My Top Ten Most Read Authors

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new top ten list prompt and book bloggers respond with their lists. We don’t usually participate in these sorts of things, but this week was kind of a fun one and I was curious to see whether my most read authors corresponded to my favorite authors or if there were any surprises.

I decided to count books series as one book mainly because once a start a series, I feel compelled to finish it even if it is terrible. Here are my top 10 most read authors.

1. Agatha Christie – 18 books. I’m pretty sure I’ve read almost all her books because I went through an obsession with her books in my pre-teens but I didn’t keep track of all the titles I had read. In adulthood, I’ve only read 1 and that was a reread for my 1001 book group.
2. Stephen King – 16 books. This was another author I read voraciously as a teenager, but have only read one book 11/22/63 in the last 5-10 years.
3. Charles Dickens – 9 books. I’ve always loved the classics and Dickens has always been a favorite. While I read most of his books as a child/teenager, I continue to like his books as an adult.
4. Tom Robbins – 7 books. I went through a Tom Robbins phase when I was in college. I haven’t read any of his books lately, but I think I would still like them today. I love his mix of quirky books with humorous philosophical undercurrents. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was one of my favorite books in my early 20s.
5. Neil Gaiman – 6 books. His books are hit or miss for me but I have loved many of them and Neverwhere is one of my favorite books.
6 -8. Tie between Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood; Jane Austen with 5 books each.
9-11. Tie between Chimamanda Adichie, Heinrich Böll, & Kazou Ishiguro with 4 books each. This was an interesting tie because Adichie is one of my current favorite authors while the other two are not (although I do like Böll’s writing).

Many of my top ten were authors I had read as a teenager and don’t really reflect who I am as a reader today. The second half of the list is the closest to my current interests. Some, like Ishiguro and Heinrich Böll, made the list because of the 1001 books to read before you die list — meaning I read them because I’m trying to complete the 1001 list. Three of my current favorites (Adichie, Murakami, and Atwood) made the list. Shakespeare probably should have made my list since I’ve read most of his works, but I didn’t log any of them into goodreads. Some of my favorites were shut out at three books including David Mitchell (I’m reading my fourth now), Edith Wharton, and Thomas Hardy.

I am grateful that I didn’t include book series in my top ten or I would have ended up with a very embarrassing list of authors who most certainly don’t reflect my primary reading interests.

Which authors make your list of most read?