neilgaiman

Authors I’ve read 5 or more books by

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Last weekend, on Bluesky, there was a meme going around where you listed the authors where you have read five or more of their books. I duly complied, but felt it was also worth a blog post to provide a bit of commentary on top.

The ordering of these is essentially the three authors that came to mind, and then the rest were from my Goodreads profile. Also, when I say ‘read’, this includes books that I have listened to as audiobooks. Indeed, this is primarily how I consume books, but I do try to fit in e-books and paper books where I can.

Terry Pratchett

I have read a lot of Terry Pratchett over the years. As a teenager, I read the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and then started with the Discworld books in 2017. I’ve now read every core Discworld book (all 41 of them), as well as some of Pratchett’s non-Discworld works like The Carpet People, his Long Earth series with Stephen Baxter, and Truckers, the first book in the Bromeliad Trilogy. I tried to get our nine-year-old into the latter, but they weren’t interested and didn’t get a lot of the references, alas.

John Scalzi

Although I’ve not yet read any of his Old Man’s War series, for which he is best known, I have read a number of John Scalzi books. This includes the Lock In series – well, the two books and the prequel – Starter Villian, The Kaiju Preservation Society and The Android’s Dream. I picked up the majority of Scalzi’s books in a previous Humble Bundle, so they’re there for me to read in due course. I’ll also be picking up his latest novel, When The Moon Hits Your Eye when my next Audible credit is available. It’s once again narrated by Wil Wheaton, who does an excellent job – especially in the newer books.

Scott Meyer

Scott Meyer wrote an inventive fantasy/sci-fi series called Magic 2.0, and I’ve read all of those that have been published so far. If you like Pratchett and Scalzi, then you’ll like this series. I haven’t read any of his other books yet though.

Yahtzee Croshaw

Yahtzee Croshaw made a name for himself doing fast-faced and highly sarcastic video game review videos, in a series called Zero Punctuation which ran until 2023. But he has also had seven books published to date (plus two unpublished works available from his web site) and I’ve read five of them. They are, once again, mainly sci-fi, and include the humour that you would expect.

Roald Dahl

I think I’ve read every Roald Dahl book. More recently we’ve started reading some of them to our nine-year-old, hence why they’re showing up in my Goodreads lists.

Juno Dawson

Last year, I started reading Juno Dawson’s Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series. The first two books are fantastic, and I need to read the prequel soon before the final book, Human Rites, is published this summer. I’ve also read several of Dawson’s non-fiction, including The Gender Games and What’s The T? – I recommend both.

Terry Deary

As a kid, I wasn’t into reading fiction so much, so instead I read a lot of books like Horrible Histories. We’re now reading some of these with our nine-year-old.

Matt Haig

As with Juno Dawson, I’ve mainly read Matt Haig’s non-fiction works, like The Comfort Book and Reasons to Stay Alive. But last year I also read The Midnight Library and it fully deserves all of the accolades it received. Just an excellent novel. I need to read more of Haig’s novels in future.

Adam Kay

I remember seeing Adam Kay when he was performing comedy songs in a double act with Suman Biswas, as The Amateur Transplants. We saw them in Manchester – Christine and I were in the early months of our relationship and still lived apart. Back then, Kay was still a practising doctor with comedy and writing as a side-hustle.

Then he published This Is Going To Hurt which was both hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure. Since then, he’s written a follow-up, Undoctored, but the reason why he features here is that he’s also written a very good series of science books for kids, starting with Kay’s Anatomy. We’ve read all of them to our nine-year-old.

Caitlin Moran

Another author who is here because I’ve read her non-fiction books. Indeed, How To Be A Woman was the first audiobook that I listed to on my Audible free trial, 12 years ago. I’ve also read her follow-ups, More Than A Woman and What About Men? as well as her collections of previously published columns for The Times newspaper. I would recommend them all, although I scored More Than A Woman highest.

Jay Rayner

I think I’ve read all of Jay Rayner’s books – mostly through the audiobooks which Christine and I listen to in the car. Rayner’s dulcet tones have accompanied us on many a long-distance drive over the years.

Gill Sims

Gill Sims is known for the Why Mummy series, of which I’ve read the first four books. There’s also the Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood, which is a free-standing book that tangentially takes place in the same universe. All the books are very relatable if you’re a parent.

Neil Gaiman

I almost didn’t include Neil Gaiman here because, whilst I had read more than five of his books, I won’t be reading any more. I touched on this last week, but following the allegations that surround him, I can’t bring myself to read any more of his work. And that’s a shame, because Anansi Boys was one of my favourite books of all time.

What does this say about my taste in books?

Firstly, I was surprised that I had read five or more books from as many authors as this. Logging what I read on Goodreads has helped here. But I’m also a little disappointed that the majority of authors are straight white men. Admittedly, some of those straight white men, like Pratchett and Scalzi, are/were good allies, but I need to read more books by women and people of colour.

Also, I definitely have a thing for stories with humour, ideally in the sci-fi and fantasy realms, and most of the books that I read have been published relatively recently. Indeed, as I write this, all the authors bar Pratchett and Dahl are still alive.

Listening to books, part V (Fiction edition)

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It’s time for another update on the audiobooks that I’ve been listening to. As mentioned last time, I’ve been listening to a few fiction books lately, rather than just yet more celebrity memoirs. As someone who hasn’t read (or indeed listened to) fiction in many years, this was a bit of a departure for me. Indeed, Mitch Benn’s book Terra was the first in a long time.

Here’s what I’ve listened to:

Battlemage by Stephen Aryan

The cover of Battlemage by Stephen Aryan

I’ll disclose a minor conflict of interest here: I used to work with Stephen’s partner. At the time, I remember hearing about how he was struggling to get a publisher. This was when self-publishing on Kindle and the like was becoming more popular. I’m pleased to see that Stephen’s persistence paid off, with this book being published by Orbit in September 2015. It’s available as an actual paperbook in real shops (or Amazon – sponsored link), and an audiobook on Audible.

Battlemage is among the longer books that I’ve listened to – roughly on a par with a typical Game of Thrones book. It tells the story of several battlemages, powerful and feared wizards, who are recruited to fight in a war against the ‘warlock’. It’s firmly in the ‘sword and sorcery’ subgenre of fantasy.

I really enjoyed this book; whilst I chose it principally to support someone I know, the story was good and the characters had depth. The narration by Mark Addis on the audiobook is good as well. It’s the first in a trilogy, and I’m looking forward to listening to Bloodmage, the next book in the series.

Dietland by Sarai Walker

I listened to this book on a recommendation from Sofie Hagen, formerly one half of The Guilty Feminist podcast. I didn’t really know what to expect, other than that it would likely criticise the diet industry.

Dietland (Amazon link – sponsored) tells the story of Plum, a fat girl who doesn’t want to be fat. She signs up for a weight loss scheme called ‘The Baptist Plan’, but is left looking for other options when the company is closed by its founder’s daughter. Considering bariatric surgery, she’s recruited into a secretive collective and finds out the truth about dieting.

The reviews of this book are mixed, perhaps due to its controversial second half where the story takes an interesting twist. For me, I found the second half much stronger than the first. Initially I almost wrote this book off as being typical cheap ‘chick lit’, but I stuck with it and was rewarded. Drawing parallels with real-life events, it’s hilarious and empowering.

Lauren Henderson narrates the book, and whilst she does so well, she wouldn’t be my favourite voice actor.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I listened to The Alchemist (Amazon link – sponsored) because it was available as a freebie on Audible back in November. I had run out of credits, didn’t fancy paying full price for another audiobook and saw that it was a relatively short 4 hour listen, which I completed in a week thanks to a few long car journeys.

It’s certainly not the sort of book that I would normally listen to, and it was okay, I guess. The story follows a young Spanish shepherd, as he travels to Africa to find treasure. The revelations he has on his journey end up changing the course of his life.

There’s a lot of religious imagery in the book, even if it isn’t overtly Christian. The narration was good, but you can tell that it has been translated into English. There’s not the level of nuance that I expect it would have if read in its original Portuguese.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

The cover of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

As a child, I read a few Terry Pratchett books – namely the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, but as yet I haven’t dabbled my toe into any of Pratchett’s books for adults. Similarly, I’ve not really read any Neil Gaiman books apart from a couple of short stories. So I thought that Good Omens (Amazon link – sponsored), a collaboration between the two of them, would be a good introduction to both authors. It’s a standalone book that is not part of any wider series.

Good Omens follows Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and an angel who live on Earth, and who aren’t very happy about its imminent destruction. As the four horsemen of the apocalypse gather, and the anti-christ goes missing, it’s up to them to save the world, with the help of a surprisingly accurate book of prophecies written by one Agnes Nutter.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments in Good Omens, especially in its comments about the M25, and how every cassette that spends more than a couple of weeks in a car becomes songs by Queen. Some of the pop culture references are a little dated – this book was first published in 1990 – but on the whole, it holds up well. Stephen Briggs offers an excellent narration in the audiobook.

Update (May 2025): This was written before the allegations about Neil Gaiman’s sexual abuse were made public. Also, the original Stephen Briggs audiobook has been replaced with a newer recording narrated by Martin Jarvis.

Up next

At present I’m back to celebrity memoirs, but will be listening to more fiction books in future. I’m considering making a start on Game of Thrones, and perhaps making inroads into Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe.