The Minutiae: Completing a Body of Work, Part I
Which authors make it onto my completionist list?
Welcome back to The Minutiae! This is a twice-monthly newsletter for paid subscribers, usually dedicated to whatever book-related topic is currently on my mind.
This post was inspired by conversations in book club, as so many of my bookish thoughts are, but I’ve noticed a few other Substackers talking about ‘becoming an author completionist’ over the last several months, including Natalie McGlocklin and Regan. Certainly where many avid readers are tiring of the endless stream of new buzzy releases, exploring an author’s backlist can feel like a more rewarding goal.
I think I have a natural tendency toward this. I like to collect full sets of things, and always have (no, I won’t be exploring this tendency in more depth). Similarly, it feels natural to me to want to read an entire body of work, to really dive in deep and get to know an author.
Does that mean I’m entirely successful at it? Not exactly. I’m pretty sure I first set the goal of finishing Jeff VanderMeer, Toni Morrison and Ursula Le Guin’s work in 2022, or maybe 2023 if I’m feeling generous. We’re now stepping into 2025 and I’m still not quite there with any of them. But I have made some good progress. And with all three it has been a really rich experience, seeing how they mature(d) over their careers, spotting similar themes and resonances. When I finally finish each of these, I will make the relevant guides and/or courses…
But that just goes to show that you don’t actually have to become an author completionist, at least not in the space of a year or even two or three years. But that moving slowly toward the goal is the good bit; to take a moment for cliche, it’s all in the journey.
My list of authors whose work I’d like to complete is comically large, so get ready. (In fact, dear reader, this post grew so enormous that I have decided to split it in two!) But whilst we talk a lot about individual books around here, I don’t get as much of an opportunity to talk about favourite authors. Turns out I have quite a few, across a wide range of genres! On purely anecdotal evidence of my own, I feel like I used to get asked about favourite authors much more often, but now people tend to ask only about specific favourite books. I think inquiring about authors can actually give you a quicker and more accurate sense of someone’s taste. I hope in writing this list it might cement a few in my mind so I don’t just stare blankly at the next person who asks about my reading when I tell them it’s like, my whole job (something that happens more than I care to admit).
There are a lot of ‘big names’ below, but I hope there will be a few in there to surprise you. You’ll also notice that I’m pretty generous with the designation. If I really love at least one book by a particular author, that can be enough for me. I can always take them off at a later date if I feel they were a one hit wonder. But I really do find the process of reading a backlist to be that gratifying. I am generally specifically counting novels here (and/or singular volumes of work) with the occasional short story collection or nonfiction exception.
First, the Completed