Do you have books that you love which nobody else appears to have read?
As I said in his comments over there: the only other people I know who have read “Hopeful Monsters” by Nicholas Mosley, one of my favorite books of all time – are people who were forced to read it by me. They may have come to adore it – my friend Ted comes to mind – but I was the one who got there first.
Any books you LOVE – that nobody else seems to love or even have heard of?
I thought “3 Men in a Boat” fell into that category until I read your blog.
“The Gadfly” by Ethel Voynich – also one of those not-so-well known Western books reprinted in the USSR. Very Victorian anti-Catholic propaganda.
“Moscow 2041” – a lot of Russians know it, but no Westerner I’ve ever talked to has read it. Funny, funny book.
The Berkut by Joseph Heywood
“Warsaw Diary” by Kazimierz Brandys. A gassy yet fascinating account of the Solidarnosc uprising in 1981.
I’ve read ‘The Berkut’ – damn fine historical thriller. ;-)
Books I love that noone I know seems to have read: Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo series.
I passed it around my family, Dan, but I had never met or heard of anyone else who had read it or heard of it although I think it was a bestseller.
I got it from a friend in college; it kinda made the rounds. He wrote another (the title escapes me) but it wasn’t as good.
‘Dalgren’ by Samuel Delany
‘Stand on Zanzibar’ and ‘The Sheep Look Up’ by John Brunner
‘Sylvie and Bruno’ by Chas. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
‘The Real Story : The Gap into Conflict’ by Stephen R Donaldson
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. First hand account of the Eastern Front, told by a soldier on the wrong end of the war.
Gripping.
A few spring to mind… “Finding Maubee” by A.H.Z. Carr. It got made into a halfway decent movie called ‘The Mighty Quinn’ starring Denzel Washington, but the book (as always) is much better.
“Dust” by Charles Pellegrino. I’m not a big fan of eco-disasters, but this well written tale of the ramifications of a die-off in the food chain is a page-turner.
“As Time Goes By” by Michael Walsh. Not the greatest of books, but I liked it, and it deserves a mention here because of our titian-haired bloghost’s obsession with all things Bogie. It’s a novel concerning the events immediately following “THE END” of the movie ‘Casablanca’, and also gives a credible backstory to Rick Blaine, et al.
Yeah, the purists will probably scream “HERESY!!” and stay away in droves, but it really is worth a look.
Spd!
I read “Forgotten Soldier” two times! Great story of an Alsatian ethnic German drafted into the German army in WWII. An amazing book – one I’d forgotten about.
“Moab Is My Washpot,” Stephen Fry’s autobiography. Brilliantly written and absolutely fascinating discussion of his change from lying, cheating, stealing little brute into Cambridge-bound future actor.
Ditto with “The Forgotten Soldier.”
Michael Moorcock’s fantasy novels from the 70’s. The Sword Trilogy was the best.
I think I still have it somewhere.
“This New Ocean” by William E. Burrows is one really cool book about the history of space exploration that no one else EVER tells me they read when I mention it.
“Hyperion” and “Fall of Hyperion” by Dan Simmons
And now I’ll have to read “The Forgotten Soldier” as it was loaned to me and has been sitting on the pile. Did you guys also read “Soldat” by Siegfried Knappe?
I have ‘Soldat’ sitting on the shelf – picked it up on the cheap at a library sale.
The only one I can think of is Nik Cohn’s “Heart of the World,” about the folks he meets on Broadway.
You know what’s fun about obscure books? If you go on Amazon and look up Hopeful Monsters, most of the reviews are raves, and yet also acknowledge that almost no one’s read the thing. Although apparently it did win some sort of award.
Given my love of history and philosophy in the 20th century, I must admit this sounds like a book that would be up my alley.
A Summer to Die, by Lois Lowry. I read it for the first time when I was 12 and my sister Christy was 14. We both bawled our heads off. The two of us read it EVERY SUMMER for the next five years or so, just to see if it would still make us cry. (It always did). When we were pregnant with our daughters 12 years ago, I found a beat up old copy of it in a used bookstore, and gave it to her as a surprise. You should have seen the tears- not like the raging pregnancy hormones did anything to quell them! Imagine my surprise when a book on my Ceileidh’s sixth grade summer reading list was penned by Lois Lowry. Now, all the book stores have brought back “A Summer to Die”, along with her newer books. BUT, Christy and I read it first!!!!!
“The Vanishing Adolescent” – Edgar Z. Friedenberg
It’s gratifying to know that others have read Sajer’s “there, but for the grace of God, go I” account of hell on earth. It takes courage to look down the barrel of the other end of the gun, and yet still weep. Five stars.
going back to a comment I made earlier
“A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. is one of my favorites and I think very few people I know have read it.
The Radio Planet, by Ralph Milne Farley. It’s the sequel to another, The Radio Beasts, which I haven’t yet found.
The Last Starship from Earth, by John Boyd.
The Only War We’ve Got, by Derek Maitland.
War Cries Over Avenue C, by Jerome Charyn (I suspect this may not be all that obscure).
Shibumi, by Trevanian (ditto the above).
For my own best-loved non-bestseller I’d have to pick “The Boomer Bible”, by R.F. Laird. It’s probably the funniest book I’ve ever read about the decline and fall of American culture.
“Cities of Gold” by Douglas Preston
An excellent book- I’ve recommended it and gifted it many times.
The author retraces the path of Francisco Coronado’s 1540’s exploration of the desert Southwest on horseback- more than 1000 miles. Douglas finds himself confronting many of the same hardships that the original expedition faced 400+ years ago, as well as some new ones. Great story and great history- before this book I had zero awareness of American history almost 100 years before the pilgrims.
I was recently mentioning on my site that Thus Was Adonis Murdered was my favorite book. It’s the first in a series of mystery novels by Sarah Caudwell, and they have the flavor of mystery novels as they might have been written by Oscar Wilde. I re-read all the novels all the time, mostly because I identify with one character, Julia Larwood, who is constantly falling for young men with “charming profiles.”
Guy T., The Boomer Bible is absolutely brilliant and hilarious. I haven’t read it in years, but now that you mention it, I’ll have to get it back from a friend I lent it to ages ago.
I think it’s so great that people are remembering books – based on other people’s comments. That’s so awesome!!
Bringing these long-forgotten books back to life.
Is it…wicked awesome, Sheila?
;-)
It’s wickit awwsum that you guys ah sha-rin all these old books. It’s wickit cool.
I may have mentioned this on another thread in the recent past, but I’d to bring up “The Masters” by C. P. Snow. It’s a novel about the election of a master at a Cambridge college in the last years before WWII. The book is drenched in atmosphere and the characters are so various and well realized. And within this book I encountered the notion that gratitude is not a human emotion, but the expectation of it is a very lively one.
I swear to God- I was tucking Ceileidh in tonight and on her nightstand was…..A SUMMER TO DIE!!!!! She said, “I just had to read the ending of that book again- I am going to read this book every summer for the rest of my life.” I can die a happy woman, now. I swear, it is genetic- I never said a WORD to her!!!!!
“Precious Bane” by Mary Webb. My daughter and I watched it on PBS when she was about 14-15, and I tried to go check it out at the library. We had to get it on inter-library loan from 2 or 3 states away, and after waiting about a month I finally got it. I read it through several times while I had it, then had to return it. I always have 2 or 3 books going at once, but that’s one of the very few I’d read more than once.
I thought it was those two Brunner books, but Bruce mentioned, so I didn’t just dream their existence after all…
I’m reminded, on the sci-fi tip, of a series called “The Chronicles of Amber” by Roger Zelazny. A friend turned me on to ’em about 20-some years ago; I bought a couple of bound volumes for my son last year.
I’ll go for my own obscuros:
“On the Loose” by Terry & Renny Russell (a Sierra Club book, beautiful).
“Spencer Holst Stories.”
and I wonder just how popular “Sometimes a Great Notion” is. The great American novel, I say.
Yeah Hopeful Monsters definitely made an influence on me. It combined philosophy, science, literature, history, and ideas aboutlove in a way I had never experienced or read before.
If you’d like to find out more about Mosley check out
http://www.metameta.ca/jbanks/index.html
There is a DVD available on Mosley if you’re really keen.
Cheers
John Corry