I wouldn't say I'm obsessed; I'm just dedicated.

So the book challenge this week is the author of whose books I own the most. (Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.) This seems too easy. Am I supposed to just list a name? 'Cause that would be boring. I suppose I could talk about why I have so many books by a single author, but when you see who it is, the reason will be obvious. I guess I'll do a bit of a suspenseful countdown and list off a few others who were not quite the top dog.

So, forthwith, the top five authors on my shelves by number of books I own starting at the bottom and working up.

Coming in at a joint fourth it's Agatha Christie and Hergé with 24. I suppose I ought to list them out.

Christie:

1. The Hollow
2. Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
3. Double Sin
4. The Tuesday Club Murders
5. Murder on the Orient Express
6. The Seven Dials Mystery
7. At Bertram's Hotel
8. The Secret Adversary
9. 4:50 from Paddington
10. The A.B.C. Murders
11. Death Comes as the End
12. Murder in Three Acts
13. By the Pricking of My Thumbs
14. So Many Steps to Death
15. Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective
16. Murder on the Links
17. The Man in the Brown Suit
18. Postern of Fate
19. Cards on the Table
20. The Mysterious Affair at Styles
21. Elephants Can Remember
22. Death on the Nile
23. Curtain
24. The Big Four

Hergé:

1. Tintin in the Congo
2. The Land of Black Gold
3. King Ottokar's Sceptre
4. Tintin and Alph-Art
5. The Prisoners of the Sun
6. The Broken Ear
7. The Seven Crystal Balls
8. Tintin in America
9. The Secret of the Unicorn
10. The Blue Lotus
11. The Shooting Star
12. The Crab with the Golden Claws
13. The Black Island
14. Cigars of the Pharoah
15. Explorers on the Moon
16. Destination Moon
17. Tintin and the Picaros
18. Red Rackham's Treasure
19. The Calculus Affair
20. Tintin in Tibet
21. Flight 714
22. The Red Sea Sharks
23. The Castafiore Emerald
24. Tintin in the Land of Soviets

There's a bias in the Agatha Christie books I've acquired so far, they tend to skew to books with Poirot and those available cheaply from library sales. I like Poirot most, I believe, because he and I have the most similar sense of morals. Some of Dame Christie's other detectives tend to be overly sympathetic to the criminals.

I have a complete collection of the Tintin stories, only excepting the abomination that was entirely based on a television story. Of particular interest is Tintin in the Congo, a tale so redolent with the racist attitudes common in Belgium at the time that it's not even in print in the US any longer. My copy, though in English, is from Portugal.

This is much too long to do this with all of them, I'll move on and do the next three as separate posts for each.