150 Astounding, Mostly Forgotten Books

No offense, but screw the BBC.

They published a silly list of 100 books you should have read by now — a stinker many people seeded on Facebook in 2010. Well, maybe the books weren’t “silly,” but they were a predictable lot of dust-drenched classics.

You want to really do yourself a favor in the 21^st century? Read something that didn’t get its proper due the first time around. If they’re available for your e-book reader (yeah, right), have it. Otherwise, the trees are already cut down.

Here you’ll find my list of some 150 favorites: novels, non-fiction works, biographies, poetry, plays, diaries, art books, etc. I spent 20 years running these down in bookstores around the world, and writing people letters and making expensive long-distance calls to acquire them — before there was an Internet. You want to know what these books are about? Do a little research. That’s what Google and amazon are for! Then, enjoy.

Greg’s Recommended Read List: (boldface indicates personal favorites)

Edward Abbey — Desert Solitaire (A Season in the Wilderness), 1968

Edwin A. Abbot — Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions

Phillipe Alfau — Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

Frank Earl Andrews and Albert Dickens — Voices From the Big House, 1972 (editors and contributors)

Leonid Andreyev — The Little Angel (or the Abyss, or the Governor, Red ..)

Guillame Apollinaire — The Poet Assassinated

Juan Jose Arreola — Confabulario and Other Inventions, 1964

Antonin Artaud — The Peyote Dance (also, his essay: No More Masterpieces)

Paul Aster — City of Glass

Lester Bangs — Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

W.N.P. Barbellion (Bruce Cummings) — The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 1918

John Franklin Bardin — Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly, 1948

Djuna Barnes — Nightwood, 1936

George Bataille — Story of the Eye, 1928

Jean Baudrillard — America, 1986

William Beckford — Vathek, 1782

Gottfried Benn — Primal Vision

Meyer Berger — Meyer Berger’s New York, 1960

E.L. Bernays — Crystallizing Public Opinion

Pierre Berton — Klodike, the Last Great Gold Rush 1896 – 1899

Ernest Betts — Heraclitus, of the Future of Films, 1928

Andrei Biely — St. Petersburg, 1911

Ambrose Bierce — The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

Richard Bissell — A Stretch on the River

Wolfgang Borchert — The Man Outside

Tadeusz Borowski — This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Jane Bowles — Two Serious Ladies

Chandler Brossard — Who Walk in Darkness

A.S. Byatt, Possession

Georg Buchner — Woyzeck

Lord (Richard) Buckley — Hiparama of the Classics, 1960

Mikhail Bulgakov — The Heart of a Dog, 1925

James M. Cain, Serenade

Italo Calvino — Cosmicomics

Elias Canetti — Auto de Fe, 1935

Haydun Carruth — Poems

Karel Capek — War With the Newts, 1936

Alejo Carpentier — The Lost Steps, 1953

Nel Cassady — The First Third

Louis-Ferdinand Celine — Journey to the End of the Night, 1932

Aime Cesiare —  Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Alfred Chester — The Exquisite Corspe, 1968

Emil M. Cioran — A Short History of Decay, 1949

J.E. Cirlot — A Dictionary of Symbols

Jan Cremer — I Jan Cremer, 1964

Charles Cros — Poetry

Harry Crosby — Shadows of the Sun: the Diaries of Harry Crosby

Salvador Dali — Hidden Faces, 1944

Rene Daumal — A Night of Serious Drinking

Philip K. Dick — Valis

Lord Dunsay — The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories

Friedrich Durrenmatt — The Physicists

Isabelle Eberhardt — The Oblivion Seekers (translated by Paul Bowles)

Harlan Ellison — Dangerous Visions 1 (S.F. Anthology)

Richard Farina — Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

John Henry Faulk — The Uncensored John Henry Faulk

Charles G. Finney — The Circus of Dr. Lao, 1935

Leslie Garrett — The Beasts, 1968

Pierre Gascar — Mean and Beasts, 1953

William H. Gass – Omensetter’s Luck, 1966

Witold Gobrowicz — Ferdydurke

Babs Gonzales — I Paid My Dues

William Goyen — The House of Breath

Sanche de Gramont — The French: Portrait of a People, 1969

Alasdair Gray — Lanark: A Life in Four Books

Jerzy Grotowski – Towards a Poor Theater, 1968

Knut Hamsen — Hunger

Jaroslva Hasek — The Good Solder Schweik, 1923

Sterling Hayden — Wanderer, 1963

Nathan C. Heard — Howard Street

Lafcadio Hearn — Kwaidan

Sadeq Hedayat — The Blind Owl

James Leo Herlihy — Season of the Witch

Stephan Heym — The Wandering Jew

Joris-Karl Hysmann — Against the Grain (A Rebours)

Gullermo Cabrera Infante — Three Trapped Tigers

Alfred Jarry — Ubu Roi

Al Jennings — Through the Shadows With O. Henry

Gary Jennings — Spangle; Raptor; Aztec; The Journeyer

Ernst Junger — Storm of Steel

Wassily Kandinsky — Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912

Anna Kavan — Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories (or Ice)

Yansuri Kawabata — The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

Bruce Winton Knight — How to Run a War

Janusz Korczak — King Matt the First

Count Alfred Korzybski — Science and Sanity

Karl Kraus — The Last Days of Mankind: A Tragedy in Five Acts

Par Fabien Lagervist — The Dwarf

Halldor Laxness — The Atom Station And I will write about Laxness ….

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Gersham Legman — On Love and Death Legman (supposedly his real name) was one of the great American literary oddballs of the 1940s and 1950s. At one point, he was a “researcher” of sexual literature for Kinsey. In his essential 1948 monograph (which I bought for five measly bucks in a first edition of from a basement dwelling bookseller in Seattle, in the 1990s; the image at right is a ’60s reprint), is a scathing attack on the American proclivity for allowing the worst kind of torture, sadism and violence to enter the ranks of popular culture unhindered, but anything concerned with sexuality (or, heaven forbid nudity) is consider “dirty” and is banned. Legman, a scholar, was relentless in this classic tirade: attacking chuavinism as it is evidenced in violence against women (to his credit), detective fiction (now, really), comic books (well …). Legman is both witty and completely obsessed. And he sure knows his facts, and how to write. He is also the same man who wrote the scholarly works on vulgar humor (The Rationale of the Dirty Joke, published in two volumes). He did a whole book on fellacio and cunniligus, an expose of the Knights Templars (which a French rare-bookseller almost threw me out of his store for asking about in Paris in the ’90s), and much more. He was also apparently a Mozart scholar and did origami in his “spare” time. I have collected first editions of all his books, which took some doing, I’ll tell you. I even have a bound edition of all the examples of his scholarly journal Neurotica, which was the last straw that got banned by the Feds in the 1950s. That forced Legman to become an expatriate. He lived in a Knights Templar castle in southern France for many years. I had his phone number. But I never had the courage to call him for a journalistic interview. He was a noted curmudgeon, churlish as hell. Blind and vociferous. I just didn’t feel like rankling him. But, by all means, check out his truly one-of-a-kind writings!

Ursula K. Le Guin — A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968

Eric Linklater — Poet’s Pub this is where I will write about Poet’s Pub

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Jakov Lind — Soul of Wood

Clarice Lispector — Family Ties

J.F. Lyotard — The Post Modern Condition

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis — Epitaph of a Small Winner

Curzio Malaparte — The Skin (Kurt Suckert)

Joseph Moncure March — The Wild Party

Don Marquis — archy & mehitable (Donald Robert Perry)

Warren Miller — Looking for the General (author of The Cool World)

Octave Mirbeau — The Torture Garden

Joseph Mitchell — Joe Gould’s Secret

Nicolas Montserrat — The Ship That Died of Shame

Michael Murphy — Golf in the Kingdom, 1972

Silvina Ocampo — Leopoldina’s Dream, 1988

Charles Olson — The Maximus Poems, 1983

Juan Carlos Onetti — Body Snatcher

Breece D’J Pancake — The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, 1983

Harry Partch — Bitter Music (collected journals); and Genesis of a Music

Jane J. Philips — Mojo Hand

Stephen Potter — Gamesmanship

(Sir) Herbert Read — The Green Child, 1948

Ishmael Reed — Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, 1969

Wilhelm Reich — The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Amar De Reincourt — Sex and Power in History

Jean Rhys — Good Morning, Midnight, 1939

Edward Roditi — The Emperor of Midnight

Raymond Roussel — Locus Solus, 1918

Rudy Rucker — The 57^th Franz Kafka, 1983

Juan Rulfo — Pedro Paramo, 1955 (also The Burning Plain, stories)

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch — Venus in Furs

Marquis DeSade — 120 Days of Sodom

Alex Schoumatoff — Florida Ramble

Bruno Schultz — Street of Crocodiles

Roger Shattuck — The Banquet Years: The Arts in France 1885-1918

Dr. John Shay — Achillies in Vietnam

Curt Sidomak — Donovan’s Brain, 1942

Joseph Skvorecky — The Brass Saxophone

J.R. Slamanca — Lilith

Iceberg Slim — Trick Baby, 1967

Elizabeth Smart — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Logan Pearsall Smith — All Trivia: A Collection of Reflections & Aphorisms

Phillippe Soupalt — Last Nights of Paris, 1928

Terry Southern — Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Stories

Sporeri — Mythological Travels

Frank Stanford — The Singing Knives, 1972

Olaf Stapleton — Sirius

Bruce Sterling — Schismatrix, 1985

Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno, 1923

Andrei Tarkovsky — Sculpting in Time

Michel Tournier — The Ogre

Georg Trakl — Autumn Sonata: Collected Poems

B. Traven — The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Alexander Trocchi — Cain’s Book

Amos Tutuola — The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads, 1928 (also, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts)

Cesar Vallejo — The Dark Messengers (The Dark Heralds)

Vincent Van Gogh — Letters to Theo

Thorstein Bunde Veblen — Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899

Villoldo — Three Faces of the Jaguar (drug experiences in Mexico)

R. Gordon Wassen — Soma

Wetering — The Empty Mirror

Herman G. Weinberg — Saint Cinema

Dennis Wepman, Ronald B. Newman, Murray B. Binderman — The Life: The Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hipster, 1976

Calder Willingham — Gates of Hell, 1951

Stanislav Ignacy Witkiewicz — The Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays and Documents

Bernard Wolfe — The Late Risers: Their Masquerade

Rudy Wurlitzer — Nog, 1969

Lin Yu-Tang — The Importance of Living

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin — We, 1920

Stephn Zweig — The Royal Game