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My reading habits are pretty OCD--I generally can't read just one book by an author, but usually must read everything they've written. Consequently, my literateness is deep, but not broad.
Two factors conspire to put certain authors perpetually at the bottom of my to-read list: First, new must-read books are constantly getting bumped to the head of the line--I just finished Michael Pollan's three books, and am now reading Malcolm Gladwell's three. Second, prolific authors get pushed aside so that I can knock out big names with only a few titles under their belts: Homer? Dante? Machiavelli? Cervantes? Check, check, check, check. Tolstoy? Hemmingway? Dickens? Yeah, I'll get around to them sooner or later...
Thus is born my new project: The Author of the Year. I figure, if I pick just one author, I can probably work through all of their material in one year, and still have time for all of the interesting flotsam that comes out in the interim. Now I just have to pick an author. A logical starting place would be a nice conversational book I have lying around, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; I think I'll select the author who has the most entries in that book. It could be Jane Austen, or it could be Dickens. Or Hemmingway. Or someone else entirely.
But I think I'll declare 2009 "The Year of ________"
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From this post it seems you might be interested in heading over to Arukiyomi for a copy of the new version of Arukiyomi's 1001 books spreadsheet .
Along with calculating how many books you need to read a year before you die, there's all the 2008 edition books, all those removed from the 2006 edition, links to wikipedia , amazon.com and .co.uk and Google books.
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