Which books have you read?

[Sieginder Niederlage]

You know, the internet is preeeeetty  nice. I mean, it's a near unlimited cache of information for crying out loud! Of course, sturgeon's law is in full nelson here, so 90% of everything in it is absolute garbage. That being said, the remaining 10% is worth dying for.

So what does this whole thing have to do with books? Well, I took a quick trip to the black hole called TV tropes (don't judge me because of the "black hole" comment, it's pretty tame compared to the things they say about themselves) and I checked the Fanfic Recs page on a whim just to see how many made it to the list.

Needless to say, I turned away from it before losing my sanity to that eldritch mass of tropes.

Then I looked at the longest fanfics and I say this: What! The! #$&*! They're huge! Millions of words long! I kid you not!

Now, I'm not saying that fanfics are bad, but seriously now, couldn't you have written a book instead and sold it? *Cough* *Cough* Fifty Shades *Cough* *Cough* 

And then it got me thinking, "How many books HAVE I read?".

I have a boatload of books, some as e-books, most of them in paper, but I'd be lying if I said I've read them all. All in all, I'd say I read about 10% of all the books I have, and that's just my guess.

So, here's the question: Which many books have you read?

It's not limited to things like H.P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien, you can include Japanese Light Novels like KnK The Garden Of Sinners, Fate/Zero or The Familiar of Zero (as long as it's the LN and not the anime, manga, movie or radio drama adaptation), or some other things...Homestuck doesn't count since it's more of an epic than a book.

Anyways, I'm sure it'll be a nice list, so share away!

 

[mlogan]

Oh wow, I could not even begin to list all the books I've read over my lifetime - I'm an avid reader and I can confidently say I've read hundreds of books. The very rough estimation I did says at the very least 1,500 books. And that's an estimate starting around the time I would have really been reading chapter books, does not count books for young children.

 

[Sieginder Niederlage]

Umm...Could you share a small list of them?

 

[EternalShadow]

Well, what does 25 bookshelves of books (a meter long, each) say about me?


EDIT: Mostly fantasy now, like The Wheel of Time, Mistborn Trilogy (no spoilers please, I'm on the last book! But I have to say, Fantasy books are the worst culprits when it comes to spoilers in their blurbs!) The Way of Shadows trilogy, that sort of thing.

 

[Raider]

Would take to long, if I list every book I ever read, but it should be a few hundred.

I like to read really much and I read also very fast, so when I'm in the mood I read quite a lot of books in a short time.

Sadly I didn't do so in the last time, but I think I will change this soon because reading is awesome

 

[Warpmind]

Oh, gods, probably in the thousands...
Lord of the Rings, of course... probably about a hundred of the Hardy Boys books, most of the Discworld books, the Dirty Pair light novels (the ones that predate anime and manga appearances), most of the Honorverse books by David Weber, the Dresden Files and Codex Alera by Jim Butcher, several books in adventure novel series by a now-obscure Norwegian author named Øvre Richter Frich (See if you can find anything about Adrian Roca or Dr. Jonas Fjeld), and numerous other series, and hundreds and hundreds of standalone books, and so on and so forth...

Frankly, asking me how many books I've read is about as meaningful and answerable a question as "how many loaves of bread have you eaten?"

 

[imascribble]

I have the same problem as anyone else - Too many books to count! Just my house has a bedroom turned into a library, plus an entire wall of books downstairs. I've probably got access to a couple thousand books, and I've read a good chunk of them.

I really enjoy mostly older Fantasy books - David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Mercedes Lackey, Tolkien of course, among many others. I also have a lot of non-fiction, a lot of dinosaur textbooks... :/

 

[Kes]

In the thousands, fiction, non-fiction, lightweight, heavyweight, almost all in English but a few in French or Italian, prose, poetry, most genres in fact.

 

[Sieginder Niederlage]

I think I'll put up some of the books I've read myself...

"The Colour of Magic", "Mort" and "Reaper Man" by Terry Pratchett

"Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

"Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners", "Angel Notes" and "Decoration Disorder Disconnection" by Kinoko Nasu

"Faust" and "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The Old Man and the Sea" (AKA: Fishing was never THIS EPIC) by Ernest Hemingway

"Baccano" By Narita Ryohgo
"Ballad of a Shinigami" by K-ske Hasegawa (Hasegawa Keisuke)

And many more

 

[mlogan]

All right, you asked. I partially went through my Kindle list to see what was on there. Not all of these were on there but it helped trigger some memories. I also reviewed a list of 100 Classic books to jog my memory as well as some other reading lists.

Fantasy:

• Game of Thrones series
• Harry Potter series (the first 4 I've read at least 15 times each - I used to read through all of them that were published at least once a year)
• The Hobbit and all of The Lord of the Rings
• Septimus Heap series - I highly recommend these if you like Harry Potter type books; they are unique and a lot of fun

Non Fiction

• I Am in Here: The Journey of an Autistic Child Who Cannot Speak (a really interesting book)
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy (game research, but quite fascinating nonetheless)
• Several books on Texas history
• The Jesus I Never Knew
• Reviving Ophelia

Other

• the entire "Outlander" series
• All of the Sookie Stackhouse novels (what True Blood is based on), as well as many other of Charlaine Harris' books
• Hunger Games trilogy (at least 3 times?)
• Sarah's Key - wonderful but tragic
• Interview With the Vampire
• Went through a Dean Koontz phase as a teenager and read most of his stuff that was published up to that point

Classics

Spoiler

• Entire Wizard of Oz series (there's some strange things in those books)
• Most of the Sherlock Holmes books
• the unabridged Les Mesirables
• all of the LIttle Women books
• Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• To Kill a Mockingbird (one of my all time favorites)
• Some of the King Arthur series
• All of the Anne of Green Gables books
• CS Lewis: All of the Chronicles of Narnia series; all of the Perelandra series; several other works
• I have several collections of fairy tales that I’ve read much of
• A lot Edgar Allen Poe’s works (The Power of Words is a fascinating piece)
• Charles Dickens – Had to read a lot of his stuff in school and hated most of it
• The Old Man and the Sea – imo, probably the most hideous book I’ve read and that’s saying something
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Lord of the Flies
• The Great Gatsby
• The Illiad and The Odyssey
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Call of the Wild
• Frankenstein
• The Canterbury Tales
• The Scarlett Letter
• Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Dracula
• Frankenstein
• The Thousand and One Nights
• The Time Machine
• Native Son
• A Raisin in the Sun
• Grapes of Wrath

And I seriously cannot even begin to express what a drop in the bucket this list is. I can easily read a 200 - 300 page novel in a day, and have done so countless times. The estimate of 1,500 is based on one book a week over the last 30 years. So no idea how accurate it is.

 

[Sieginder Niederlage]

Frankly, asking me how many books I've read is about as meaningful and answerable a question as "how many loaves of bread have you eaten?"

You were expecting a list of books but it was, I, DIO!

Spoiler

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/754/538/454.jpg

 

[GrandmaDeb]

Every single thing by Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, E.S.Nesbit, most of George MacDonald, all of Edgar Eager; fantasy lover at heart.


Mildred Taylor, Howard Pyle (Especially Men of Iron), Twain, Elizabeth George Speare; love historical setting, especially the closer they get to real historical events.


Tons and tons of juvenile fiction - I was a librarian for several years. =]


I wish I had never read Game of Thrones. Brilliant work of course, but Too grim and unresolved for me.

 

[mlogan]

Every single thing by Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, E.S.Nesbit, most of George MacDonald, all of Edgar Eager; fantasy lover at heart.

Mildred Taylor, Howard Pyle (Especially Men of Iron), Twain, Elizabeth George Speare; love historical setting, especially the closer they get to real historical events.

Tons and tons of juvenile fiction - I was a librarian for several years. =]

I wish I had never read Game of Thrones. Brilliant work of course, but Too grim and unresolved for me.

Why does this not surprise me? (As in, it just seems so perfectly fitting of you.) <3

And GoT - yes. Yes, yes, yes. I lost it at the end of the last one, especially upon realizing that, at the time I read it, the last one had JUST come out the previous month and he takes years to finish one.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Oh man, I couldn't possibly list them all, but going off my Goodreads...

• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
• The First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks
• Dragonswood by Janet Lee Carey
• The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
• Seven Realms # 1 & 2 by Cinda Williams Chima (I'm waiting for some money to buy all the books in the series)
• Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
• Death Sworn by Leah Cypress
• Merry Gentry #1, 2, & 3 by Laurell K. Hamilton
• Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
• Anything by MERRIE HASKELL
• Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
• The Claidi Journals Series by Tanith Lee
• So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane
• Huntress by Malinda Lo
• The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long
• Hell House by Richard Matheson
• The Stolen by Bishop O'Connell
• The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Far From You by Tess Sharpe
• Diary of a Mad Bride by Laura Wolf
• Broken Sky #1 & 2 by Chris Wooding

Well, that was fun!

 

[slimmmeiske2]

I read a lot, but most of it is manga and fanfiction actually. Though I have read books! Such as:
 

Spoiler

Everything ever written by Oscar Wilde (aka his poems, plays, novel, short stories and of course his fairy tales )
Around 100 fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. (I still need to continue reading the rest.)
The Wizard of Oz
The Harry Potter series (including Tales of Beedle the Bard)
Mockingjay (Planning to read the first two Hunger Games books soon)
A Robin Hood novel that started with someone discovering his bones (I don't remember who wrote it, only that I cried a lot).
Wolf Hall - I hear there's a TV series coming out based on this book. The sequel's lying here, waiting to be read. 
Dracula
Romeo and Juliet/Tristan and Isolde novel
Prince Caspian
The Phantom of the Opera
The Kite Runner
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Naomi by Junichirou TanizakiRice by Su Tong

And then of course a whole bunch of Dutch/Flemish books no one knows Open at your own peril?


Dood van een soldaat
Het Duivelskind
Tijl Uilenspiegel
Jan Zonder Vrees
De Zusje Kriegel
Het Huis van de Moskee
De Engelenmaker
Kartonnen Dozen
Los
Omtrent Deedee

There's a few books I remember reading, but not actually remember the title/author. ^^;

 

[Alexander Amnell]

   What haven't I read? I'll pretty much read anything out there, and generally read 3-5 books a week in all honesty and outside of War and Peace and Lev Tolstoy's other works I haven't encountered a book I've regretted picking up. Not even going to try creating a long list of favorites, though I've read a bunch of what has already been posted here. I'll throw out a few that haven't already been mentioned though that have a particular meaning to me.

Scott O'dell: Namely Island of the Blue Dolphin, the Black Pearl and Black Star, Bright Dawn. As far as I can remember one of these was the first actual novel I ever read as a child and thus to blame for starting a lifelong obsession with reading.

Terry Goodkind, sword of truth series: I started reading these around 5th-6th grade (which is bad I know, but I didn't care then that they were beyond age inappropriate) and they've stayed a guilty favorite series of mine overall, even though since then I've long read everything that Goodkind 'kinda' stole from to create it and understand completely why his works are bashed the way they are in some circles.

And some books I've been reading in the past few weeks

E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth Series ( well, only read Baltic Gambit recently)

The Art of War

American Sniper

Steve Jobs

Killing Lincoln

Dexter's Final Cut

 

[Touchfuzzy]

Too many to list. So I'll just focus on a few authors I think people should check out.

Terry Pratchett ( ). Specifically the Guards books, and The Truth. which are my favorite Discworld novels.

Neil Gaimon. Especially American Gods. American Gods is an amazing amazing book.

C.S. Friedman. This is a really really obscure author compared to my other two, but is my favorite author of all time. Do you like Dark Fantasy? Pick up the Coldfire Trilogy. Do you like Adventurous Scifi? Pick up This Alien Shore. Do you like a really super thinky philosophical scifi? Pick up Madness Season. Do you like political scifi? Pick up In Conquest Born. Just try and pick up a book by her. Her writing is awesome.

 

[wallacethepig]

Ugh, I feel so bad now. The last book I read for fun was Mockingjay. (If manga counts, then that puts me at One Punch Man, but nothing in between those two. Still, go read One Punch Man because the art ungodly fantastic, the story is epic, and the anime is gonna be a thing and dat gun b gud.)

As for childhood, I read an awful lot of Goosebumps and their respective knockoffs (Michigan Chillers as a favorite). I also read the Series of Unfortunate Events books and The Mysterious Benedict Society books. I've read a bajillion other books - mostly when I was young. Those were just the highlights and most memorable ones for me.

I suppose it explains my writing style, though - a touch of gore from R. L. Stine and Snicket, and a really easy-to-go-along-with description of characters.

But I've given up reading stories. Now I just write them myself.

-Wallace

 

[starcrescendo]

Do magazines count?
 

I haven't had time to read a real book in FOREVER. The last book I read wasn't even what most would call a "fun" book it was a book on essentials of design. Last summer I started Under the Dome and I think I got to page 10 before I ended up having to build a new deck after a collapse of my back porch.

Also, I'm going to sound really old, but I'm really happy to see that some people these days are still reading and have such lengthy completed book piles. It does inspire hope in the next generation. 

 

[captainproton]

Good lord. Untold thousands.

My most recent reads, though:

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Making Money - Terry Pratchett

High Five - Janet Evanovich

The Water House - Christopher Fowler

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle