The ten-plus authors club
This week I finished my tenth book by P. D. James: eight novels, a memoir, and a reflection on writing detective fiction. I hope to read every other book by her before I die.
That number got me thinking: with which other authors have I hit the “ten-plus club”? These are the writers I have loved, studied, or learned the most from. Some of them, like James, I hope to “complete” by the end of my life. Others I read in a certain season, for a specific reason. Still others were for work, i.e., they were at one point (and perhaps still are) important to my scholarship.
Who are yours? Here are mine, in alphabetical order:
Karl Barth
Wendell Berry
G. K. Chesterton
David Bentley Hart
Stanley Hauerwas
Mick Herron
Christopher Hitchens
P. D. James
Robert Jenson
Mary Karr
John le Carré
C. S. Lewis
Cormac McCarthy
Marilynne Robinson
J. K. Rowling
Kathryn Tanner
R. S. Thomas
John Webster
Rowan Williams
Tad Williams
Franz Wright
N. T. Wright
John Howard Yoder
A few comments:
I’m sure I’ve missed some authors.
I count an author if they’ve written at least seven books but fewer than ten and I’ve read them all.
Poets are tricky, so I’ve just gone with my gut.
Book length matters: if I’ve read nine 1,000-page books by one author, I’m going to count that alongside ten 200-page books by another.
Fewer novelists than I’d like. Currently trying to rectify that.
The nonfiction writers here are the ones who live rent-free in my head. Even if I don’t regularly return to their writing—even if I adamantly disagree with or dislike their ideas—their voice, their very words and phrases, resound in my skull whenever I’m thinking, reading, writing, and teaching.
Drawing up this list also got me thinking about which authors are on their way to being added to it. The following list—surely incomplete—includes those who are on my personal “five-book club,” most of whom will very likely be on the above list eventually, in some cases sooner rather than later:
Saint Augustine
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Albert Borgmann
Walter Brueggemann
William Cavanaugh
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ross Douthat
Terry Eagleton
Richard Foster
Stephen Fowl
Paul Griffiths
Richard Hays
Wesley Hill
Alan Jacobs
Luke Timothy Johnson
Tony Judt
Immanuel Kant
Søren Kierkegaard
Peter Leithart
Mark Lilla
Ian McFarland
George R.R. Martin
Ephraim Radner
Joseph Ratzinger
George Scialabba
Roger Scruton
James K. A. Smith
Charles Taylor
Miroslav Volf
Ben Witherington
Two final thoughts:
First, these lists remind me how many novelists there are of whose books I have read exactly one. That’s true for most people, obviously, but in my case it’s increased by my habit of reading the first entry in as many long-running genre series as I can: e.g., Hammett, Cain, Chandler, Macdonald, McBain, Himes, Stark, MacDonald, Higgins, Block, Burke, Mosley, Connelly, Pelecanos, Lehane … I’ve read no more than one book by each of them, because I have a list of renowned crime novelists I periodically check off for fun. Whereas, at least in my mind, a proper crime aficionado would read each series in its entirety before moving on to another.
Second, the above lists are not exhaustive of authors or books that are important to me. For example, I have read one book by Mary Midgley, no more; but The Myths We Live By and, more important, her intelligence, style, wit, and clarity of thought left a lasting impact on me. And, God willing, I will return to her, though I have no plans at present of making good on that hope. I could say the same about Tolkien, Susanna Clarke, Wallace Stegner, and many others. Some authors write the one great classic that imprints itself on your mind; others write dozens of works that, within the limits of work and marriage and parenting, you just never get around to.
Such is the reading life: here, at least, finitum non capax infiniti.
