The Book of Lost Books; An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read

I love the way this witty writer gives us a history lesson about famous authors in bite size chunks. As a person who has mastered the art of Tsundoku (the word for people who buy books and do not read them) I am more of an occasional reader but I want to be a voracious reader. This book inspired me to read more now that I know more of the back stories of some of my favorite authors. I especially loved the fact that Stuart Kelly didn't spend loads of time on authors that so much had already been discovered and written about (e.g. Hemingway, Dickens, Austen, Melville, and Moliere) but gave us more juicy details about lesser known -- or not as highlighted in mainstream -- authors (Urquhart, von Leibniz, and Zola). Through his book, Kelly introduced me to more books of which I want to devour!

Reading even the first part of this book makes one wonder how the world's literature might have been different if the Great Library of Alexandria had not been burned. The loss of ancient manuscripts was incalculable, and so today we are left with a mere fraction of the writings that were preserved in that institution. This book goes much more into loss, theft, misplacement, and just sheer non-written works, from the earliest writings right until today. We read how many writings have not come down to us for one reason or another, and as avid readers, we must all mourn their disappearance. We, and the world, are much poorer for their loss.

When I read the description alone, I knew I had to read this book. Any bibliophile would also be entraced by this book about books. How pleasantly suprised I was to learn that Kelly is also a fun, breezy writer, and his style and wit, are a joy to read. However, the organization of the book, into many small sections (calling them chapters is quite generous), often turned me off. Many of these sections are just a page or two. Granted, the source material is often lacking, but I would have prefered to read more about less.

This is an extremely erudite look at some of the lost works of world literature, from the ancient world down to the near present. To fully appreciate some of Stuart Kelly's observations the reader ought to have been immersed in the subject for a long lifetime. Obviously very few of us have had anything like that sort of exposure, yet Kelly's work holds interest for us as well. First, Kelly provides an interesting overview of how often things go badly wrong for an author and his works: Fires break out, wars end badly, depressions (economic and emotional) sink in, etc, etc, all of them likely to cause the loss of some or all of an author's work. Second, Kelly writes well and wittily, so that even when I had never heard of or had barely a nodding acquaintaince with an author's works before I found his stories and anecdotes captivating. This is especially useful because Kelly does not confine himself to mourning the loss of potentially great literary works, but also celebrates the fact that some evidently awful writings didn't survive. Thirdly, reading this book reminds us again of the great role chance and coincidence play in history and literature and allows us to muse on such fascinating questions as "What if that maid had found something else to start the fire with in Harriet Taylor's London drawing room on March 6, 1835?" or "What if Queen Victoria had let Charles Dickens tell her the ending of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' three months before his death?" Any sort of book that inspires readers to ponder such questions is well worth the time and money!

Frankly, I'm amazed that this is Stuart Kelly's first book. He brings such an assured and confident voice to this project, one would think he's been crafting humorous treatises for years. As advertised, THE BOOK OF LOST BOOKS is a look at the works of notable authors that have been lost, destroyed, or never completed over the course of history. Written in a dense and skittering style, Stuart has a flair for the turned phrase ("young [John] Milton could hit, but not hold, the notes") and a wicked sense of humor. While this book is chock-full of pathos, Stuart's wit keeps matters lively. Particularly enjoyable are Stuart's creative vocabulary choices ("a cack-handed servant") and historical facts. (For example, I had no idea that in the 200s BCE, an attempt was made to purge Confucian thought from China. Massive book burnings occurred, and 260 Confucian scholars were buried alive so that they could not reconstruct the books from memory.) Organized into short chapters, Stuart begins with the dawn of written language, and he is in no hurry; by the time he gets to the 20th century, there are only a few dozen pages left in this extraordinary book. I look forward to Stuart Kelly's next project; THE BOOK OF LOST BOOKS is a complete success. SIDELIGHT: I've subsequently heard Kelly state in an interview that he had only one copy of this book on his laptop. After sending the electronic files to the publisher, his laptop was stolen; thus his own book very nearly joined the distinguished company it was devoted to.

This is a great idea for a book. It is another book of books, but this one about books written and lost, or about books planned and never written, or about books partly written and never made really into books. This sounds very much like an idea from Borges. This is a short list of the 'lost works' he writes about as given by Michiko Kakutani in the NYT. "Homer's "Margites," a humorous epic about a fool, who, in Plato's words, "knew many things, but all badly"; the Arthurian epics contemplated by both Dryden and Milton but never written; Laurence Sterne's never completed "Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy," which concludes with one of the most famous unfinished sentences in literary history ("So that when I stretch'd out my hand, I caught hold of the Fille de Chambre's -") ; Lord Byron's supposedly explosive "Memoirs," which his publisher, executor and biographer had burned because, as one critic put it, they were "fit only for the brothel and would have damned" the poet "to everlasting infamy"; the novel, provisionally titled "Double Exposure" or "Double Take," that Sylvia Plath was reportedly working on before her suicide in 1963." The work of course centers on those great names of world- literature from whom 'losses' might be missed. But I imagine another different kind of book might be written about all the great masterpieces never published, or never made known to the world. The problem is that no one knows what these are, except of course their own real or imaginary writers. Kelly also writes of might- have- been - lost works, Pope's 'Dunciad' and most notably the work of Kafka which Kafka himself willed to the flames They were saved only because of the good judgment and loyalty of his great friend Max Brod. Kelly in opening up worlds of literature which have been lost in a way shakes up our sense of the 'inherent rightness' of the Literary Canon. He gives a sense in a sense of the contingency of all Literary Greatness, of what is and might not have been, and what might have been and is not. But he also provides a work rich in literary anecdote and story, which all lovers of books will find thought- provoking and enjoying.