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

by Stuart Kelly

The Book of Lost Books is a book of stories involving kings, heretics, untimely interruptions and back room deals, falling tortoises and fairy princesses, train crashes and war atrocities, bravery, cowardice, rent boys, chamber maids, love, quests, puzzles and a crocodile.
From Homer to Jane Austen, Shakespeare to Ernest Hemingway, this is an endlessly engaging tour of literature from the pre-historic to Marvel Comics. With academic shaggy dog stories, swashbuckling historical fables, wry ironies and imaginative fantasia, The Book of Lost Books is the perfect read for all bibliophiles.
Hilarious, insightful, endlessly fascinating, sometimes shocking - The Book of Lost Books is a wonderfully quirky but utterly romantic saga of our love affair with books.

• ISBN10: 1400062977
• ISBN13: 9781400062973
• Publish Date: 18 April 2006 (first published 25 August 2005)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Random House (NY)
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 344
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I tried, I really did.  6 weeks and 3 library renewals, but ultimately I just ended up skimming through the last half, flipping through and reading bits about certain authors.   I was hoping for something more anecdotal, but this book is much denser and much more targeted at people who take literature Seriously.  The writing is dryer than I like and almost academic.     The book deserves a higher rating; it's obvious the author is passionate about his subject, I'm just not the proper audience for it.