The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly

For this week's Ramblings of a Bibliophile, I've chosen The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly. Enjoy!

The Book of Lost Books - S. Kelly

The Book of Lost Books

While looking over the reference section in one of the local bookshops, the following title caught my eye: The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You’ll never read. I picked it up to read the back cover and knew I had to read this book – and it was a very good buy. Stuart Kelly goes about describing the books many well-known writers planned to write, but never got the chance to write and books destroyed by fire, water or other means.

“Widsith spoke, unlocked his word-treasure, he who of all men had most widely travelled among all the nations and peoples of the world.” (Kelly 2010:101- translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem “Widsith”)

Some of the chapters in the book are: “Homer”, “Sophocles”, “Saint Paul” and “Widsith the Wide-travelled”. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Kafka and Philip K. Dick also make up part of the book, making it a treasure trove of the works of some of the greatest writers we only have a brief glimpse of.

Somewhat elegiac, the prose draws the reader in and makes every page enjoyable to read. Even if you are not familiar with some of the writers featured in The Book of Lost Books, Kelly still gives enough information to ensure that his readers are not lost between names and titles. When one looks at all the works that we know of that has been lost, it makes one more thankful for those works that have stood the test of time.

“This book, even in its expanded form, is still only the visible tip of the extravagant, glorious tragicomic universe of loss. That universe, like our own, is expanding.” (Kelly 2010:379)

I can highly recommend this volume from Polygon for any avid reader or bibliophile as Kelly covers so many different writers – there is bound to be at least one to suit every taste.

Goes perfectly with: A Caffé Latte on a rainy day.

Perfect size to: Keep in your handbag for those moments of stolen reading pleasure.

Rating: 4/5

Also visit: www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Kelly, Stuart. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You’ll Never Read. New Expanded Edition, 2010. Polygon Books, Edinburgh.

What I’m also reading at the moment: Bart Nel, by J van Melle & Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett and for studies: Myths of the Pagan North by Christopher Abram.