I am so NOT a morning person.I'm a night person. The night is when I come alive!
I like staying awake till all hours, sleeping like a dead rhinoceros -- and my perfect day is when I can awaken due to natural causes. Like…… sunlight. Or Jack's lovely mewling. Or the sheer desire to read, with a coffee steaming away beside me. I like sleeping until then.
And when it comes to reading, I like discovering sleepers.
Books that are surprising in that, for all their obscurity, they turn out to be quite good -- these are what I call "sleepers". I'm in the midst of a real good one, right now.
It's called All Will Be Revealed, by Robert Anthony Siegel. [2007]. The fact that you have never heard of this book is my very point here. It's too bad that for whatever reason it does not have a greater readership, because really it is a terrific read. Dealing with the subject of the dawn of pornography -- and how one of its early moguls gets involved with the phenomenon of the seance, the occult practices that were so prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century.
As any reader of Bookpuddle knows, I am not a follower of the bestsellers.I'm a bit of an Ibsenite, I'm afraid.
Old Henrik said "The majority are always wrong" and I tend to agree. I like finding that underdog book -- the sleeper that is a real keeper.
Over the years I've unearthed a few real dandies.
Books that no one has read, like:
The Ash Garden, by Dennis Bock.
Some Things That Stay, by Sarah Willis.
Slammerkin and Life Mask, by Emma Donoghue.
The Doctor's Wife and An Answer From Limbo and The Great Victorian Collection, by Brian Moore.
The Watch That Ends The Night, by Hugh MacLennan.
The Way The Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.
Afterlands, by Steven Heighton.
Or, the ultimate Book That No One Has Read… Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis.
I've read this last one about four or five times.
What is your ultimate Sleeper Book that you have read but you are quite sure no one else in the world has read but yet you have a feeling that it should be read by everyone in the world?
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6 comments:
The Silver Pony by Lynd Ward.
Wow -- perhaps the fastest response to a blog I have written, ever.
Thank you, Anonymous. I shall watch for this book in my travels hither and yon.
I've read Till We Have Faces. And the Silver Pony- that's a beautiful book. I could add a lot to your list, books I love that are old and forgotten, no one's ever heard of them. Like Circles in a Forest by Dalene Matthee, one of my absolute favorites.
I read Til We Had Faces because of you! The Things They Carried is actually fairly well known in the U.S. and is sometimes taught in schools.
My mind is drawing a blank for my own sleeper book. I'll think of it int he middle of the night tonight.
Ahh, some fans of Till We Have Faces. Excellent!
Thanks for that suggestion of a book Jeane, you're right, I have not heard of it.
And Stefanie, I look forward to hearing of your sleeper-book, revealed to you as you....... sleep!
I slept too well to be awakened with a book title but I'll toss out Raw Shark Texts. It has gotten some awards and looks like it might even get made into a movie but I haven't come across many people who have read it.
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