Name a book you found quite by accident and turned out to be very good.

[Sequoia]

Yesterday I was in the library going down the line of shelves within my line of vision. (Those top shelves are too high for me to see titles), and stumpled upon "Suite Francasise", by Irene Memirovsky. It's about people fleeing Paris when the Germans march in. Iren was a sucessful writer living in Paris at the time but was arrested in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz where she died. The novel was unknown for 64 years. When I checked it out it was for 5 weeks and when I asked the librarian why (usually its 4 weeks) she said it was on the "lunchtime discussion list."

amazon.com/images/I/51IFa1QuFCL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Némirovsky's plan consisted of five parts. She completed only the first two before she was murdered. Yet they are not fragmentary; they read like polished novellas. The first, "Storm in June," gives us a cross section of the population during the initial exodus from the capital, when a battle for Paris was expected and people fled helter-skelter south, so that the roads were clogged with refugees of all classes. Némirovsky shows how much caste and money continued to matter, how the nation was not united in the face of danger and a common enemy. In her account, the well-to-do continue to be especially egotistical and petty. And yet a deep, unsentimental sympathy pervades this panorama. Looking up to the sky at enemy planes overhead, the refugees who have to sleep on the street or in their cars "lacked both courage and hope. This was how animals waited to die. It was the way fish caught in a net watch the shadow of the fisherman moving back and forth above them." I can't think of a more chilling and concise image to convey the helplessness of civilians in an air raid.

amazon.com

I disregard all the negative comments about this book. After all, she didn't have a chance to edit it. Most people, it seems, want to read a book like they're watching a movie with all the details spelled out which leaves me to believe they are not possesed with much of an imagination but have to be spoon fed ideas.

[cobalt1999]

1. Thanks for the information

Looks like a good one.

Forgot to add mine...

Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh

AmazonmSynopsis
In 1963, a schoolboy browsing in his local library stumbled across a great mathematical problem: Fermat's Last Theorem, a puzzle that every child can now understand, but which has baffled mathematicians for over 300 years. Aged just ten, Andrew Wiles dreamed he would crack it. Many people had tried before Wiles and failed, including an 18th-century philanderer who was killed in a duel. An 18th-century Frenchwoman made a major breakthrough in solving the riddle, but she had to attend maths lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique disguised as a man. This is the story of the puzzle that has confounded mathematicians since the 17th century. The solution of the Theorem is one of the most important mathematical developments of the 20th century.


You won't think a book about proving a math theorem would be a page turner, but this one is hard to put down.

[Sequoia]

7. Cool. See, he was in the library looking around also!

[MercutioATC]

2. "A Voyage to Arcturus"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Voyage_to_Arcturus

Confusing, not particularly well written and out of print.


I have two copies and reread it every year or so because I have the sense that there's some kernel of universal insight that I just keep missing.

[Warpy]

3. "The Irish Magdalene"

I was poor and had read my way through most of the offerings at the small library branch a block from my house when I noticed this title. Since I live in a heavily Hispanic area, it struck me as a little discordant so I checked it out.

I think you have to be Irish to understand a lot of it, but it was so funny I kept laughing so hard I'd drop the book.

I have since ordered a copy for my own library from Amazon UK.

[Sequoia]

11. From the UK site?

No wonder I couldn't find it.

[Skink]

4. Larry Flynt's Sex Lies and Politics.

[KansDem]

5. "The Boy He Left Behind" by Mark Matousek

Mark Matousek's memoir The Boy He Left Behind begins with the gripping sentence, 'I was four years old when my father came back to kidnap.' Part reminiscence, part detective story, part spiritual musing, the book is more than the story of one man's search for his father, it is also a look at the meaning of life and how fathers contribute to that meaning.
The New York Times Book Review

A sensitive meditation on death, family and masculinity that asks hard questions about a culture without fathers
Out

Matousek's probing memoir of lost childhood and found history celebrates the power of manhood.
The Une Reader


markmatousek.com

I came across this quite by accident about 7 or 8 years ago when my son was only a couple of years old. I'm glad I read it, and highly recommend it for any new or expecting father.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. "Elmer Gantry," "It Can't Happen Here," and "Main Street"

All by Sinclair Lewis.

Each novel took away my breath.

[jakem]

8. 'The Mysterious Benedict Society'

Found in the kid's section, but very politically and socially relevant.

Excellent read.

[Occulus]

9. "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

Really very very good. It deals with mythological gods- Zeus, Loki, etc.- that are actually real, here in America, posing as ordinary people. They depend upon belief in them in order to continue to exist, and they're set to fight a "civil war". The main character, whose name is Shadow, begins as a convict in prison who is visited by the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who (I think, it's been a while since I read it) turns out to be Zeus.

Highly recommended.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

10. "Forrest Gump". It's very little like the treacly movie. It's friggin hysterical!

I was reading it on the subway and laughing so loud people were staring at me.

[begin_within]

12. I picked up "On the Road" at random in a bookstore in 1980,

without knowing anything about it or about Kerouac, bought it, and it became one of my all-time favorite books.

[Indenturedebtor]

13. South - Shackleton's expedition to the southpole

Picked this up at a book exchange while travelling in NZ. Wonderful hair raising memoir of a failed expedition to the south pole in 1914-1917

Gotta read it!

http://www.amazon.com/South-Endurance-Expedition-Ernest-Shackleton/dp/0451198808

[Jeanette in FL]

14. "Backstairs at the Whitehouse" by Lillian Rogers Park

When I first moved to this small northern Florida town I went to the local library. It is quite small compared to the libraries I had been used to and didn't have much of a selection.

I saw this book "Backstairs at the Whitehouse". I opened it up and started reading the first few paragraphs. It gripped me right from the get go.

It is a true story of a girl who's mother was a maid at the Whitehouse and herself later, the seamstress. It goes from the Taft administration though the Truman administration. Parks had such a wonderful writing style, you actually felt like you were there. She gave such insight into the families, their private lives and their lifestyles.

It was a wonderful read. I think the whole title was My Thirty Years Backstairs at the Whitehouse.

[Breeze54]

15. 'SACAJAWEA' by Anna Lee Waldo --

'SACAJAWEA' by Anna Lee Waldo -- http://www.annaleewaldo.com/sacajawea.htm

Sacajawea: 1400 + pages

The Heroic Saga of a Great Woman Whose Life Tells the Story of Lewis and Clark's historic trek.

Read an excerpt here by clicking on 'Preview Book' at the tab at the top:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_RugwYaK39EC

Really was an engrossing read to me and a lot of fun and adventure and I want to read it again!
The kind of book you just don't want to put down, even to eat dinner! It was so interesting to
me, I wanted to take notes on facts and terms in the book so that I could research them later
on even more. Make sure you have easy food and drinks available while you read this, as you won't
want to put the book down at all to cook or anything else! ;)

[NightWatcher]

16. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

both of those were one day reads

[Sequoia]

17. Johnny Got His Gun has been published in PB again.

That was some story...it was banned for a long time. The ending was shocking but it shouldn't have been.

[TornadoTN]

18. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon

I'm a big fan of comics, but I let this book slip completely under the radar. I believe it was published in 2000. Saw it on a bargain table at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago so I couldn't pass it up.

It's a great read and a great glimpse of 30's and 40's American culture and a window to the soul of just about everyone during that time. It's about two cousins from vastly different background who have a dream of putting together their own comic - which leads to some amazing revelations and adventures, romance and loss, and personal demons that plague them both.

Even if you aren't a comic fan, this is a great book.