My top 100 most unread authors!

Following my previous post analysing the list of books I’ve read, for some daft reason I thought it made sense to go on to look at those that I own, but haven’t read. My Goodreads list produces 1326 unread and unfinished books, not including those listed as to-read-for-review.

Those books are by 628 different authors and editors, from A. Susan Williams (editor of The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women) to Zenna Henderson (author of The Anything Box).

So, allowing again for the list being built only on the first-named author in the Goodreads database, here’s my list of top unread authors:

1. Brian W. Aldiss (32 books)
2. Harry Harrison (19)
3. Robert Silverberg (19)
4. Patrick O'Brian (17)
5. Clifford D. Simak (15)
= Michael Moorcock (15)
7. Poul Anderson (14)
8. Dave Eggers (13)
= E.C. Tubb (13)
10. Arthur C. Clarke (12)

That Aldiss and Moorcock can show up in both my most read and most unread lists shows how amazingly productive they have been. You have to marvel at writers who can produce so much, of such consistently high quality. Patrick O’Brian is on there because I went nuts in a 3 for 2 sale and bought the complete Aubrey-Maturin, despite having read not a word of his fiction. Aside from The Wild Things, the Dave Eggers ones are all back issues of McSweeney’s. E.C. Tubb's presence is down to a bundle of Dumarest books on eBay a couple of years ago, although it turns out I still haven’t got around to reading Space 1999: Breakaway either.

So what are all the Aldiss books I haven't read? Glad you asked! Here’s a full list (some of them overlap a bit):

The Airs of Earth, A Rude Awakening, This World and Nearer Ones, The Year's Best SF 9, The Year's Best Science Fiction 1, Best Science Fiction Stories, Supertoys Last All Summer Long & Other Stories of Future Time, Perilous Planets, Life in the West, Cryptozoic!, The Primal Urge, Space, Time and Nathaniel, Last Orders and Other Stories, Intangibles Inc. and Other Stories, Cracken at Critical, Forgotten Life, The Dark Light Years , The Canopy of Time, Nebula Award Stories 2, The Year's Best Science Fiction 8, Comic Inferno, The Year's Best Science Fiction 7, A Soldier Erect, Starswarm, The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths, Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, The Malacia Tapestry, Hothouse, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter, Non-Stop and Helliconia Spring.

Must get stuck into those!

If you haven’t yet lost the will to live, the rest of my top 100 unread and unfinished authors are below the jump break!




11. Frederik Pohl (11)
= Graham Greene (11)
= Philip Jose Farmer (11)
14. Brian M. Stableford (10)
= C.J. Cherryh (10)
= Robert E. Howard (10)
17. Arthur Conan Doyle (9)
= Gardner R. Dozois (9)
= John Brunner (9)
= Stephen King (9)
21. Fritz Leiber (8)
= Justin Richards (8)
= Stephen Baxter (8)
24. Aldous Huxley (7)
= Ben Bova (7)
= Bob Shaw (7)
= Dan Simmons (7)
= Frank Herbert (7)
= Gore Vidal (7)
= Gregory Benford (7)
= Philip K. Dick (7)
= Roger Zelazny (7)
33. Daniel Pennac (6)
= David Wingrove (6)
= Gene Wolfe (6)
= M. John Harrison (6)
= Samuel R. Delany (6)
38. Andre Norton (5)
= Cao Xueqin (5)
= Christopher Bulis (5)
= Clive Barker (5)
= David A. McIntee (5)
= Edgar Rice Burroughs (5)
= Honore de Balzac (5)
= Isaac Asimov (5)
= J.G. Ballard (5)
= Keith Roberts (5)
= Marion Zimmer Bradley (5)
= Richard Laymon (5)
= Roy Thomas (5)
= Steve Lyons (5)
= Theodore Sturgeon (5)
= Various (5)
= W. Somerset Maugham (5)
55. A.E. van Vogt (4)
= Alan Garner (4)
= Albert Camus (4)
= Brian Lumley (4)
= C.S. Forester (4)
= Carl Hiaasen (4)
= D.H. Lawrence (4)
= Diana Wynne Jones (4)
= E.E. Smith (4)
= Gardner F. Fox (4)
= Georges-Jean Arnaud (4)
= Greg Bear (4)
= Iain M. Banks (4)
= Ian Watson (4)
= Jean-Paul Sartre (4)
= John Buchan (4)
= John Wyndham (4)
= Kim Stanley Robinson (4)
= Lin Carter (4)
= Michael Chabon (4)
= Olaf Stapledon (4)
= Patrick Tilley (4)
= Peter Haining (4)
= Robert Graves (4)
= Robert Jordan (4)
= Rudyard Kipling (4)
= Sax Rohmer (4)
= Shaun Hutson (4)
= Simon Messingham (4)
= Stephen Jones (4)
= Thomas M. Disch (4)
= Virginia Woolf (4)
87. Alasdair Gray (3)
= Alexandre Dumas (3)
= Alistair MacLean (3)
= Anne McCaffrey (3)
= August Derleth (3)
= Captain W.E. Johns (3)
= China Mieville (3)
= Chris Boucher (3)
= Christopher Priest (3)
= David Brin (3)
= E. Powys Mathers (3)
= Frances Burney (3)
= Frances Gies (3)
= Fred Hoyle and many, many others (3)

I own a truly ridiculous number of books!