sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

August 14, 2014


top ten authors in my collection
posted by soe 3:42 am

I’m tired and out of inspiration at the moment, so I’m stealing a Broke and Bookish Tuesday topic from a couple weeks back:

Ten Authors I Own The Most Books From

  1. Carolyn Keene: Although they are all in my parents’ attic, the plurality award goes to my Nancy Drew collection, which was started by a gift from my mother when I was in 3rd grade. There are probably close to 20 books there (although I loaned one out once to a friend of a friend who lives on the West Coast and never got it back…)
  2. L.M. Montgomery: I loved the Anne books and the first one was definitely a present. But I can remember using my saved allowance to buy copies of the subsequent books in the series and then the Emily books and either bought or received as gifts several of her other titles. Some of them are up in Connecticut still, so I can’t give you an exact count, but I’d guess somewhere around 14.
  3. Jasper Fforde: I have every book he’s published thus far in the U.S., which according to Wikipedia now numbers at 12. I will continue to buy them, so at some point, he’ll overtake the Nancy Drew team.
  4. William Shakespeare: He’s another one I can’t give you an accurate count for, since I buy them used for cheap, but I’m probably somewhere around 10 or so…
  5. J.K. Rowling: Seven Harry Potters in English (and possibly one in French), plus the most recent Cormoran Strike novel. If we count household copies, we have duplicates of the last three HP novels and Rudi is in possession of at least three in foreign languages: two in German and one in Welsh.
  6. Barbara Kingsolver: 7 or 8. I can’t quite remember how many short story/essay collections I have. One of my favorite authors.
  7. Louisa May Alcott: My grandparents gave me a set of six of her books when I was a kid and I received a second copy of Eight Cousins as a prize in third grade. With Harry Potter and the Anne books, Little Women is the book I’ve re-read most during my life.
  8. Laura Ingalls Wilder: I know I don’t have the full collection, since I’ve been picking them up over the years as I find them (having read the library’s copies as a kid), but I’d guess I’ve got six of the ten Little House books and then a collection of her newspaper columns.
  9. C.S. Lewis: 6, although I’ve never read the final book in the Narnia series, since a friend told me doing so runs the risk of ruining all of them. Since she doesn’t mess around about that kind of stuff, and since I thought the quality had tapered off after the first three or so, I’ve taken her advice thus far.
  10. Toni Morrison: 5 or 6. Many of these were read during college, so I don’t quite recall whether or not I’ve read (and thus own) all the titles I think I have.

How about you? Are there specific authors you collect and/or read above all others?

Category: books. There is/are 2 Comments.



Nice list, but not a surprising one! (well, except for the Toni Morrison). My list will probably not surprise you much either.

1. Agatha Christie is the big winner with 35 or more, mostly skinny paperbacks that store easily (thank goodness!)
2. Carolyn Keene is next, weighing in with 20+, though many of them are the modern, PC versions that I hope to replace with original versions someday.
3. Marion Zimmer Bradley: at least a dozen.
4. J.K. Rowling: eleven, but four of them are the first Harry Potter book in different editions (softcover, hardcover, French, and Spanish).
5. Raymond E. Feist: currently ten or so.
6. Jasper Fforde: eight, but I expect this number to go up.
7. J.R.R. Tolkien: eight, three of which I haven’t read yet.
8. C.S. Lewis: also eight (the Narnia books plus “Boxen,” which I haven’t read yet).
9. Edward Gorey: at least seven, possibly more. They’re hard to count. A lot of them are small, and they seem to disappear from time to time and move about on the shelves as they please.
10. Eoin Colfer: seven, all from the Artemis Fowl series.

Comment by Karen 08.16.14 @ 11:04 am

@Karen: You’re right; your list doesn’t particularly surprise me, having been introduced to several of those authors by you over the years. (Should I read Feist, btw?) And I’m also not surprised by the Gorey books moving. He seems like the sort of person to imbue his books with scuttling personalities.

Comment by soe 08.21.14 @ 1:07 am