www.NeglectedBooks.com: Where forgotten books are remembered
Posts and articles about neglected books and authors gleaned from the vast digital farmlands of the Web.
The Wall Street Journal published one of the very few, I’m sure, pieces in its history devoted to an out-of-print and neglected book recently. Titled “A Yiddish Novel With Tolstoyan Sweep,” the piece, by Joseph …
• George Baxt Brooks Peters, who writes some of the most interesting and thoughtful pieces on literary, celebrity, and cultural figures of the past, recently posted a long review of the diverse career and works …
In Commentary magazine “Contentions” blog, critic Terry Teachout salutes the fine series of reissues from New York Review Books and reflects on one of its titles, Angus Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: Originally published in 1956, Anglo-Saxon …
Source: BookSlut.com Michael Antman passed along links to a short series of articles he wrote for BookSlut.com back in 2006. Titled “Afterwords,” the series focussed on “… some unfairly neglected books of the past century …
I stumbled across writer Lee Sandlin’s website (www.leesandlin.com) and was delighted to find, on his “Enthusiasms” page, a list titled, “Ten Novels That Not Enough People Have Read.” Lee is one of the finest essayists …
Source: “The Escape Artist: John Banville on Georges Simenon,” L. A. Weekly, 28 May 2008, http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/wls/the-escape-artist-john-banville-on-georges-simenon/18984/ A couple of weeks ago, the L. A. Weekly published a long piece by Irish novelist John Banville on …
Source: “Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books”, the Village Voice, 13 May 2008 In an attempt to get folks thinking about something other than best-sellers for their summer reading lists, the Village Voice …
In 1969 critic Laurence Lerner called Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters “the most underrated novel in English.” And Henry James wrote of it, “The hours given to the novel’s perusal seem like actual hours spent.” …
Source: Francis Iles, “Before the Fact”, from the 2blowhards.com blog. Michael, one of the anonymous Blowhards, writes a long and thoughtful piece on the works of Francis Iles, who wrote several examples of the genre …
Source: “Who Is Harry Sylvester?”, by Philip Jenkins, from the March 2007 issue of First Things: the Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life “If the Ministry of Truth had devoted their full attention to …
Source: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/09/plucked_from_obscurity.html, Guardian Unlimited Books Blog, 2 September 2007 Following up on The Observer’s feature, “How did we miss this?”, in which 50 contemporary novelists were asked to name the books they considered most “shamefully …
Source: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,2160644,00.html, The Observer, 2 September 2007 “[B]ooks that seem to speak only to you are, in some ways, the most treasured,” writes Robert McCrum, The Observer’s literary editor, in his introduction to a recent …
“Save These Books!”, from Salon.com, December 1997 Way back in its early days, Salon.com asked some of its contributors and other writers to share their thoughts about a favorite book that has fallen out of …
Back on Boxing Day in 2002, the NPR show, Talk of the Nation talked with about a half-dozen writers about their favorite “lost” classics. Among their suggestions: • Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination — …
Lingua Franca, the now-defunct “Review of Academic Life”, had a regular feature called “Breakthrough Books”, where academic experts recommend the groundbreaking books in their various fields. Way back in June 1997, the field in question …
In “Their Back Pages”, from the 26 September 2005 issue of the Village Voice, Paul Collins amusingly discusses forgotten books by famous writers. Among those mentioned: • Casing the Promised Land, by Caleb Carr A …
Since 2005, Nextbook magazine, which focuses on Jewish literature, culture, and ideas, has published a regular feature on “Lost Books”, in which writers such as Meg Wolitzer and David Rakoff discuss the lives and works …
Robert Nedelkoff forwards an article by Larry McMurtry from the 23 June 1975 issue of the Washington Post titled, “Two Novels: One a Find, One Better Lost.” In it, McMurtry lambasts the Lost American Fiction …
Robert Nedelkoff forwards a link to “The Sustaining Stream”, a Time magazine article from February, 1963 that provides “a recommended reading list of American novelists whose first work has appeared within the last few years.” …