DISCUSSION: A Book Uncovered
I have had this book for as long as I could remember. I have kept it only because I love books and I am incapable of throwing a book away, not because I wanted to read it. In fact, I did not even know the author. Neither did it occur to me to google his name. All that I knew of the book was its strange title. The closest I had come to glancing through is flipping the pages at a speed no one can read.
However, everything changed when on May 15th or thereabout I went on my usual blog-reading. There is this blog dedicated solely to reviewing books by individuals who have won the Nobel Laureate in Literature. It is there that I discovered that Elias Canetti, the author of Auto-da-fe, the book in question, was the 1981 Nobelist. I was shocked that I have never discovered this all this while. My happiness arose not because Elias Canetti won the Nobelist but that the book was worth the keep. With this information I embarked on a search on my copy of this old book. And read it.
Have you experienced a similar situation before? Have you had a book whose value only became apparent after a number of years?
Nana, how can one know the value of a book until one's read it? The Nobel--or any other prize--is no guarantee of value; in fact, I'd much prefer to read a book by a non-Nobel winner vs. a Nobel winner given my experience reading books by each class of author.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Personally I don't peg my readings to a Nobel. However, here I never gave the book a glance. I thought it was one of those books my parents read for grammar class.
DeleteThe whole thing is interesting. Kind of bordering on weird. I'd be interested to read how the book affected you. If it did. Such a thing has never happened to me with a book (even though there are a couple that I have yet to read after sitting on my bookshelf for many years).
ReplyDeleteI can say it is a great read; very illuminating.
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