OTOH I don't know how I came to read all of Jane Austen ... I guess it's sort of the same way that friends aren't chosen but just happen.

[Beth]

That last Stochasticomment is a scream! I'm woefully incomplete. I shall cradle To Kill a Mockingbird tonight in an attempt to feel better.

[Sevigne]

I will usually read all but one or two of a favorite author's works. I hold on to some unread piece in the same way that one saves money for a rainy day.

[cuchulain]

Quick tally. Probably forgetting some.

All or most of what's out there for:


Joyce
Kafka
Woolf
Austen
Hardy
Fitzgerald
Hemingway (except his posthumous novels)
Murakami
Joseph Roth
Robert Walser
Calvino
Borges
Cortazar
Fuentes
Kundera
Vargas Llosa
Garcia Marquez
Saramago
Barthelme
Ozick
Rilke

[promtbr]

Under Saliotthomas' headings B):
Patrick White (in the early 80's he was "hot" I don't remember why I felt I had to read most all of them, none stick with me as being remarkable)
Thomas Hardy (Had to read him in regards to Schopenhuar's influence I have no pleasant memories of his novels..)
Jane Austen (pleasant memories always...)
Hemingway--All including journalism
Barthelme--Long ago, Need to revisit
Raymond Carver
I won't list poets since this forum focuses on fiction, but
have read and owned translations of all of Strindberg's plays (but no Fiction or his Inferno)
Ditto Ionesco

On retrospect a wierd mix and reflects the fact that I left off reading literature for almost 3 decades...

[Heteronym]

Let's see:

Harper Lee: read her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

James Joyce: missing Finnegan's Wake, Exiles and his poetry.

Juan Rulfo: read The Burning Plain and Pedro Páramo. Nothing else to read.

José Saramago: only two novels away from completion. Not really sure I want to bother with non-fiction.

Milan Kundera: four novels to go, plus non-fiction (which I want to read).

Gabriel García Márquez: missing Strange Pilgrims, Of Love and Other Demons, Ojos de Perro Azul.

Jorge Luis Borges: to the best of my knowledge, I'm only missing the prefaces he wrote for the 'Library of Babel' book series.

Franz Kafka: Amerika and The Castle to go.

[Sevigne]

I am a recovering Twain-iac. In one summer I bought and read (eventually) 42 books by or about Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

For two years, I never started a sentence without the words "As Mark Twain says..."

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

Franz Kafka: Amerika and The Castle to go.

Oh? You've read The Office Writings, have you?

[JPS]

All of Proust (and a good portion of the letters), certainly.
All of Kafka (letters and diaries included).
All of Waugh.
All of Graham Greene.
Beryl Bainbridge.
Patrick Modiano
René Belletto.
Bolaño (in translation).
Joseph Roth.
Jane Austen.
Very nearly all of Tolstoy.
" " " Flaubert.
Dickens (save for The Old Curiosity Shop).
Kundera.
Svorecky.
Others, I'm sure. As I'm probably a wee bit older than many here, I've had that much more time.

[kpjayan]

a)Because you love his work
b)for various and mysterious raison you end up having read a lot by the author
c)i love doing those point with letters like Eric
d)You wish you could but his books are very hard to come by,not translated yet or where lost in time.
e)I would love to but there is just to many of them books.
f)I read all their books but shame prevent me from openly discussing it.

My attempt..

a) Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mario Vargas Llosa ( well, 'Conversation in cathedral' was abandoned half way through, twice for no apparent reasons)
Milan Kundera
Manuel Puig

d) Sandor Marai
e) Umberto Eco ( except few highly priced non-fiction books and the latest 'queen...' , I have read most of them)
f) Michel Houellebecq( I bought most of them in a single purchase carried away by some reviews )

[Mirabell]

I am too interested in all sorts of books to concentrate on a single writer. There are a few writers of whose work I have read most or very much, at least. Among them writers that affect me especially: Ingeborg Bachmann, Wolfgang Koeppen, A.L. Kennedy, Jean Rhys, John Berryman, Uwe JOhnson, Heiner Müller, Thomas Bernhard, Paul Celan, Thomas Pynchon and so on.

[Cocko]

There are a few authors with just a couple of works which I've read, but of those with a larger body of work:

John Steinbeck - 10 of 27
Peter Carey - 8 of 19
Haruki Murakami - 9 of 13

[Colette Jones]

Good way of putting it, Cocko. Of the authors I listed above as hoping to read all of their novels, here's where I'm at:

John Irving 7 out of 11
Brian Moore 7 out of 20
Richard Yates 2 out of 7
David Mitchell 3 out of 4
Ian McEwan 9 out of 11
Martin Amis 4 out of 10
Kurt Vonnegut 5? out of 17
Graham Greene 3 out of 28

Quite a ways to go with some!

Vonnegut has a question mark because I'm sure I've read more than I counted but can't say for sure which ones as I read them so long ago.

[miercuri]

a)Mircea Cartarescu - everything except for the final volume of the Orbitor trilogy. I have to read volume I and II again and that will be somewhat time-consuming. I keep postponing the moment.
Mircea Eliade - a great deal of his fiction and little bit of his non-fiction. Have been re-reading him a lot lately.
Umberto Eco - 3/5 novels so far, The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino left to read.

b)Ian McEwan - have read a bunch of novels by him and intend to read the rest of them, mostly because I enjoy his very distinctive style, even when I don't particulary like the book.

f) I have one author in this category and it is Tracy Chevalier

also:
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children, Shame, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and half a short story collection (East/West - I lost my copy and never got my hands on another one since). I plan to read at least three other novels by him in the near future.

There few authors by whom I have read more than two books, mostly because I keep checking out others unknown to me. But there are so many authors I plan to return to: Faulkner, Iris Murdoch, DH Lawrence, Nabokov, Capote, Fitzgerald. Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Saramago, Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarty, Kazuo Ishiguro and the list goes on.

[Mr.K]

There are a few authors with just a couple of works which I've read, but of those with a larger body of work:

Haruki Murakami
Jens Bjørneboe
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
John Fante
Knut Hamsun
Charles Bukowski
Hermann Hesse
Raymond E. Feist
Robert Jordan

Lacking a few works:

Kobo Abe
Joseph Conrad
James Joyce
Vladimir Nabokov
Fjodor Dostojevskij

[Funhouse]

Of those with a larger body of work, notably:

John Barth (18 out of 18)
Paul Auster (16 out of 16)
Salman Rushdie (14 out of 14)
Michael Ondaatje (6 out of 6 'novels', plus quite a smattering of his poetry)

[steffee]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

a)Because you love his work

John Irving - I think I have three left to read. His books are always among my favourites, although the at-the-time current favourite of his changes often. Right now, it's The World According to Garp.

Vladimir Nabokov - I've read around 8 of his books and loved them all. Pnin is a firm favourite. Whilst I loved Lolita, my first Nabokov, I now appreciate The Enchanter as being as good if not better.

Jill Dawson - Since reading Watch Me Disappear a year or two ago, I've read a couple more of this author's books and can actually see her becoming a 'read-all-of'.

Haruki Marukami - Absolutely adore his books, and have read 8 of them.

Kazuo Ishiguro - I've read half of his (the easiest half).

b)for various and mysterious raison you end up having read a lot by the author

Ian McKewen - I don't understand why I've read so many of this author's works, for I find them quite tedious. I imagine it's because they're short, and because I really want to like him, but I just can't.

James Joyce - I studied Dubliners for my A level and then, for some reason, I managed to read or half-read everything else. I'm not quite sure why, but I assume now that it was my teenage self wanting to appear well-read. Dubliners remains my favourite, even if it's not quite considered up there with the best of Joyce by most.

Chuck Palahniuk - I know not why.

Isabel Allende - I've read four of her books in Spanish, for no other reason than her works are at my level, and I would certainly prefer to read them than translated Harry Potters.

d)You wish you could but his books are very hard to come by,not translated yet or where lost in time.

Patrick McGrath - oh why oh why won't they reprint Dr Haggard's Disease? I've read the others.

e)I would love to but there is just to many of them books.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel García Marquez... I'm sure there are more.

f)I read all their books but shame prevent me from openly discussing it.

Er... Enid Blyton? More recently, Margaret Atwood, Jostein Gaarder and Bill Bryson.

[fausto]

I've got a completist tendency.

Missing one Amis, 4 Barth, 1 DeLillo, 3 Mishima (among those available in French), 3 Bolaño (in Spanish), 2 Vila-Matas (in Spanish), got all Pynchon, all Gaddis, Easton Ellis, etc.

Until very recently I had read all McInerney, and I don't know why.

I've read all (save the last one, which I bought) translated (in Eng or French) Murakami Ryu and I don't know why either.