I have read every word in the Dune series. 6 original books, the Encyclopedia and the 3 (so far) prequels. I have read, I think, every word in Asimovs’ Robot series. I don’t know if it is possible to read every word that Asimov has ever written. There was a point in time when I had read every single word committed to The Hardy Boys (60 books +/-).
I’ve read every word written by:
[ul]
[li]Geoffrey Chaucer, late-14th century founder of English literature (all his surviving works in the original Middle English. Mostly love poetry, political satire, farce, and occasional religious sermons.[/li]
[li]Poppy Z. Brite, homoerotic, existential-angsty, “horror” writer from the American South. Sort of an Anne Rice without the restraint.[/li][/ul]
Thanks! 
I haven’t read Sir Thomas More either, never having seen an edition in print; I only know of it. (I’ve got a couple of books that reproduce a page of the material supposedly in Shakespeare’s handwriting.)
Strictly speaking, you don’t need to read Arden to be up on apocryphal Shakespearean works, since you won’t find many people seriously arguing for his authorship; a lot of anonymous contemporary plays ended up getting attributed to him in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 1664 Third Folio includes many plays not considered to be written by Shakespeare: The London Prodigal; The History of Thomas, Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle (the one who didn’t become Falstaff); The Puritan Widow; A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Locrine.
(I got the list from [this site[/ur] – I didn’t know it off the top of my head! :D)
Arden is worth reading, though, especially if you’re interested in the genre of domestic tragedy.
As far as the will goes, I believe I’ve heard it argued that Shakespeare wrote the thing himself, though I a) don’t have the text at hand and b) don’t recall the arguments pro or con. (There’s probably something on the web – [url=http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com]Dave Kathman’s Shakespeare authorship page](http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/Annex/DraftTxt/) might be a good starting point, but you’d have to dig around for it.)
It’s probably almost impossible to read everything written by X. People are always turning up extras and apocrypha.
Shakespeare: Have you read the play Sir Thomas More? It’s believed to be written at least in part by the big S. There’s a fragment in my copy of Harrison’s Shakespeare.
Heinlein: He wrote three stories that were never reprinted (at his request – he called them “stinkeroos”). You’ll have to look them up in the original pulps.After his death out came three more books – Grumbles from the Grave, Tramp Royale, Take Back Your Government. Have you read these? I strongly recommend Tramp. Then there are two interviews he did. The questionnaire he answered for the book Focus on the Science Fiction Film, and I’m sure there are lots of notes.
Sherlock Holmes – There is a burgeoning cottage industry in “Sherlock Holmes meets ____” that started with Nicholas Meyer’s Seven PerCent Solution (Sherlock Holmes has met Sigmund Freud, Rassendyl from The Prisoner of Zenda, George Bernard Shaw and virtually the entire London Theater community, Harry Houdini, Fu Manchu – twice!, Eduard Dreyfus, The Phantom of the Opera – twice!, The War of the World Martians, Professor Challenger, Tarzan of the Apes, Dracula – three times!, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Charlie Chaplin, O. Henry, and no doubt plenty of other historical and literary figures), although Doyle himself had no hand in these. There are, however, the “apocryphal” tales in which an un-named detective plays a role – “The Man with the Watches”, “The Lost Special”, and others. The detective may be Holmes, or Watson, or Gregson or Lestrade. Some people lump these in with the Holmes tales. Then there’s the plat Sherlock Holmes, which is ostensibly the work of Doyle and William Gillette, its first star.
The Bible – Don’t get started on this. There’s plenty of apocryphal books of the Bible. Get The Lost Books of the Bible, or The Secret Gospel by Morton J. Smith. Or The Nag Hammadi Library. Or look up the works of “The Apostolic Fathers” for less Gnostic stuff that, for some reason, didn’t make the cut. Read Eusebius’ History of the Church
I am pretty sure I have read everything Vergil leaves us. Not a whole lot, admittedly, but enough.
That’s by a different Michael Connelly according to the info I have. The author of that book was born in 1947. The author of the Harry Bosch novels was born in 1956.
This is according to the info I found through OCLC (a librarian tool, don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it :)) and will not be supported by Amazon.com or Books In Print, both of which consider them to be the same person. However, there is no mention of Riders in the Sky at Connelly’s web site, and the Library of Congress catalog gives the same info as OCLC.
Hey, dig me fighting ignorance!
Hey, I said that! In fact, I think I said it twice! 
If Gordon Korman had died when I was fourteen, I could safely say I read all of his stuff. But he kept writing and my interests began to wander…
Roy Blount, Jr.
That’s the only one. He’s the funniest living human, if you ask me. I either own or have owned a copy of everything I can turn up that he’s written; the only time I’ve ever bought a “rare” edition of a book was for a book of poetry (Soupsongs/Webster’s Ark) that was no longer in print.
Somebody else mentioned the Harry Potter series; I’ve read all of those but don’t know if I would include that, since it’s only four books so far.
One (“Beyond Doubt”) was reprinted in an early Fredrick Pohl anthology (it was dreadful, and mostly the work of some woman…umm Emma Wentz(sp?)). The other two I managed to get the pulps where they appeared (after 15 years of hunting!) “My Object All Sublime” is pretty good and “Pied Piper” is best described as “mostly harmless”.
Plus, inexplicably Heinlein considered the delightful “Let there be Light” a near-stinkeroo (he didn’t like the slang), hence the reason that it was left out of The Past Through Tomorrow. (There are also two versions of “Let there be Light”, one of which has a bit of vaguely risque language)
**
Yup. And I agree with your recommendation for Tramp. Excellent portrait of a now-gone era. Plus Robert and Ginny are so likeable.
**
The Schulman one I’ve read, but what’s the other? I may have read it.
**
You got me on that one! I’ll have to hunt it down. (Like I said, I’ve read all his fiction. The interviews and stuff, I’m still working on! )
Fenris
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by KneadToKnow *
**
I dig it.
Violet: You have read “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch Through the Ages,” yes?
adam yax: How do you know which of the Asimovs are Robot and which Foundation? Don’t they kind of merge together? Have you read them all just to be safe? And listen up, saffostar: adam says there’s something called the Dune Encyclopedia. You down with that?
Hamish–sadly, I must surpress my natural instinct to flirt with anyone who can quote Chaucer due to your second area of expertise.
I found both Shakespeare’s will andSir Thomas More on line. It looks like the will was done by the lawyer at Will’s instruction. But sincere thanks to Katisha and Cal for the lead on the Thomas More–I’ll be a know-it-all again in no time.
Maeglin: You got your Ecologues, your Georgics and your Aeneid in Latin, I’m sure. Any fragments and quotable bits retained in other authors you want to tell us about? (BTW, kibbitzing on the pit thread: you should read ERR Eddison, and for god’s sake get working on that critique of the Principia–I’m waiting.)
Maeglin mentioned Vergil, which reminded me that I’ve read everything of Sappho’s that we have. Only one complete poem and several fragments, but I’ve read 'em all. In the original Lesbian dialect of Greek, no less, which is the ONLY way to read her. Mmm, Lesbian poetry…
KneadToKnow wrote:
[QUOTE]
There’s a rock band called Michael Connelly?
(Heck, why not? There are rock bands called just about everything else.)
I can positively claim that I’ve read everything I’ve ever written. 
:::ducks and runs:::
I’ve read all of Harper Lee’s books. Several times, actually.
Mudd has read every published word (except letters) of:[ul][]James Joyce[]Philip K. Dick (oops, except pulp fiction that hasn’t been collected.)[]John Irving[]Paul Quarrington[]Margaret Lawrence[]“Lewis Carroll” (Even the logic texts)Douglas Adams[/ul]Don’t think there’s anyone else that could be added to that list with any degree of confidence.
[Yoda]
Deserved that I did.
[/Yoda]
My sincerest apologies. That’s what I get for scanning too fast through a thread and trying too hard to get my own words in. Sorry.
Fenris: I’m still envious about those early Heinlein articles on writing that you found. I’d love to read those!
The other interview is listed in that Heinlein Companion, I believe. I know you’ve got a copy of that book, because you mentioned it. The questionnaire is a curiousity. It’s worth looking up the book for the other things it contains (it has Heinlein’s essay on Making Destination Moon, the first time that piece was reprinted. It also has questionnaire answers from other sf writers, and it’s interesting to read, for instance, John W. Campbell commenting on the 1951 adaptation of “Who Goes There?”), but Heinlein’s entry is unbelievably sparse. It’s as if he felt that Nobody’s Paying Me For This, Dammit!, so he answered as briefly as possible. A lot of the questions that elicited long replies from, say, Theodore Sturgeon, Heinlein answers “Yes”, or “No”. (One of the longest replies: The question is "What are the disadvantages of SF film? His response was “Working in Hollywood”.) On the other hand, he must have felt duty-bound to say something, because he returned the questionnaire. But you can read the whole thing, twice, in under thirty seconds.
There’s no end to such apocrypha. Heinlein co-covered the Apollo 11 launch. If they transcribed his comments (and, to my knowledge, no one ever has) would that qualify as Heinlein “writing”?
Did you read his Exegesis? I picked that up once in a bookstore and got tired head pretty quickly from it. PKD is on my list to try and read all of his stuff, but again he was fairly prolific and it is now tough to find everything he wrote.
I’ve read a whole bunch of the words of Maud Hart Lovelace, who is primarily known as a children’s author. I’ve read all her published books, as well as a substantial number of her short stories that were published in women’s magazines such as Ladies Home Journal. I’ve also read a fair amount of her unpublished words – some of her diaries and some correspondence. But I realize this is sort of a geeky thing and very few people have heard of her.
I think I’m pretty safe to say that I’ve read almost everything available of Nancy Mitford. Certainly all her novels, histories, essays, and published letters, and even some of her unpublished letters. I’m sure there are some essays no longer available that I’m missing.