Who is my favorite author? I’m too much of an empiricist to just give a gut reaction to such a question. Not when there’s a more objective alternative.
I’ve been using Goodreads to keep track of the books I’ve read. However, I was surprised to find that they did not provide a simple group-by and count to tell me how many books I’ve got for each author. Luckily, though, Goodreads provides an API. So, I built a little mashup page (not sure if it’s techinically a mashup with only one API involved, but it must be close). So now I can respond, if asked who my favorite author is, with a very definitive, “It depends”
If you just want total books read: Kurt Vonnegut and Steven R Donaldson, each with 9. But if you want to talk about total pages, Neal Stephenson takes the lead.
If you’re a Goodreads user, you can find your favorite author on the mashup as well. Just locate your Goodreads user ID (its on the URL of your “My Books” page between “list/” and “?shelf”) and fill it into the form at the top of the page. Click on the “Number of Titles” or “Total Pages” headings to sort by that field (probably twice since it sorts ascending the first time. Also, note that the analysis won’t work unless my Goodreads account can see your bookshelves. So you may as well send me a friend request if you aren’t already.
Enjoy!