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.

The postman got a break from me this week, but one of my locals and my library, did not.

 

Between my library system getting a few upgrades and my taking the time to dig around their website a bit more, I'm figuring out how to get more out of it than I have up until now. They have a user list function, so I've been creating a list of books as I come across interesting titles.  As you can see, it's working well so far.

 

My library haul includes Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.  This is going to be my Science Fiction read for Summer Book Bingo.  I dislike dystopian settings, but I dislike space and AI fiction more - and I love Fforde's other work so I'm totally willing to give this a go for the humour alone.

 

I also picked up a couple of titles I found in an article on LitHub that recommended books about books: A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan  and The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly.  Sitting next to The Book of Lost Books was Book by John Agard, which looked cute and short.

 

The library haul was rounded off with Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard  and Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini and Rebecca Paley  because I've seen so many good things said about both here on BookLikes.

 

Two of the three bookshop buys were impulses from shelf browsing; I had just read about The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe by Kelli Ann Morgan  mere hours before seeing it on the shelves, so that felt like karma.  The Clasp by Sloane Crosley looks funny and I've read her essays - they're hysterical.  The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman  because it's birds, science and look at that cover!

 

Total new books: 9

Total books read this week: 9

Total physical books on TBR: 227

 

I hope everyone has had or is having (depending on which side of the dateline you're on) a fabulous weekend!

This is a book to be savored. Anyone who loves literature, and especially anyone who collects books, will be fascinated by this look at so many works that are lost to the world. Some were lost over the centuries, such has Homer's epic comedy The Margites. Some were destroyed by their authors, such as parts II and III of Gogol's Dead Souls. Some were left unfinished due to the author's death, like Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Some could never be finished, such as Leibniz's Universal Encyclopedia. Some were destroyed by accident, like the first draft of Carlyle's History of the French Revolution which was mistaken for scrap paper and burned in a fireplace. Some were physically lost like all of Hemingway's early writing which vanished in a misplaced suitcase during a trip to Switzerland.

Although it is sad to think of so much lost literature, I choose to be optimistic about it. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, some of these treasures may be waiting to be rediscovered. In some air tight jar in the Egyptian desert the lost plays of Sophocles may be waiting for us. In the ruins of a Medieval monastery there may be copies of the lost works of Aristotle. In some long forgotten London basement, buried under piles of paper, there may be a copy of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won. Somewhere in the archives of the KGB the lost manuscript of Bruno Schulz's The Messiah is stored away and someday someone is going to find it.

A great Inspirational Suspense short story

The fourth in the 'Lost Book' series bridging the 15-year story gap between the first two books in the 'Circle' series: 'Black' and 'Red'. Having attempted to read 'Black', I got rather mixed up between the different and alternating realities, and soon shelved it. Now, that I've read the 'Lost Book' series, I have a better grasp of the plot that winds through the series -- and though it might seem as though I'd be reading the front part of the book after I've read the conclusion -- for me, it's just putting things into better perspective. Now, onto the 'Circle' series: 'Black', 'Red', 'White' and 'Green'.