Completist Reading Or Non-Completist Reading, That Is The Question?

追加: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Hi book and welcome to a new video.

[00:00:02]Something a bit different today. Um don't rest assured that my regular reviews will be um up and running again quite shortly. Um but this is after a discussion I had with a friend, longtime subscriber and writer in his own right, Bob Black, where we were talking about sort of our personal pantheons of writers, you know, writers that we so esteem we put into a personal pantheon.

[00:00:28]Um but sort of with that comes almost a built-in assumption or implication that you would have read everything by that author because they were so high in your sort of hierarchy of appreciation that you know it's not possible to be a completist um for all authors that you read but maybe as I say if if you thought so highly of them um that you would be a completist of at least those individual authors. And it got me thinking because that's not really the case or it's a little more complicated than that um for me. So, what I thought I'd do is I'd go mobile with the camera. Uh and let's face it, it's an excuse for a bit of um of bookshelf porn as well. and I just go through some of the slightly different uh approaches I have to uh completest um uh collection of books by certain authors and whether they would rank in my pantheon. So, let's go mobile.

[00:01:42]Okay, so the first one is um Dondilo.

[00:01:47]Not sure how much of this you can see.

[00:01:50]So, I've probably read more books, more novels by Don Dillo than by any other writer. And as you can see, he gets a cubby hole all of his own. And last week, I read a book of his I hadn't read called Ratner Star, which will be in as my next promised um set of reviews uh as said. And that leaves just one of his uh novels left to read which I own.

[00:02:18]So I have a complete collection of all Don Dilo novels and this one's called Players and I probably read it this year. I don't know. Um but the point about Dilo, I mean well one of the points you can see is a a practical point. I've run out of space in this cubby hole. I'm not going to be able to fit these two in. Um, which brings me to um the fact that Don Dowo is not in my pantheon of of authors. I mean, I like him a lot. Obviously, there's loads of books of his here that I've read. Um, but having read Ratna Star, spoiler alert, it's not very good. I realized that the first six books that Dow published are really not terribly good.

[00:03:01]So, books like uh Americana, um, what else is here?

[00:03:07]Um, I I'm not a fan of Libra, funny enough.

[00:03:12]I know a lot of people really really like it, but I'm not a fan of it. Um, but I happened on Dilo when someone I guess I was in my 20s or maybe early 30s. Someone sent me a copy of Mau uh, and which is my first Dillo book and I loved it. And then I read Underworld, which is an absolute tool to force. So in a way I lucked out with Dillo in that I happen to start with his um sort of mid-career books all of which are very very good. Um and I also like his sort of latter career books here. Falling man, Zero K, Omega Point, and The Silence. Um and it's only because I thought I was going to be a completist or I will be a completist that I went back and read some of his older books which are pretty terrible. Um so it's just a quirk that I happened to start with his mid mid-career stuff which is fabulous and then sort of committed to being a um a completist which sort of led diminishing returns. Here's P uh Persville Everett who's probably the author I've read the second most uh titles of but I will never be a Pville ever completist because he's written so many godamn books. So, how many dillos?

[00:04:33]1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. So, there's 16 dillos. I know for a fact that first of all, Everett has published 30 novels and I'm never going to be a completist as much as I like him. And also to be fair, Everett is slightly hit or miss. Um, but we do come to another example of completen because David Marson sadly died in the 90s. uh I think the '90s um indeed some couple of his books were published posumously and it's easy to be a marks and completist because there's a limited amount of books. So this is um a trilogy. Uh this is not a novel and other novels there being two other novels. And then um and they're brilliant and reader block here is uh really for makes this a tetrology although it's never been bundled up with them but stylistically it's it's very similar. Victimstein and and they're the they're the latter part of Marx's career and they're very experimental and they blew my mind as a writer. Um so these these sort of five novels uh yeah five novels here. However, having read them and I knew that they were very different divergent from his earlier career as a writer but I so admire David Marson that I went back and tracked down his earlier writings. So that I am a completist but in a way these have very little to do with his more experimental later works.

[00:06:05]So what we have here is an Epitar for a Dead, sorry, Epitar for a an Epitar for a Deadbeat, which are sort of pulp fiction, which I think they were sort of paid to write gigs that he was basically commissioned to write to write this pulp stuff. I will say they're very well written and they're very funny.

[00:06:22]There, you know, having said that, you know, that they're completely different from the experimental stuff. They are, but there's they're definitely still have the stamp of David Marxon. Then we had the ballad of Dingus McGee. I think these were written in the 70s.

[00:06:37]Uh then in the 80s we had sort two heavyweight serious novels, Springer's Progress and Going Down. But again, very different. I mean, in a way, Going Down is a sort of what you'd call a sort of classically rendered novel. And Springer's Progress is a classically rendered comic novel. It's very funny. I mean, you wouldn't get it past um people's tastes today. Um but it's very funny and it's again very well written.

[00:07:03]So it's easy to be a David Marxon uh completist because there's only what sort of two if you count them separate three four five six seven yeah there's only 10 books to be a David Martin completus because unfortunately there won't be any now I have read his letters um that he wrote to a young poet whose name escapes me temporarily I haven't read his did he do poetry so that's the thing that's worth pointing out in terms of my attitude to completism them. I'm only talking about novels. I don't read short stories anymore. Um, so if a writer has short stories as part of their sort of pros collection, I don't count them in terms of completism. And yes, you can come at me for that because I know I'm cheating.

[00:07:48]So, as it happened, Don Dulo's uh Esmeralda other stories I read before I put my self-imposed embargo on continuing with short stories. So, um, yeah, there you have it. Now another uh novelist is is uh Michellebeck. I am a completist of his but it's actually quite easy to for it was easy for me to be a completist. So his first novel was Atomized and as you can see it's hardback and all of these are hardbacks and I'll explain why in a minute. So Atomized was first published in 1999.

[00:08:27]So, I would have been 35.

[00:08:30]And [snorts] it's full of all the stuff that Hellbeck gets criticized for um in his attitudes to women and other ethnicities. However, the the last few pages, the endings, takes the whole book onto a metaphysical journey, slightly sci-fi and speculative, but it so blew my mind. I thought, "Wow, this is a this is a writer." So, I must have read him either in 1999 or 2000. Obviously, he's been trans he's has to be translated from the French. I don't read it in the French, but it means that each time he has a new book, I I sort of I'm there for for when it's released, which is why all of these are hardbacks. Um, so he's easy for me to be a completist because I just have to wait every couple of years for a new book by him. Uh, I don't have any back catalog I have to track down.

[00:09:21]In fact, I'm such a completist that um atomized was the English uh the English market and in America it was called the elementary particles. So I saw this book on Amazon, thought, "Oh, I've never read that. I've never heard of it." So um I ordered it and then realized it was the American edition of Atomize, which is slightly annoying. So I do have two paperback versions of Platform and Whatever. whatever is a bit of a sort of a precursor or a prequel if you're talking in film it turns to atomized um platform I've got in um paperback that's the only novel of his really that I have in paperback and onto Perk now we've also got Seabard in this um now again like um Markson it's easy to be a seabboard um completist because unfortunately he died in a car crash and had only published four novels before that. So obviously I've got the four I've read them. I've also happened to read one of his non-fiction. I can definitely say he has written poetry. I have not read it. So I'm not a completist in that sense. But I I think if you're only talking about a novelist with four books to their category or uh to their career, it's probably calling it sort of complet.

[00:10:40]But here George Perrick and interestingly BS Johnson which I'll come to as well. So Gor Perrick again a bit like um Dilo I lucked out with Perk in the first book of his I read was a void which was an APO novel written um entirely throughout without the letter E which is an astounding achievement if you think in French it's l uh L um and lots of words like that and it's just as big an achievement of his translator Gilbert. So, I wasn't bowled over by that book, but I did appreciate its virtuosity. And then I read Life a Users Manual, which is stupendous. And so, I thought, I'm going to buy more. I'm going to read more by this guy. And then I read um W or the memory of childhood, which is astounding. And then I read um 53 year um where is it? Yeah, here. 53 days, which actually was the most significant text for my novel uh death of the author in triplicate. So at that point it every book I'd read had been an improvement on the previous one. And I say improvement they were already bloody good. Um so I thought okay I'm going to start tracking down everything. So um three by perk um uh as you know as sort of implied that sort of gathering together sort of disperate text portrait of a man because one of the things Perrick wrote about quite a lot was art forgery. Um and they weren't nearly as good. They they definitely had the feeling of of cutting room things that you know have been scraped off the cutting room after he died. Um I will say that that they did do um they did um publish this things a story of the 60s and a man of seat. Now, these are his first two novels. Um, and I assume they were probably, if not publishedly, at least reprinted postumously, even though they're right at the start of the screen. Now, they are good. I mean, that they are the only, but as I say, it started off high, got considerably more and more impressive, and it's only when I committed to being a completist that um this the quality dropped off. I would put Peric in my pantheon because he was so experimental. Um, and onto Boris Johnson. So, I've only got three titles here. Um, but that's because unfortunately I had every one of his books. Um, and they were uh they were victims to my flood in my outside shed library when I only used to have a shed library. I hadn't brought any shelves in here, which is why everything's so cramped in here. It's such a small space. Um, so I have read everything by by Johnson other than the very I think his very first book which is unavailable. It's been out of print for years and years and years and it's really really expensive. So I can't be a Johnson completist unless somehow that book falls into my uh lap. And again a bit like Perk um the first book of his I read is the unfortunates which is the book that comes in a box that looks like a book. highly experimental and brilliant and you know he was presented uh sort of critically as an avantguard writer [snorts] an experimentalist. I thought right I need to read everything by him and I have to say again there's significant drop off from the unfortunates in the even in the terms of how experimental his books were. Um so yeah I'm I'm as good as you can get as a Johnson completist. Okay, so that's this little section just to say I have a dilemma. Going back to Dilla, I have a dilemma. As you can see, they won't fit.

[00:14:21]So, what I could do is I could just get rid of this. When I say get rid, I mean take to the shed, the six early books that aren't that great and this book of short stories and just keep my favorite ones. Um, but that seems to sort of go fly in the face of being a completist because although I am a complete I will be a completist. I will own all Dilo's novels. They'll be split into two different locations and that seems to go against the spirit of being a completist. But, you know, that's a first world problem. Maybe you can help me with um in the comments below. Okay, now on to um Georgie Gospinov. Uh it's easy to be a completist for him because he's a relatively recent writer. I've only got uh four of his books. Uh that's all that exists in English translation. But I am absolutely committed like H wellbeck to read each new uh book as soon as they come. Hence Time Shelter is in um hardback. Death of the Garner his last book in hardback. I will say uh wellbeck [snorts] as I say is not in my pathonon pantheon pathonon uh is not in my pantheon uh this guy would would be I mean if's not in my pantheon why am I committed to reading all of his books because I think there's something to be gleaned I don't I mean I think is a deeply flawed writer apart from his personal views I'm talking about as a stylist sometimes there are sections of his novels that feel he's phoned them in. Um, so I would never put him in my pantheon.

[00:16:03]He's not that good a writer, but there's always something of value from HBett's books. You know, he's a writer of ideas, uh, more than sort of a writer of of sort of style and language. So, he wouldn't be in my pantheon. Gospelino on current rate of progress would be.

[00:16:22]Now, An Carson, I would very much like to be a completist, but she has so many texts and a lot of them are out of print or hard to come by. I know I will never be a completist, but I'd like to be.

[00:16:36]Now, there's a British author here called Scarlet Thomas. Uh, so, Sleep Walkers, The Seed Collectors, um, Oligarchy, Our Traic Universe, which is my favorite one of her books, PopCo, The End of Mr. Y. Now that's pretty much you know her I mean she's still writing that's pretty much her entire u except she wrote a children's book and I will not read children's books and therefore I can never be a Scarlet Thomas completist. I'm not the type of person who just buy it just to sort of have it on my shelf. Say, "Look, I've got all her books." I, you know, I only buy books that I read. So, um, that's that's not an option for me. Uh, sadly. Now again a bit like Gospino, an author I relatively recently discovered in the last few years is Gina Apostol Laters Latera Biblop Bibliorpsy um insurreto and the revolution according to Rayundo Mata brilliant all really really good and again as say like Gospino I'm committed to being a completist apostile writer so each time she has a new book uh I will get it. So again, these two are in hardback. I guess for me, the function of buying an author's new book as soon as it comes out in hardback kind of automatically qualifies them for because you know often I will wait a year for the paperback just just from financial considerations. And on to Jonathan Letham. Now, I'd like to be a Peter Sitham, but first of there's one book missing here, which is The Fortress of Solitude, which is his debut novel, which I do own, but it's in the shed because I really I I grant to a halt with it. I couldn't I couldn't get through it. So, that's an extra title to add here. But the point about Letham is his early career has quite a lot of um sci-fi base books. um a bit like um gun with occasional music as she climbed across the table. Um and I haven't tracked them all down. Um I mean I really like the first Lethan book I read which totally got me into him was um was this one Chronic City which is definitely the most stoners novel stoner stoner novel. It's brilliant. Um, and I've I've continued following his career as you can see, you know, hardbacks.

[00:19:11]The Arrest was um, again, one of the sci-fi ones, I think.

[00:19:17]Yeah. So, I'm unsure whether I'm going to be a Jonathan uh, Letham uh, uh, completist or not. I do like him. He was not he's not at the level to be in my pantheon, that's for sure. Also, he writes, he's a prolific writer. He fortunately he also writes non-fiction which like short stories and poetry I don't count in my sort of definition of completism. Um he's pretty much knocking out a book every year for as I say fortunately the last one was was non-fiction so I didn't feel compunction that I had to buy that.

[00:19:50]So may or may not end up being completist author for me but not in my pantheon.

[00:19:58]Um, someone like Jeffrey Eugene is very easy to be a completist because he knocks out a book every 10 years or so. So, I'm not really counting him. This is the sad um state of my William Burrows collection because I've read everything by Burrows uh all his early novels, The Cut Up Method. And unfortunately, a lot of them succumbed, if not all of them succumbed to my floods because they were all obviously stacked uh with each other on a on a bookshelf that I had to throw out cuz it got mold and mildew from a leak.

[00:20:29]Um so I couldn't afford to replace the whole collection. So, I did um buy The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands. And the third part of the trilogy, Cities of the Red Knight, I'd never owned cuz I read it in a library.

[00:20:45]I was literally in the British library reading it because it was um um a text which had sort of, you know, warning content warnings even back then. Um, so I finally invested, you know, when I did buy a couple of uh of Burrow's titles. I have read I've read everything by him, but I I don't I'm not a completist in the sense of owning them all, which is a bit of a tragedy. uh the western lands uh sorry the last words of Dutch Schultz and then this was published a few years ago so it's actually a new title which I hadn't read and is really good uh cobbled together from his um public speaking events and things like that. So, unfortunately, Burrows uh is in my pantheon. Uh it obviously been dead. Uh he doesn't produce new work, although as I say, this came out not that long ago. Um I am a completist. Unfortunately, I'm not a completist owner anymore, which I I'm a bit sad about. Um who else have we got?

[00:21:47]Oh, yes, Claris Spectre. So I again a bit like with uh Dilo and with Perrick um I locked out because the first couple of books I read which are Agua Vigga Agua Viva and The Passion called GH immediately put her in my pantheon they are so good and she died in 1977 she's Brazilian wrote in Portuguese and they keep releasing titles which I assume have either have never been translated or are being reprinted. So, these are a couple that I've got to read. Um, the chand the chandelier and the apple in the dark. But I feel that all these titles since since there's been a [snorts] uh an increase in interest uh in her work which has led to these reprints or these these new translations. I feel the drop off from things like Agua Vigga, Agua Viva and The Passion Accord GH has been quite significant. They haven't been nearly as good these more recent releases with the one exception which I think that was quite um quite an early book if not her first novel this the apprenticeship or the book of pleasures. I really enjoyed that and that's that was recently uh published. Um, and she is so my pantheon on the basis of being the most intense writer I've ever read. I actually feel I'm going to brooch her short stories as part of a necessary part of being a proper completist with Le Spectre that she really is worth tracking down every last word that she wrote. Uh, I know it's quite a chunky collection. I think it's about 500 pages and I'm not going to do it until I finish reading all her novels. I had these two still to read. I haven't read them yet. Um but I, you know, I will break my own rule and get um buy her book of short stories once I finished all the novels. And then finally, I think for the purposes of this video, so there's only three Marie NGI there. Um Vengeance is Mine, The Witch, and Self-Portrated Green. And she has several more titles. And so I can't claim to be a completist, but she is an author that I'm committing myself mentally to actually um getting all her books. Um I'm well short at the moment.

[00:24:14]So this this is sort of fledgling completism. She's not quite in my pantheon yet. I haven't quite worked out what it is about her writing that really appeals to me that sort of absolutely sucks me in. Um but I will. But I can only do that by reading more titles. And actually just returning here there's a couple of books here three books here I don't know if you can see by Kate Zambbrano Book of Mutter to write as if already dead and drifts and she's brilliant I absolutely I only discovered her a couple of years ago and I absolutely am committed to being a completist. I have another one of her titles in my TBR pile down there somewhere. I don't know where. Um, so she will be I mean again I'm far short of being a completist at the moment but I'm committing myself to getting all of her books. So that's it really. I just wanted to give you a bit of a eye into my mad [clears throat] logic of of Pantheon writers and um completist collections and completist readings.

[00:25:19]Those that I consider count those that I'm well short of. those that I am a completist on, such as Helbeck, but they're nowhere near my pantheon.

[00:25:29]So, there you have it. I hope that was of interest. Till next time, thanks very much.