Neglected Books

@neglectedbooks.bsky.social

2146

Followers

818

Following

2394

Posts

Brad Bigelow, writer and editor of neglectedbooks.com. Champion of reading off the beaten path.

Editor, Recovered Books series @ Boiler House Press:
www.boilerhouse.press/recovered-books

Posts Replies Media

Where J. D. Vance learned about hillbillies. (If that "Ah don't like it here" voice sounds familiar, it's because it's the late great Gilda Radner's). youtu.be/GE9AQhfz2fM?...

The Immigrants--National Lampoon Radio Houryoutu.be Cast: Bob Perry, Joseph O'Flaherty, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle- Murray. Written by John Belushi, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joseph O'F...

I forgot to mention that Paris 1935 is available from CB Editions, each copy featuring a hand-pasted Dora Maar self portrait cover photo. www.cbeditions.com/Follain.html

Today's #WaferThinBook: Paris 1935 by Jean Follain, tr. Kathleen Shields (1935/2024, 118p.) An individual inventory of Paris, informed by history, rich in its observations. "Paris awaits the future with its graceful women, its enchanted evenings & its stolidly warm bar counters."

CB editions - publisher of new writing - Follainwww.cbeditions.com CB editions - small press publishing novellas, short stories, translations and other new writing

Albert Camus had today's GOP's number way back in 1956. (From The Fall, translated by Justin O'Brien)

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand by Alex Kapranos (2006, 141p.) The lows & mostly highs of food on the road. Eating at a Michelin-star restaurant is "like listening to a Frank Zappa record...[mostly] ironic references."

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A. J. Liebling (1962, 191p.) Like everything about Liebling, this book is a little over the limit (~150p.) but as the saying goes, too much of a good thing is wonderful.

New on Neglected Books: Mightier than the Sword by Alphonse Courlander (1912) A guest post by @sarahjlonsdale.bsky.social on a novel about the promise and perils of reporting in the early days of the great popular newspapers like the Daily Mail. neglectedbooks.com/?...@sarahjlonsdale.bsky.social on a novel about the promise and perils of reporting in the early days of the great popular newspapers like the Daily Mail. neglectedbooks.com/?...

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): A Pike in the Basement by Simon Loftus (1987, 143p.) Loftus on his loves: wine, food, & travel. "A fresh peach brings back a walled garden in Brittany, the smell of saffron recalls paella in Andalusia."

The best book I ever bought in an airport. neglectedbooks.com?p=1747

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): Garlic, Mint, & Sweet Basil by Jean-Claude Izzo (2013, 104p.) Noir novelist Izzo on the town, food & fiction he loved. "When I eat, I like to feel Marseilles pulsating beneath my tongue."

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai by Nina Mingy Powles (2020, 96p.) A dream guide to an eater's paradise: "Grandmas & grandkids sit elbow-to-elbow, shoveling soup and dumplings drenched in chili oil into their mouths."

“A ‘love for books’ does not have to mean a choice between weird parasociality and excruciating dryness.” So true. Which is why I choose both. www.currentaffairs.org/news/new-yor...

The NYT Book Review Is Everything Book Criticism Shouldn't Bewww.currentaffairs.org The Review is famous as an arbiter of taste and quality. But the publication utterly fails to seriously engage with books and the publishing industry.

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): Serve It Forth by M. F. K. Fisher (1937, 145p.) Fisher's first book, which established her unique voice as a food writer—opinionated, worldly, richly historical, never too self-important.

Today's #WaferThinBook (Foodie edition): The Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes (2003, 136p.) A book for any cook whose culinary education has been self-directed, full of misses, and heavily dependent on cookbooks and good luck. Intelligent, self-deprecating, and funny.

One of the more unusual things I've found in a used book. 50¢ for the Auto Show, kids! Jiminy!

Today's #WaferThinBook: Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1931, 132p.) Based on the author's experience as director of Aeroposta Argentina, that country's first airmail service, about the thrill and deadly risks encountered by its daring pilots.

Polling isn't available here, but for my Bluesky friends, please let me know your preference in a reply.

Today's #WaferThinBook: Return to Vienna by Hilda Spiel, tr. Christine Shuttleworth Spiel, a Jewish emigré to England, returns to her native city in 1946. "In my day, we put on galoshes, but now the boot rules, transforming every woman into a concentration camp commandant."🧵

Celia Cruz shows how a clave beat and hyper-rolled Rs can improve even the hottest original. youtu.be/x1PP6ePcU8g?...

Other than Hurt by Johnny Cash and any version of The Sound of Silence, what are your favorite cover versions of famous songs?

Yo Vivire-Celia Cruzyoutu.be

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Language of Cats by Spencer Holst (1971, 120p.) A collection of Holst's twisted fables: "Once upon a time there was a Siamese cat who pretended to be a lion and spoke inappropriate Zebraic—the language whinnied by the race of striped horses in Africa."

If you could give any writer a volume in the Library of America, who would you choose?

Jack Gilbert reminding us to risk delight:

Today's #WaferThinBook: Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, tr. Rosalind Harvey (2011, 74p.) Tochtli's home is full of things he loves: hats, books, even a private zoo. It's also full of guns, with a big hole into which dead bodies are tossed. His father runs a cartel.

Here are a few more circadian (or partial day) novels I had to leave out, some neglected, some not. 🧵 1. A Lovely Day by Henry Céard, tr. Ernest Boyd (1924) The first day of an affair between two people described by most reviewers as either stupid or unimaginative or both. Hmm.

Neglected Circadian Novels—New on Neglected Books. Novels set within a 24-hour period are a mostly post-19th Century phenomenon. And there's plenty more to this sub-genre than just Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway. neglectedbooks.com/?...

Today's #WaferThinBook: Medallions by Zofia Nałkowska, tr. Diana Kuprel (1946/2000, 88p.) Sketches from Nałkowska's interviews and visits of Holocaust survivors and sites soon after liberation. A companion to Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. 🧵

July 4th brings out calls to name the Great American Novel. In 1836, Edgar Allan Poe said it was Beverly Tucker's George Balcombe: "We are induced to regard it, upon the whole, as the best American novel." These things come and go & this is a pointless game. So, love great novels—don't rank them.

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Art of the Publisher by Robert Calasso, tr. Richard Dixon (2015, 148p.) Calasso on 50 years with Adelphi Edizione, one of the leading literary houses in Italy. The minimum essential requirement for a publisher: "Enjoy reading the books he publishes."🧵

Driving directions before Google Maps. In 1901, Rand McNally published illustrated turn-by-turn directions for driving from New York City to Chicago. There were 11 volumes in the set.

A new publisher recovering neglected books: Hirsch Giovanni, whose first five titles are all by the pioneering bi writer Fritz Peters. His 1951 novel, Finistère, was an early American novel about homosexual love. www.hirschgiovanni.c...