As I was pondering my selection for my kick-off Shelf Control post this week, I realized that I seem to have a problem with Kates. Looking at my shelves, I found that I have three authors whom I tend to accumulate books by, but whose books I haven’t actually read.

Why do I have all these books by these authors when I haven’t read a single one? Because my mind works in weird ways. Kind of like this:

• Hey, this book looks interesting! Maybe I should buy it.
• But wait! This author has a bunch of books out.
• So, if one sounds interesting to me, probably the others will too.
• Hey look! Here are the other ones RIGHT HERE.
• What the heck. I just know I’ll love one, so odds are I’ll love them all.
• … and suddenly, I have the complete works of an author on my shelf, and I’ve never read a single one.

So, back to the Kates. I think it’s quite funny that among my hundreds of unread books, I own:

… four books by Kate Morton

… three books by Kate Grenville

… three books by Kate Mosse (not shown: the Kindle edition of Citadel)

And yet, I have yet to pick up a single one of these to actually read. My book group even picked a Kate Morton book for discussion earlier this year — and I didn’t end up participating that month!

I know I really do want to read the Kate Grenville books, and plan to do so once I’m caught up, once and for all, on my ARC backlog. As for the others — well, time will tell. I suppose I had a reason for buying all these at the time, but the fact that I haven’t truly wanted to start any might mean that I’ll just always have something else I’d rather spend time on.

Have you read anything by any of these authors? Are there any of their books that you’d especially recommend?

And in more general terms — has this ever happened to you? Have you ever bought multiple books by the same author without having read any, just because you assumed you’d enjoy them? Please tell me I’m not alone!