# Most Underrated Books In History



## Rustgold (Feb 2, 2013)

We have the most overrated books in history, now for the more difficult most underrated books in history.

To start things off.
Now I won't say her books are close to perfect, and I'd list her first fault as loving her characters too much and don't let them die; however I'd read anything from Angie Sage.  No, they aren't a Rolls Royce, but a Rolls is only a Mercedes in a shell these days.  Plus I'd rate them higher then most highly rated 'best sellers', which makes them underrated in my opinion.


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## Kyle R (Feb 2, 2013)

I haven't heard of Angie Sage, but now that I have, I'm glad to have a new author to [strike]stalk[/strike] read. :encouragement:


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## Ever2222 (Feb 3, 2013)

Ugh! This is so hard. I hate to say this but every time I think of underrated books, Misery by Stephen King comes greatly to mind.


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## Nee (Feb 3, 2013)

Buzz Cut by James W. Hall. One of the best examples of Deep POV I can think of.


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## moderan (Feb 3, 2013)

Stand On Zanzibar, by John Brunner. Great read, hugely ambitious format based on dos Passos' USA. Amazingly prescient regarding our technological, sociological, and environmental present. That it has ever gone out of print is a crime against humanity.


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## Winston (Feb 3, 2013)

_We _by Yevgeny Zamyatin.   

The dystopian novel that all modern iterations owe their lineage to.


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## moderan (Feb 12, 2013)

The Monk, by Matthew Lewis. Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Both spawned multiple genera.


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## Lewdog (Feb 12, 2013)

Mick Foley's "Have A Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks" was awesome.  I'd recommend it.


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## moderan (Feb 12, 2013)

I like it too...but as "most under-rated book in history", I don't think it makes the cut. Was surprisingly well-written though.


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## Fats Velvet (Feb 18, 2013)

Winston, We is only underrated if your experience of dystopian literature, or literatue in general, is limited. We is rightly regarded as a landmark of the genre. It is also an aesthetically tragic novel, in the sense that it was written during that brief anything-goes period of the Soviet-era during which writers were permitted total artistic freedom, and which also produced other classic sci-fi satire like Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog and Fatal Eggs.  Stalinism put an end to that.

One of my votes goes to Mark Twain's A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It works as an 18'th century critique of the Old World, an homage to American industriousness, and was, weirdly, the first alternate history novel.  The contrast between primitive fuedal England and the yankee factory-foreman-cum-Captain of Arthurian industry lends it a sci-fi flavor.  Plus it is bat-crap hilarious.


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## Daevid (Feb 20, 2013)

moderan said:


> The Monk, by Matthew Lewis. Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Both spawned multiple genera.



The Monk I can see, but do you really think Frankenstein is underrated? I was under the impression that it was already held in fairly high regard.


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## moderan (Feb 20, 2013)

It is, but I don't believe it is held in high enough esteem. As the (consensus) first real science fiction novel and the crossroads between the "pure gothic", as in the works of Walpole, et al, and the "modern novel", Mary Shelley's first novel cannot be rated highly enough in my estimation. It also reads pretty well, despite its age. Her other work also has that clarity of language (The Last Man, for example) but has not the striking originality of thought or of conception.
This said, despite the novel's obvious flaws as a narrative. It is ultimately unsatisying as a story, but its influence is towering and undeniable.


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## ppsage (Mar 1, 2013)

_Travels in Arabia Deserta _by Charles Montagu Doughty 

_A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers _by Henry David Thoreau

Everything by Dame Freya Madeline Stark 

_Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes _by Robert Louis Stevenson

_Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-made Man _by Garry Wills

_The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man _by Marshall McLuhan

_The Rainbow_ by D. H. Lawrence

_Sanctuary_ by William Faulkner

_Ancient Evenings _by Norman Mailer


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