honestly did not hold my attention for very long but you can tell the author is very funny and passionate. well-written

An enjoyable journey through the books everyone isn't talking about! Some hidden gems and recommendations here.

I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't want to review a book that I didn't finish.

this was a interesting collection of essays, I really enjoyed reading them. I thought the topics were interesting and a fun take.

This was an interesting series of short essays on various books that aren't as well known. I hadn't heard of many of the books and found some of the essays quite interesting but I was expecting more of a personal, anecdotal reviews on the books. This is quite good for anyone who wants to find a few books that are less well-known, some hidden treasures perhaps...

The idea behind "B-Side Books" is pretty cool. Asking some famous writers and respected scholars to tell the readers of some of his favorite books that might have slipped through the cracks of the collective interest is awesome. It has the potential not only to introduce the casual reader (though which casual reader buys books published by Columbia University Press is beyond me...) to book they might have never heard of these novels or their writers. Were it not for two big problems - the books included and the tone of the authors.

First, the books. Looking at the selection found here, one would think that only anglophone literature has hidden gems, while everything else from around the world is unimportant. Sure, there are some books that aren't written originally in English to be found here, but they are so minuscule in number that can't be taken as anything else but just token. That's quite sad, as it perpetuates the Western-centric views on literature and culture. And a book such as this could've been a great vehicle for presenting other literatures to the readers.

The second is the tone of the writing. In one of the chapters, the writer speaks about the food table being the perfect place for vertical communication, for sharing ideas and so on. Sadly, this book does not feel like such a place. Instead, reading through the essays, the reader feels lectured - either by an esteemed and detached professor, or at best, by an incredibly pretentious "friend". In both ways, the writer feels distanced and superior to the reader, as if him appreciating these "secret" book (most of which aren't that unknown at all) makes him more special and better than the worldly, ordinary, and boring, reader.

A must-read for most (but perhaps not all) bibliophiles, for those readers who love to discover/re-discover books that have slipped off the radar, been under-appreciated or unjustly neglected, or simply fallen out of fashion. A series of 40 personal essays highlighting personal choices, there’s an eclectic range of titles to discover here and a goodly number of books to add to that scarily ever-growing TBR.

I always enjoy hearing about why people love the books they love. This collection of essays features writers and academics talking about their favourite "forgotten" or under appreciated works. Hearing from authors about works that inspired them as a child to what they're currently reading today is super fascinating to me, and I leave this book behind with a very long list of books added to my TBR list.

Thank you to NetGalley and Public Books for the ARC!

B-Side Books is an anthology of essays edited by Dr. John Plotz, curated from bookish erudite authors and others on their favorite "forgotten" books which they feel don't deserve to lie on the literary scrap-heap of history. Due out 1st June 2021 from the Columbia University Press, it's 280 pages and will be available in ebook format (other formats currently available also). This is an entry in the Public Books series devoted to scholarly essays and commentary on contemporary culture, politics, and society.

I always enjoy essays on literature and writing. They provide a wealth of inspiration for hunting down new authors, finding previously overlooked gems, and reaching outside comfort zones to choose cross-genre books which would otherwise get away. There are 40 essays included here ranging from the very popular and well known authors and essayists to those scholars who are perhaps less well known outside their academic niches. The "hidden gems" they've chosen were mostly previously unknown to me. In fact, of the 40 included books, only 4 of them were previously familiar to me.

I'm glad to have found this book and will utilize the suggestions here to at least sample some new works and authors. I found some few of the essays stilted and very dryly academic, but the points were salient and the language precise and worth the effort.

Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

My thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for an advanced copy of this book.

As a reader I always find it fascinating why people read the books that they read. The flashy cover that stops the eye, a familiar author blurbing away, a certain publisher track record. So that is why I found B-Side Books: Essays on Forgotten Favorites edited by John Plotz interesting.

First off the title mislead me into thinking the book was going to be about less popular books by authors, like in music. Or that it would be about maybe sub-genres of fiction. This is more of a deep backlist book, sometimes way back backlist collection, with accompaning essays. Various writers discuss a book they love, that is not well known or forgotten, but has meant something to writer. The essays do sometimes go on, sometimes you forget what the book under discussion was. B-Side is a good way to find titles you might like and it does range across many genres and countries. At the end I probably would have liked more titles to look for, and less me, me, me writing, but the collection is still very engaging and worth reading.

I love to hear people talk about books they love - especially books I know nothing about. This book is the reading version of that. Many readers have written short essays about the books they love that most people have never heard of. I noted down three or four books I might like to read myself, but even when I wasn't interested in the book (and the descriptions of books in some essays made me think, "Wow - that is SO not a book for me") I was always fascinated to read what an advocate had to say about it.

I read this as an e-arc courtesy of Netgalley and Columbia University Press. It’s a collection of essays from various authors regarding their favorite overlooked books and I think that it’s very much worth a read. With the number of books getting published every year it’s kind of inevitable that some books will fall by the wayside and B-Side Books presents a very persuasive collection of essays regarding the various author’s favorites. It’s very informative and you learn a lot about the time period when the books were written and how they affected each author. I recommend this and I also recommend checking out at least some of the books mentioned.

This was a collection of essays of forgotten books and books that have not received the praise they deserve. You do not to read this cover to cover, it is ok to skip around to read this and read this in short doses. Amusing and entertaining.

Thanks to Netgalley, John Plotz and Columbia University Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 6/1/21

Digital (Kindle) Formatting is terrible - can not read
Perhaps you will have a better formatted version in future, which I would be able to read and review.
Thank you!
Bookbarmy.com

This book has an original concept that will pull readers that love to read about books and look for recommendations.
This is a collection of essays that are interesting to read and I came away two books that I would like to read out of the collection.
Well written and a novel idea.
This book is best read in stages as some of the complex essays make it a read you have to come away from at times.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley in allowing me to read in return for a review.

This collection of 40 essays is literary criticism, lacking the personal connections and anecdotes I was hoping for.

At the least, I wanted to find inspiration to read these "B-Side" books, but only two writers managed to even slightly pique my interest in the books they wrote about (Adrienne Brown on <i>Brown Girl, Brownstones</i> by Paule Marshall; and Sharon Marcus on <i>Life Among the Savages</i> and <i>Raising Demons</i>, both by Shirley Jackson).

Spoilers for various books are shared, and not just for the books named in the chapter titles. Only one essayist was thoughtful enough to include a warning of said spoilers.

Also present is the glorification of sex (deviant sex, in particular), complete with horrifying details, the occult, and liberal politics.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

This is the sort of book which appeals to any book addict. Sure, I’m only up to H in the 1000 books to read list, but look, here’s a new book suggesting 40 books to read! I’d already read one of them—Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood during a period when I was reading everything she wrote.

I was a little concerned that if these books were forgotten, unread, etc., any which interested me would be out of print and difficult to find. But of the five which caught my attention (two novels from more than a century ago and three from 20-40 years ago), all are in print, and my local library even has two of them, so the titles apparently aren’t really that obscure.

Thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for a copy to review.

In his contribution to B-Side Books, Carlo Rotella writes: “When you champion a writer who you regard as underappreciated, it’s never clear to what extent you’re trying to get others to appreciate your writer and to what extent you’re trying to show how much more discerning you are than everyone else. Perhaps it’s really your own greatness, not your beloved writer’s, that you consider underappreciated.” And in doing so he, knowingly or not, has highlighted the issue with this collection, subtitled Essays on Forgotten Favorites.
As to the Forgotten Favorites themselves, several are not that long forgotten. I’m sure I remember Brown Girl, Brown Stones and Lolly Willowes being permanently in stock at the wonderful Silver Moon bookshop that used to be on Charing Cross Road. And The Young Visiters was a 2003 TV movie, starring the ever-reliable Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy.
Some of the recommendations are lukewarm at best. (“JR Ackerley’s We Think the World of You (1960) isn’t a novel I’d ever say I think the world of…”). Others are seemingly there to remind us that the author’s best work is found elsewhere. We learn that “what might be (Patience) Agbabi’s best individual poems aren’t even in” Transformatrix, the collection that is the subject of the last essay. Here, the author goes on to describe, in some detail, these better poems. Which aren’t in Transformatrix. Agbabi’s poem Josephine Baker Finds Herself, we are told, has to be read or heard whole to be understood. The essay then goes on to quote a portion of it.
The contributors to this collection are, in the main, academics, whose target audience is probably other academics. Did this reader know what JSTOR was? She did not.
All in all, a bit of a missed opportunity.

I thought this book would be a catch-all, preaching to the converted, allowing any and every browser to find something wonderful. It's not – I would show it to people awaiting the next McSweeney's, but everyone? Certainly not. I was reminded of the 33 1/3 books while downloading this, and how they splodged a book together where all their musical-minded contributors all gave a few words in praise of the deep cuts, the also-rans, the not-worth-a-full-volume. Here, forty writers (and if you've heard of three of them you're doing well) give us half a dozen pages in honour of a literary deep cut, the novel or story or collection of poems that they are miffed so few people seem to know about.

And as a result the entrants are pretty obscure (and as I definitely know of four of them, albeit having read none, I'll use the same trick – that if you know five of them you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din). But the book didn't get off to a good start with me – not only was it a very modern American style of appreciation, where I was spoken down to from the lecture rostrum and not across a bar table, none of the contents convinced. It took almost for a whole academic career of someone being changed through receipt of one Greek myth compendium for me to be on board. If I took anything from these pages it might be a very small itch to check out Helen DeWitt, or "Lolly Willowes", or "Lady Into Fox". I might be persuaded to give "Riddley Walker" an actual try. And I think everybody will learn that this would have been much more fun and friendly if everyone within could write like the star contributor, Ursula Le Guin – but then, so few of us can.

This isn't awful, but I would have expected that any look at unknown treasures of literature would have much more than the 'bound to remain unknown' factor that this itself has. Were common browsers to have contributed, this might have been wonderful – academe, less so.