Shannon Turlington

I keep a record of what I read in LibraryThing. I haven’t recorded every book I’ve ever read, because I don’t remember (boy, I wish I had started keeping a list at the age of 5 or something). But I have recorded almost 1,200 books, so I thought I’d take a look at my authors list and see which authors were most influential on me.

It seems I read widely, because there are only 2 authors with more than 10 listings, and only one, Stephen King, with over 15 listings. I think being an eclectic reader is a very good thing. For purposes of this little poll, done for my amusement only, I decided to count any author with more than 5 listings as highly influential.

Here they are then, in order of influence:

• Stephen King
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Neil Gaiman
• Jonathan Lethem
• Edward Gorey
• Christopher Moore* (once, maybe, but not anymore)
• Margaret Atwood
• Jane Austen
• Michael Chabon
• Fred Chappell
• Nick Hornby* (like Moore, this one is dubious, unless it’s him writing about books and reading)
• Kim Stanley Robinson
• Octavia Butler
• Tom Perrotta
• Ray Bradbury
• Roald Dahl
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Shirley Jackson
• Francine Prose

What’s the point? None, really, just thought it was interesting data.