On Sunday I heard an interesting interview with Stuart Kelly, author of Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read. In it, Kelly discusses great books that were planned but never started, started by never finished, destroyed before being published, or simply lost. Two of the greatest losses mentioned in the interview were the ancient Greek tragedies, only a small fraction of which survive, and the great library at Alexandria, which was destroyed by Muslim conquerers who believed that the Koran was the only book that should exist. I wonder if we have made up for those losses in the intervening millenia? You can listen to this entertaining, if a little sad, interview at the CBC Writers and Company website.
