Writers, it's often said, are readers first and writers second. Frequently, it is the indelible mark left by some book that inspires a person to commit to the writing life. Mining that vein, the editors of Brick, a Canadian literary journal, asked their contributors "to tell us the story of a book loved and lost." The "Lost Classics" issue has been expanded into a book, in which 73 authors--Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, John Irving, Philip Levine, Anchee Min, and Michael Ondaatje among them--write about the books they've loved and lost.

These are books worth stealing, books remembered in the twilight that precedes sleep, books that, for these authors, provided "that moment when a reader seems to have found the perfect mate." Though many of the books extolled here are acknowledged classics, many are not. Helen Garner cherishes a childhood book that "except for members of my immediate family, no Australian I've mentioned the book to ... has had any knowledge of it whatsoever." Sarah Sheard writes lovingly of Down and Out in the Woods: An Airman's Guide to Survival in the Bush, "a manual of food, shelter and first aid [that] was the companion text of my childhood summers." Michael Turner reminisces about a book he never actually read, and Erin Mouré describes a book about the history of fishes that "no one I knew was ever interested in reading." Anne Holzman laments her inability to find a copy of a book for lefty activists called Reweaving the Web of Life (hint to Holzman: check online--used copies are readily available). And Nancy Huston introduces Kressmann Taylor's Address Unknown, "a perfectly astonishing [and prescient] little book." A kind of Rand McNally for the literary explorer, each chapter a hand-forged map leading down bookish roads less traveled. --Jane Steinberg


From Publishers Weekly
In Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission, assembled by Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding and Linda Spalding (editors of the Canadian literary magazine Brick), 74 writers honor books that hang in the world by a thread, if at all. Contributors include the editors; Margaret Atwood on Hjalmar S”derberg's Doctor Glas, which caused a scandal in Sweden in 1905; Anne Carson on Dhuoda's Handbook for William, dating to the 840s, wherein an exiled wife imparts "[t]actics of survival... in this world and the next" to her hostage son (whom she never saw again); and Robert Creeley on David Rattray's How I Became One of the Invisible, "an extraordinary record of... the last of the fifties." Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Have you ever had a special book that captivated you in your youth only to find, when you're older, that it is long gone? If you have, this collection will help to revive those feelings. The editors, all of whom are editors of Brick: A Literary Journal, have assembled a collection of essays by writers who reminisce about the books they cherished and that transformed them but are now largely forgotten. The essays include Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara's Bringing Tony Home, Margaret Atwood recalling Doctor Glas, and Russell Banks writing about Too Late To Turn Back, a travelog by Barbara Greene, cousin to Graham Greene. Many of the short chapters include a picture of the cover of the book under discussion, which adds to the delight of this collection. Every book lover will want to cuddle up with these magnificent recollections of lost classics. Recommended for all libraries. Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Inveterate readers always want to hear about other inveterate readers' favorite books, and the more obscure the book, the better. This outcome of a project of the Canadian literary magazine Brick is an inveterate reader's delight. In it 73 professionally inveterate readers--novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists--discuss books they cherish but that almost no one they know has read or, perhaps, even heard of. Out-of-print novels, lesser-known books by famous authors, children's books whose contents are better remembered than their titles, single books of poems by poets long since immortalized in collected editions, travel books, titleless ephemera (the typewritten "smut" a friend handed a 12-year-old C. K. Williams), a set of essays about the "real" classics (Kenneth Rexroth's Classics Revisited), and a few pretty well known books (Lost Horizon, The Old Wives' Tale) --such are the choices of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, John Irving, Alan Lightman, Russell Banks, and their confreres. So don't weed out those old shelf-sitters yet! This dandy book may lengthen their circulating life spans. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Anecdotal, revealing, nostalgic, brief, insightful ... more than 70 nuggets of literary gold, a bibliophile's gleaming treasure trove.... Lost Classics is a warming and beautiful act of memory and homage." —Ottawa Citizen

“A delightful companion…wonderfully wide-ranging, charmingly designed and hugely entertaining.... [Lost Classics is] a collective conversation about reading that matters.” — The Globe and Mail


From the Hardcover edition.


Review
"Anecdotal, revealing, nostalgic, brief, insightful ... more than 70 nuggets of literary gold, a bibliophile's gleaming treasure trove.... Lost Classics is a warming and beautiful act of memory and homage." ?Ottawa Citizen

?A delightful companion?wonderfully wide-ranging, charmingly designed and hugely entertaining.... [Lost Classics is] a collective conversation about reading that matters.? ? The Globe and Mail


From the Hardcover edition.


Book Description
An Anchor Books Original

Seventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission.

Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics.

Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more.



From the Inside Flap
An Anchor Books Original

Seventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission.

Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics.

Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

An Anchor Books Original

Seventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission.

Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics.

Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews