The only Enid Blytons I read as a kid were the Secret Seven ones. Never got into the Famous Five as much.
Hergé would be a contender; I read all the Tintin books.
I loved Alistair Maclean when I was about 13, 14 or so. Also Hammond Innes.
As an adult, I’ve read all but one of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books, so he’d be high up my list. A quick look at the bookshelves shows he just beats Robin Hobb. Can’t immediately think of anyone I’ll have read more than twenty books by as an adult…
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On the theme of 5x5, has anyone got five (or more) versions of the same book in their home?
I think we’ve got 6 copies of The Hobbit. An old paperback, three hardback editions, a scots gaelic language edition, and a graphic novel. Actually, its 7 copies - we’ve got the graphic novel twice ( one for me, a newer edition for my daughter).
Ignoring any stock of self-published books, does anyone else have a similar oversubscription to any particular books?
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Only just realised that while I have some duplicates, I don’t think I’ve got ANY over 5 (apart from around 10 different versions of the Tao Te Ching).
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8 versions of Wonderland (one in Russian, the rest in English)
1 version of Looking Glass
6 versions of Wonderland + Looking Glass (one in French, the rest English - two of those are the same as they were gifts)
We’ve got two copies - one of which is in Finnish, as it has Tove Jansson’s illustrations (one of the Wonderlands is illustrated by her, as well as my copy of The Hunting of the Snark).
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Well now in my mind all hobbits look like Snufkin and Gollum looks a bit like a Moomin…
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I have been tempted by a the Finnish language Hobbit just for Tove Janssen’s illustrations.
Wonderland is exactly the type of book that I can imagine someone owning several different versions of.
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All I see is Beaker.
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No, but I think I’ve bought/acquired “Good Omens” that many times. It’s the book I’ve bought the most, because I kept losing it. (“Acquired” because the current copy in my bookshelf was a gift from a friend.)
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Probably on my third Good Omens. And yes, one has been dropped in the bath.
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Yes, having read everything Pratchett has written, I’m pretty sure it would be him. Bernard Cornwall probably runs a close second
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I’m also on my third, possibly fourth.
I think that pTerry would probably have something to say about multiple copies going missing
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I’ve similarly bought copies of books that turned out to have entire sections quietly missing, despite looking perfect. One of them omitted a few dozen pages in the middle, crucially leading directly from the shocking death of a major character to a scene where he was cheerfully alive again and thus ruining a major plot arc. I was deeply confused until I spotted the page number mismatch.
I’m not sure whether my most-read-by would be Blyton or Wodehouse. I’ve read a ton of the latter, including plenty of rather obscure ones - mostly for good reasons, including ones whose stories he rewrote later and better. Just had a completionist phase at one point. Meanwhile the Blytons tended to be capped by what my parents already had copies of or was in the local library. But it’s really hard to remember that far back.
Most reread intrigues me. I would guess either some of the Wodehouse books, which I picked up frequently as a teenager to while away boredom, or something by Craig Shaw Gardner, which I used as comfort reading a lot during various mental health episodes. Otherwise I rarely reread things, simply because I have so many entirely unread books boding at me.
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I don’t reread as much as I used to, but Pat Wrede’s The Seven Towers might be up there. It has a sense of fun without being explicitly humorous that I find welcome and rare in fantasy.
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Ooh yes, Wodehouse!! I think I haven’t yet read enough of his books for him to be my as-an-adult answer, but it would be close, and at minimum it must be inevitable that this will happen. I read a bunch of them a while back and then stalled. I must remedy that…
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Did some double checking and Wodehouse is pretty far out in front. I’ve been through 48 Wodehouse and have two on the table and two on order so will be at 54 before the summer is out
Only done 26 Discworld with about four more on the want to read pile
Surprisingly I have made it through 24 from Michael Moorcock when I look back
Then, rather disturbingly, the 21 Robotech books I’ve read multiple times are right there staring
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Pratchett easily wins with 45 for me. Then it’s a big drop down to 18 for Tom Holt and 17 for Cherie Priest. All of those could easily go up if I got round to reading everything I own.
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Karl May wins for me with around 70 books which I read as a kid and teenager but I don’t think anyone beside @yashima knows him.
He influenced hugely how Germans view the American natives.
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I did not read all 70 Karl May books but I certainly tried and may have read about 40-50 of them. Certainly all the Winnetou ones, and the Middle Eastern ones a lot of those taking place where today there is war… he was a fascinating guy who wrote all these books without ever having traveled to most of those places (he did travel to the Near East at least later–I didn’t know that) and he claimed that he started writing while in prison but wikipedia informs me that he lied about that and he only started writing after he got out of prison around 1875.
And the books contain tropes, clichés and stereotypes that would not pass today, but there was also a curiosity about and appreciation for different cultures that I still remember today. I have positive memories of his books–and I still remember crying all night when I finished reading Winnetou 3. Because really he was way before GRRM in killing off a major character
(Also we are still sometimes joking about Winny One and Winny Two)
I also read a ton of Enid Blyton as a kid.
Astrid Lindgren wasn’t quite so productive as those previous two but I probably read most of her books as a kid.
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You’ve all reminded me that along with the Secret Seven and Famous Five, and the Hardy Boys, I read a LOT of Willard Price.
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