Celebrating Five Years of "Forgotten Books"

[J. Kingston Pierce]

As hard as this is to believe, it was a full five years ago this month that Derringer Award-winning short-story writer Patricia “Patti” Abbott suggested it might be fun -- and perhaps even a bit enlightening -- for the Web’s growing ranks of book bloggers to recommend, each Friday, “books we love but might forgotten over the years.” That proposal has since generated many thousands of posts about unjustly neglected works of fiction and non-fiction, including 122 such write-ups (so far) in The Rap Sheet.

With the fifth anniversary of this meme coming right up, on April 25, Abbott mentioned to me that we really ought to celebrate. And the best way, of course, would be to produce a plenitude of brand-new posts building on the original idea. So, here’s an invitation: If you’ve never contributed your opinions to the Web-wide “forgotten books” series, or even if you have done so many times before, we hope you’ll take the opportunity next month to write about an unjustly neglected or insufficiently championed book from the past. The optimum time to post your contribution would be between Monday, April 22, and Friday, April 26.

If you don’t have a blog of your own in which to publish, Patti Abbott says she’ll be happy to accept any and all submissions along these lines; simply drop her an e-mail note explaining your intentions here. I would also be glad to receive new “forgotten books” posts for The Rap Sheet, though I prefer that those focus on works of crime, mystery, or thriller fiction. Please contact me here with specifics on which book you would like to address, but try to do so by Friday, April 19.

A complete list of fifth-anniversary additions to the “forgotten books” series will be posted in Abbott’s blog, Pattinase, on April 26.