I did this recently with Tom Sharpe. I’d read The Great Pursuit (and loved it), but hadn’t been able to find anything else. I spent the better part of one Saturday while the rest of the family was out of town scouring all of the local used book stores, and managed to score copies of Riotous Assembly, Indecent Exposure, Vintage Stuff, and The Throwback (after hitting four different stores). I read all four of them over the next few days. If it weren’t so hard to find his books around here I probably wouldn’t have bought them all at once, and so would have spaced out my reading of them.
I can’t think of anyone else I’ve done this with recently, though I have been listening almost exclusively to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels on tape during my commute for the last two years (I’ve been through the whole series once and am on the ninth book of twenty on my second pass). I have interleaved a few other things at times when I couldn’t readily get the next book in the series from the library.
At a certain point in more youthful innocent times I read about
25 Biggles books in a row.
Nowadays, when I find an author I really like, I keep this discovery for a rainy day. When I am having a bad day and need to cuddle up with a hot chocolate and a book I let myself have a book by one of my favourite authors. (no longer Capt. W.E. Johns nowadays)
I tend to read W.E.B. Griffin’s series books in clusters. When I get my hands on the latest in a series, I usually get more enjoyment out of it if I take the time to re-read the previous books in that series first.
Since many of his series are 6-8 books long, this can take a while. I relish burying myself in the environment he depicts, though - it makes re-hashing previously read books a pleasure, and I’m well-primed for the new material.
Iain Banks – in two separate clusters. First his “serious novels”. I read the first three within a week, and purchased the others as they came out. I also purchased his science fiction books (Iain M. Banks) [the “Culture” books] in a group and enjoyed them immensely. Startling how differently he writes with and without the middle initial.