24
2007
Reading the lot of ‘em
Reading: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Writing: six-word stories
Today’s French: jaser, blâmer, fourré à
How many authors could you name whose entire written works - all their novels, poetry collections, autobiographies, etc. - you’ve read? Even if we’re fair and don’t include things like essays and poems outside of published collections, I don’t think I could name one. For some of the most prolific writers it seems unlikely that anyone would manage to get through all of their works without becoming terribly bored of reading the same author’s novels for years on end. Mary Faulkner, listed as the most prolific novelist in literary history in the Guinness Book of World Records, wrote 904 books under six different pen names - one of which, interestingly, shared my surname.
But if you take someone like Jane Austen, who only wrote six novels, two incomplete novels and a novella, it should be perfectly possible for me to have read all of her works. Sadly I can’t say I have, despite the fact that she’s one of my favourite authors - I’ve read ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Emma’ and ‘Northanger Abbey’, and that’s it.
The author who got me thinking about this in the first place was another of my favourites from a totally different genre, John Wyndham. Over the past year or so, I’ve enjoyed reading a few of his novels - ‘The Day of the Triffids’, ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’. ‘The Kraken Wakes’ is also currently on my shelf, just waiting for me to finish ‘Anna Karenina’. Wyndham hasn’t written a huge number of novels and so I’d like to read all of them eventually.
To make excuses for myself, I think the reason that there aren’t any writers whose full works I’ve read is a) because I like to read a broad mix of literature, and don’t tend to read something by the same author one after the other, and b) because I’m only 18. I think I have plenty of time to read many ‘full works’ throughout the rest of my life, and I intend to do so.
Comments
Only a few more of Wyndham’s books left then, “The Trouble With Lichen” we have on our shelf, as well as “Chocky” and “Web”. I haven’t heard of the other’s he’s written though, just looking at the Wikipedia page for it. Indeed you have many years left of reading! You’ll get through a vast quantity of books.
Neither can I name an author whose total works I have read. I think it would be obsession. We do need variety, I guess.
There is a Hungarian writer called Jókai Mór, who wrote quite a lager number of novels. The saying goes that his wife locked him into his room so that he could write. He was popular, his books sold well, and the wife, so holds the belief, wanted to have more and more money.
Well, his stories are still great and we have 25 novels from him, but I have not read all of them.
Ah, you should choose the Bronte’s, any of them, that makes it a whole lot easier
It’s nice to read works from an author you know you like, but variety is nice too. I can’t say I’ve read all the works of any author, though I have a ton of Terry Pratchett stuff.
Test:
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