Monday, November 14, 2011

Musing Mondays: Collecting Authors

Carabosse's Library posted the following Musing Mondays question today, and I just had to respond:
Are you currently collecting any authors? Why?
Do you have all of their books? If not, why not?
Did you buy all the books in the collection at the same time, or did you buy a book here, a book there? Have you actually read all of the collection? If not, why not?
I collect authors compulsively. It's like an addiction. And, to make matters worse, I have the tendency to collect an author's entire works before I start reading them (though I probably read one or two, which got me hooked).

For the last several years, my big collecting goals have been R.L. Stine and K.A. Applegate. One day, I got it in my head that I needed all the Animorphs and Goosebumps books, and it spread from there to Fear Street, etc. Why? I don't know. I enjoy Goosebumps and Animorphs (even though in general I'm not a huge reader of kids' books). And to be honest, I like the challenge. These are not easy books to find.

I now have all the Goosebumps books, and I just obtained the last Animorphs book I was missing. I've still got a way to go on Fear Street, though. Soon, I plan to read both those series all the way through, and I really, really hope it's worth the huge effort that went into scouring used book stores for the later books that didn't have a huge printing.

Other collections I've completed over the last few years include Anne Rice, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I'm still working on Frank Herbert and Terry Pratchet...

Tell me about your collection! Is it as big an obsession for you as it is for me?

1 comment:

  1. My Mum does what you do! I don't think I've come across someone else who has the habit of collecting the author's work before buying them. She's currently working on Clive Cussler and Emily Rhodda, but hasn't read anything by either author. She began doing it with Dean Koontz too, but I talked her into reading at least one of his books first.

    I used to collect authors as well. There's something really fun and self-satisfying about it. One of them was Anne Rice, she was the main one (she's one of my idols). It took much longer than I was expecting because I'd go and track down the next book just as it had gone out of print. For so many of them! But eventually I got them all and I kind of gave up the habit after that. I sporadically do it now with H.G. Wells, but I'm not as obsessed as I was.

    ReplyDelete