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ON OUR BOOKSHELVES
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BOOK: The Book of Forgotten Authors
AUTHOR: Christopher Fowler
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2017
I was fascinated by the title of this book, and by its subject matter. It is, exactly as described, a collection of short pieces about various authors, once better known, who have fallen out of favor, or at any rate, out of the public consciousness. A perfect gift for the voracious reader in your life, this book about books delivers.
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Christopher Fowler is good company, as the short essays are well-researched, informative, and frequently quite entertaining. I certainly haven’t forgotten some of these authors…I’ve written here about books by Margery Allingham, E.M. Delafield, and Georgette Heyer (more than once). And I’m an Edmund Crispin enthusiast, as well as a fan of Barbara Pym, although I have yet to get around to reviewing any of their work. (Note to self: must rectify that situation soon to help save them from undeserved oblivion.) But many of the other authors here were quite unfamiliar to me. For the book lover, that is an absolutely terrific thing, and my kind could not ask for a more enthusiastic and engaging guide than Mr. Fowler. In the biography on the book jacket, we find this gem: “Mr. Fowler is still alive and one day plans to realise his ambition to become a Forgotten Author himself.” I, for one, do not wish him success in this endeavor.
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Besides Fowler’s focus on specific authors currently neglected, the chapters are interspersed with essays on particular topics: books made into Disney movies, pulp fiction, nonsense writers (can Edward Lear really be an unknown these days?), authors that the English-speaking world is deprived of due to lack of translations, and so on.
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One of the things I appreciate about old books is the sheer serendipity of finding a good one in an unlikely place. You can find treasures above price in rummage sales, library fundraisers, dusty old shelves in beach houses, in novels abandoned on planes and at train stations. Much of it is terrible, but some of it is wonderful, and if The Book of Forgotten Authors doesn’t send you off to a used bookshop to give some old paperbacks a try, nothing will.
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RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 4 Whistles
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HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
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Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com.
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Lead-In Image Courtesy of Quercus Books
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A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Books for Living, Will Schwalbe
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield
Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly
Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
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Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
I Will Always Write Back, Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda with Liz Welch
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Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Sanditon, Jane Austen and Another Lady
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli
Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
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The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein
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The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
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The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)
The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The Swans of Fifth Avenue, Melanie Benjamin
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Three Questions, Jon J Muth
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Women in Black, Madeleine St John
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Eleanor Roosevelt
