Books you constantly see in the shelves of 2nd hand bookstores...

...and you want to pick them up because you think its an out-of-fashion masterpiece (which sold millions at the time) that has, ahem, been left on the shelf for you to magically re-discover. But you never do pick it up because you can't be arsed or think that history has passed the correct judgement upon it.

In this thread:

1) post the title here so that
2) someone who has read it could tell if it is good (and therefore encourage you to make the great leap) or a load of ol' tripe to be left on there to rot.

It needn't be restricted to people who go to physical shops - maybe you saw something on amazon that intrigued you but you just won't pay 1p for it.

I was thinking about this in regards Henry de Montherlant. I always see his tetralogy (The Girls) which I pass off as 800 pages of misogyny and casual anti-semitism.

who's the guy who wrote all those occult thrillers? British guy. I see his books all the time, never investigated.

Dennis Wheatley?

That's the one! As I understand it he was huge at one point & just completely faded from public consciousness. I'd be intrigued to read some.

He was rabidly right wing and that came through in his writing, which probably explains why his reputation fell off rapidly after the Hammer era of adaptations. His books feel dated in style and fairly stilted but I don't think they're awful. To The Devil A Daughter is OK, though not a patch on the film.

I keep lingering on books by Catherynne Valente. They look like they could be good gothic trash, I don't know. Anyone?

For further reference: Books you never fail to see in charity shops

Back in the 1970s I would constantly see pocket-sized hardcover copies of two best sellers from before 1900: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome and The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner. The Jerome book has never been out of print and it's seen as a minor classic. I've never read the Schreiner book and it seems to be mostly forgotten now.

Aimless that's the same kind of thread but mine has a twist :)

i used to see harold brodkey's 'runaway soul' at used bookstores all the time. it was supposed to be his masterpiece, decades in the making, finally came out not long before his death and turned out to be completely unreadable. i picked it up myself a few years ago and make periodic attempts to read it. it probably is one of the strangest novels i've ever come across: reads a bit like 'ulysses' if joyce hadn't bothered to find anything to write about, and just recorded every half-coherent thought that came into his head. some (really) beautiful writing, and a lot of complete nonsense.