Completists' Club discussion

Please, employ this thread to BRAG about Completionizing your favorite authors. Not your intention to do so or your almost, but your having done so. Also, you should post a BRAGging comment in the respective author thread. That's BRAGging twice which is requisite for it to count as BRAGging. Then, a third time, BRAG about it in a review of that final nail in your Completionism. BRAG.

I have read every book published by JOHN BARTH. Finished just earlier this week with his latest book Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons.

I've read all of Thomas Pynchon's novels, and now every dog I come across talks, I no loner trust the media from Fox to NPR, believe we as humans would be better off with out borders, walls, territories, property, and I'm obsessed with entropy and thermodynmics.

you both are amazing. seriously! those are genuine accomplishments.

I've read every novel, short story and memoir by Muriel Spark and I wish that she'd written more so I could keep on reading!

You have all done excellent work here.

Carla, the only Spark I've read was The Driver's Seat which I love (likewise the weird Italian film version) but what else should I check of hers next?

Would you consider ranking your top 10 or something?

I personally love Loitering With Intent, The Bachelors, The Comforters, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Far Cry from Kensington, The Girls of Slender Means, and The Ballad of Peckham Rye....I've read them all several times.

well - I have COMPLETED Woolf, Calvino (until the letters come out later this year), Rilke, Saramago and Cynthia Ozick (though she is not dead yet but probably wont publish any more). The fact that there will never be a new novel by Virginia Woolf for me to read still makes me sad...

Just finished all of David Mitchell. My ranking:


1. Cloud Atlas
2. Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
3. Black Swan Green
4. Ghostwritten
5. number9dream

Redundancy is what this thread is built for.

I've completionized every damn book published under the name Alexander Theroux.

Gaddis completionizing will move forward shortly.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Gaddis completionizing will move forward shortly. "

I have now claim to having read every damn book by William Gaddis. Next up for Gaddis is a biography being written by Joseph Tabbi (possible 2014/15 publication?). I also have a book of Gaddis interpretation which I'll linger on eventually.

Congratulations!

Well done! You're knocking down all the behemoths of the post-war/modernism set.

Nate D wrote: "Well done! You're knocking down all the behemoths of the post-war/modernism set."

My Family Resemblance photo, I intend to completionize all of 'em except maybe for Powers about whom I'm still undecided.

Just finished Cormac McCarthy (for now).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Darwin8u wrote: "Just finished Cormac McCarthy (for now).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1..."

Congrats!

Darwin8u wrote: "Just finished Cormac McCarthy (for now).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1..."

Well, shit fire, that's mighty fine.

Darwin8u wrote: "Just finished Cormac McCarthy (for now).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1..."

Well done!

I've got Pynchon, Brautigan, and Vonnegut under my leather belt.
Need to read Joyce's plays and poems for that credit.

Vollmann, that bastard, is the ultimate completist mission.

I better read Gaddis' essays so I can drop another brag.

And Salinger, and DFW

Larry wrote: "And Salinger, and DFW"

Oh scratch that DFW, I forgot about the philosophical thesis and the book about infinity or was it zero. I shan't be reading those.

Larry wrote: "I've got Pynchon, Brautigan, and Vonnegut under my leather belt.
Need to read Joyce's plays and poems for that credit.

Vollmann, that bastard, is the ultimate completist mission.

I better read..."

Vollmann is nothing if not prolific!

Congrats on the brags!

I have completed Flannery O'Connor (she died too soon and left a small catalog) and I'm two essay collections away from having finished reading all of Walker Percy twice.

Congrats to those who polished off McCarthy. I'm a screenplay and a play away from joining you in that accomplishment.

Brautigan! (I must admit that I read my "last" Brautigan verrrry slowly...knowing that, sadly, there would be no more to read), :(

BRAG: All Ishmael Reed's novels completioned. My short overview will be made available shortly.

well i put my brag on the 2013 completist thread message 54: by thegift (last edited 13 minutes ago) 31 minutes ago

hi, i am new to this group but not this way of reading, though it as rarely been just to complete an author i have read. the ones i have read include: Alice Munro, José Saramago, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Yasunari Kawabata , Alain Robbe-Grillet, Ross Macdonald, Italo Calvino , Jorge Amado, Philip K. Dick, Paul Auster, Ursula K. Le Guin... then some specialized nonfiction- philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Bergson

i do not know how to get them all on here, do not want to do it all over: just a question, do you think we read each work as a kind of gestalt and some become foregrounds and others recede to background? does it matter if we read it in order? do we read it even if we do not like it, just to complete, really, or is there something we get from contrast/comparison/resemblance in even the least of an author we like?

actually, of the above, i guess i call them complete when i basically have run out of interest in searching for more, though i will read one if it shows up, which might be cheating, but some are complete in the sense of all i have been able to find- in that case it is Munro, Saramago, Robbe-Grillet...

thegift wrote: "do we read it even if we do not like it, just to complete, really, or is there something we get from contrast/comparison/resemblance in even the least of an author we like?..."

Maybe we continue to read to see where, if anywhere, the author might go with the story. If s/he ultimately takes us nowhere, then at the least, we have the contrast for books which really do take us deep/far/elsewhere.

Occasionally, I do stop reading a book if there is some kind of event or sticking point that I find personally insulting or ridiculous. At that point, the writer has lost my confidence, and I put the book down.

thegift wrote: "Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Bergson "

If you've read Sartre's thing on dialectical reason and his thing on Flaubert, color me impressed!!

I have Completionanalyisationarismed Gaddis. He is da bomb.

Jonathan wrote: "I have Completionanalyisationarismed Gaddis. He is da bomb."

fanfreakintasticradulations!

Just completed McElroy (will his recent little snack of a Kindle short as me dessert) - I can happily report there is not a dud amongst them, though some do work better than others. He is, without a doubt, one of the greatest living authors. We are lucky to have him.

Jonathan wrote: "Just completed McElroy"

!!!

Complete catalogue of works by the following have been read by me:
James Joyce (including letters and critical writings, poems etc.) , Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Jane Austen, the 3 Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter & William Shakespeare. Oh, and I think I read the entire set of "Jean Plaidy" historical novels in my teens, too.

Elizabeth wrote: "Complete catalogue of works by the following have been read by me:
James Joyce (including letters and critical writings, poems etc.) , Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Jane Austen, the 3 Brontes, Eli..."

Well done!

Elizabeth wrote: "James Joyce (including letters and critical writings, poems etc.) , Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Jane Austen, the 3 Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter & William Shakespeare."

!!!!!

Jonathan just got completionjacked.

MJ wrote: "Jonathan just got completionjacked."

!!!

This kind of one=upmanship is absolutely (yes!) endorsed in our Braggadocio!(!!!)

Those are only the "classic" authors I've completed. I have a load of other crime genre completions I could add!!!

Elizabeth wrote: "other crime genre"

I think maybe our Snobbish Originator of Our Sacred Order of Completionism has for one reason or another ban'd the genre's. Or, in the Words of the Rules :: "No populists like Jodi Picoult, Steven King, Dan Brown, etc shall be mentioned herein." I'm not saying anything either way. ; )

I say if someone becomes a Philip M. Parker completist, their achievement should be honored no matter how disgraceful the genre.

Vollmann Completionized ::
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Vollmann Completionized ::
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Huge congratulations!!

All that's left for you now is to have Bill's love-child.....

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Vollmann Completionized ::
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Well done! If one were to dip one's toe in the Vollmann waters, which to choose, and, just as importantly, why?

Jim wrote: "All that's left for you now is to have Bill's love-child..... "

That contract has already been signed!!

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "If one were to dip one's toe in the Vollmann waters, which to choose, and, just as importantly, why?"

I had great luck myself beginning with The Ice-Shirt. It's the first volume of his projected seven volume Dreams of American Landscapes project and that for which I believe he will be longest remembered. It's also fantastic!

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that a dipping is possible ; it's usually either a high dive into the deep end or one gets totally shut out. Seems to be.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "I had great luck myself beginning with The Ice-Shirt. It's the first volume of his projected seven volume Dreams of American Landscapes project and that for which I believe he will be longest remembered. "

Ok, put on my "wish list". Are there supposed to be seven titles in the Seven Dreams series?

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Ok, put on my "wish list". Are there supposed to be seven titles in the Seven Dreams series? "

There will be. Volume the Fifth is scheduled for next summer :: The Dying Grass. Nor were they written in order.

Thank you. The idea of a series - a more or less serious series, as opposed to a frivolous one of the contemporary "literature" - appeals to me. My goal is always to expand my horizons, Vollmann will most assuredly do that.

Should you find yourself in that kind of situation, there's a place where we Vollmanniacs hang out. You'd be welcome to join :: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/8...

We'll see how it goes. I'll have to inter-library loan a copy, after making sure it fits in a Reading with Style challenge. If the quest appeals, I'll drop by.

Just completed Leon Forrest, who I would not have hear of without Ali and Nathan, so many many thanks to you both.

I would argue very strongly that you need to read all of the novels in sequence. Diving straight into Divine Days means you are going to miss out on a whole bunch of cross-pollination.

I would also recommend reading his essays before DD too, just to get a better sense of his aims.

But my god the man could write.