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.
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Review
'A fascinating anthology of writings, which will be quite new to most people and certainly deserve to be preserved' -- Muriel Spark
'Tantalising, entertaining, mysterious' -- Herald
‘A formidable piece of bibliographical belletrism … fascinating’ -- Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times
‘Charming and erudite book, with its wealth of mini-essays ranging across world literature’ -- Sunday Telegraph
‘Charming and erudite’ -- Sunday Telegraph
‘Erudite and entertaining … marvellous’ -- London Review of Books
‘Excellent . . . A formidable piece of bibliographical belletrism’ -- Sunday Times
‘Kelly’s narrative moves with the ease of an after-dinner conversation . . . carrying itself with an elegance worthy of its subject’ -- Times
‘Lively and diverting . . . Kelly has an engaging enthusiasm for the curiosities of literature’ -- Spectator
‘Lively and diverting’ -- Spectator
'Tantalising, entertaining, mysterious' -- Herald
‘A formidable piece of bibliographical belletrism … fascinating’ -- Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times
‘Charming and erudite book, with its wealth of mini-essays ranging across world literature’ -- Sunday Telegraph
‘Charming and erudite’ -- Sunday Telegraph
‘Erudite and entertaining … marvellous’ -- London Review of Books
‘Excellent . . . A formidable piece of bibliographical belletrism’ -- Sunday Times
‘Kelly’s narrative moves with the ease of an after-dinner conversation . . . carrying itself with an elegance worthy of its subject’ -- Times
‘Lively and diverting . . . Kelly has an engaging enthusiasm for the curiosities of literature’ -- Spectator
‘Lively and diverting’ -- Spectator
About the Author
Stuart Kelly has been investigating lost books since he was 15. He studied English at Oxford and is currently a literary critic at The Scotsman on Sunday. He has written for McSweeneys, Poetry Review and Nerve and has his first collection of poems coming out in 2004. He lives in Edinburgh. Stuart Kelly has been investigating lost books since he was 15. He studied English at Oxford and is currently a literary critic at The Scotsman on Sunday. He has written for McSweeneys, Poetry Review and Nerve and published his first collection of poems coming in 2004. He lives in Edinburgh.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
By turns excellent and dreadful - a shorter book would have been a better one
18 Oct 2006
By Rgh1066
Format:Hardcover
Kelly's book is a great idea conceived by a self-confessed listophile and let down only by prolonged passages of twaddle more suited to Private Eye's Pseud's Corner than to a book lover's wordfest. His chapters vary enormously in quality - Laurence Sterne, by Kelly's own admission, shouldn't be here at all, and the chapter on Goethe is the sort of pretentious, unreadable rubbish that sophomores habitually churn out to cover the fact they haven't anything to say. But other chapters are delightful - his consideration of later writers such as Plath, Pound, Perec and Eliot is excellent; well-focussed and sharply observed. He can be informative and entertaining but ultimately I found this read more like a sequence of Sunday papers-style reviews rather than the intellectual tour de force I had hoped for. This is hardly Kelly's fault - for all I know it was his intention, but it was clear to me that a shorter book would probably have been a much better one.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Stuart Kelly's "Book of Lost Books" is for book lovers, and those who think they ought to love books, or those who would love to love books but don't have the time - or just anyone who likes reading. From the ancient Greek who wasn't as good as he should have been - his plays being found and published to a diminuendo of praise in the 1950's, through to the more modern losses of work by writers like Dylan Thomas - who lost the same manuscript three times - I found this to be a phenomenally erudite and witty romp through literature, from ancient Greek and Arabic masters through Shakespeare, Jonson and Sterne, right up to the present day. Much recommended
13 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you enjoy learning new words and stuff about dead people that hardly anyone has heard of, then this is one for you.
Apparently some Greek bloke wrote some plays and everybody thought they had been lost, but they weren't. Somebody found them and, contrary to expectations, they weren't very good. In fact most people thought they were rubbish.
Which is completely dissimilar to this witty romp through the dusty corners of the bibliophilia. What bountiful joy!
Well researched and well written, this is scholarship at its most accessible. Buy one for your book shelf today and make yourself look a bit cleverer!
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