Monday, September 22, 2008

Obscure Book Meme

What ten books do you own that you think no one else on your friends list does?
  • Anthony Trollope, The Land-Leaguers
    His last, unfinished novel. I've got a lot of Trollope (most of it still unread), but this is about the least likely one.
  • Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
    From the shelf of poetry that I hope to get to someday.
  • Matt Feazell, Ert!
    A collection of Cynicalman and other minicomics.
  • Jeremy Pascal (the Holy Ghostwriter), God: The Ultimate Autobiography
    We sold a ton of these over many years at the SFBC, so they must exist somewhere in the wild, but I've never seen hide nor hair of them.
  • S.J. Perelman, That Old Gang of Mine: The Early and Essential
    A collection of Perelman's very first (and not very good) magazine pieces.
  • Wilson Sherman, illustrated by Newell Dean, Steering Locks!
    A bizarre little cartoon book that came into the bookclubs in the mid-90s, devoted to the cause of eliminating steering locks in cars -- it was published by the Automobile Safety Foundation of La Jolla. If I believed less in copyright, I'd scan the thing and post it; it's a marvel of its type.
  • Benjamin R. Doolittle, The Grundilini
    Ben Doolittle is the son of one of my mother's oldest friends, and was one of those kids who was always doing something better than I was. (Nice guy, but that's still annoying.) Since then, he became both a doctor and a medical missionary. So I was surprised to see this book come in to the SFBC about six years ago...and even happier to see that it didn't seem to be all that good. (I still haven't read it, just in case it's wonderful.)
  • A.J. Dunning, Extremes: Reflections on Human Behavior
    Essays about various historical topics by a Dutch cardiologist and polymath.
  • Calvin Trillin, Barnet Frummer Is An Unbloomed Flower
    His first novel, assembled in 1969 from New Yorker stories that are now awfully late-60s.
  • Bruce Thomas, The Big Wheel
    A rock 'n roll novel by Elvis Costello's bass player.
Via Nancy Leibovitz

6 comments:

Tania said...

We've never met, but...

I have the Ted Hughes (poetry nerd, and I used to work with his son Nick) and I am one of the people that bought and enjoyed God: The Ultimate Autobiography.

You folks at SFBC turned me on to James Morrow. For which I'll always thank you.

Unknown said...

Not sure if I qualify for the friendslist, but i have got that Trollope.

Anonymous said...

I don't have a "friends list", but if I did, I likely have at least a hundred, possibly closer to five hundred books that nobody else I know has. How would you judge which books are the most obscure? I mean, somewhere between the Rubber Bible, Augustus J.C. Hare, and all three of Elizabeth Willey's books is likely to be found a set of books that no one else in the universe has.

tool said...

I have Ert!, but I'm not on your friends list.

Bruce said...

I don't have any friends*, but the book that first comes to mind from my own collection would be THE BARGE OF HAUNTED LIVES by J. Aubrey Tyson (1923).

A rather odd little book, with plot elements that made me wonder if it might have been an influence on the Doc Savage series. Also with vampires, sort of, and characters referred to by such names as The One-Eyed Duck Hunter and The Sentimental Gargoyle.


*The casual use of "friends" by Live Journal and such raises my hackles, probably the biggest reason I've never been a LJ participant. "Friends" is a word too important, and rare, to use that loosely. IMHO.

Jo Walton said...

I have The Land-Leaguers too.

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