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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Tuesday, December 19, 2017

8th Anniversary of Elliotsreading: Which authors have been the subject of the most posts?

Today marks the 8th anniversary of this blog, Elliotsreading, a daily record of what I'm reading and what I'm thinking about what I'm reading; this marks consecutive daily post #2924. As a way to look back for a moment, I scanned the index to my posts on this blog - you can see it on the web version of the blog, though not on the mobile-device version - to see which writers have been the subject of the most posts over the past 8 years. The # of posts provide a rough estimate of how many days I've spent reading any one writer (rough estimate because sometimes while reading one writer, usually a novelist, I'll include intermediate posts on topical issues or on other readings, such as short stories in magazines). So here is the top ten list of my most-read authors over the past 8 years:

1. Proust, with a total of 68 posts, meaning more than 2 months of reading Proust. I read (re-read, actually) the first 4 volumes in the new Penguin Classics translation of Search for Lost Time.

2. Karl Ove Knausgaard. 64 posts.The only living and actively writing author on this list. Read the first 5 volumes of his monumental My Struggle, and am eagerly awaiting the final volume.

3. Tolstoy. 61 posts, but he probably deserves some bonus points, as I was in the midst of War and Peace when I began the blog eight years ago today.

4. Henry James. 60 posts, thanks to 3 novels The Ambassadors, Portrait of a Lady, and The Princess Casamassima (which I'd never read before), plus some stories, which often represent his best work.

5. George Eliot, 45 posts, thanks to Daniel Deronda (never read it before) and Middlemarch.

6. Thomas Hardy, with 44 posts. Went on a Hardy binge and re-read Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Return of the Native, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

7. A three-way tie, with 39 posts each:

Trollope, whom I'll put first because I'm in the midst of reading Framley Parsonage right now; also read the first 3 volumes of his Barchester novels - and had never read any Trollope before starting this blog.

Philip Roth, including his first book (Goodbye, Columbus), his last book (Nemesis), his worst book (The Humbling), what he considers his best book (Sabbath's Theater), plus The Ghost Writer. 

Alice Munro, including her Selected Stories, Dear Life, Too Much Happiness, a re-read of part of Runaway, plus many stories as they appeared in The New Yorker and some notes of praise and appraisal when she received a Nobel Prize.

10. A tie at 35 posts, with a slight edge to:

Anthony Powell - as I was in the process of reading through his epic Dance to the Music of time when I started this blog, and have posted on vol 6 plus volumes 8-12 (read 7 out of sequence for some reason). Powell is tied with:

Flaubert, of whose works I read Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, and his last work, 3 Tales. 



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