Most underrated books?

[traveller]

So I saw a post about the most overrated books and started thinking about some underrated books.

 

Sometimes people are very taken up by popular works like Shakespeare, which no doubt are genius, but less infamous works that are also very genius get overlooked.

 

My first choice is the Lies of Locke Lamora, one of a long series. It does have quite some fame but I dont think it has just enough. I adore the series and it is so elaborate and thrilling.

 

Another one is the Autobiography of Malcolm X; this is an autobiography so I dont know if I can put this under literature? You cant really judge a biography by literature terms, can you? It is however a brilliant read in terms of inspiration and it is life changing.

 

What books have you read that you think are underrated?

[Blackcurrant]

For IB?  

 

The Bible. Never seen it on the syllabus but it should be there for all serious students of Lit. How can you study any lit. and understand it without knowing something of this never-read-book??

 

I'm no Bible-thumper, btw. But it's lit. nonetheless

[ultimateone]

I personally think To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is an amazing book that addresses many different social issues. It's constantly being put down because of its possibly hard-to-read writing format, using the stream of consciousness writing technique.

[veregudmen]

The Siege, by Ismail Kadare. One of the best books I have ever read, and I have read a lot. It's not a very hard book to grasp in terms of language, but the storytelling is just hypnotic. It draws you in, and by the end of the book, even though many, many details of the siege (such as the exact location) are left out you get this intense feeling of having been there and having lived the conflict. 

Lots of underrated books but none in my opinion more than this one. 

[ClimaxOfHorror]

I feel like most "underrated" books tend to be by authors whose contemporaries, by some accident of history, tickled the fancy of scholars slightly more than they did, resulting in great books becoming forgotten over time. I feel this is the case for authors like Anne Brontë, which is why I would suggest her Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as underrated.

These books deal with major social issues of the Victorian era, such as the patriarchal oppression of women, alcoholism, domestic violence, animal cruelty, and the villainous nature of the upper class. Both books are entertaining and thought-provoking, but they are vastly underrated and under-read because critics at the time thought Charlotte and Emily Brontë wrote slightly less offensive and less brutally honest novels. In fact, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was purposefully mangled in its second edition so it would be slightly less controversial. Sadly, this is the edition upon which most current copies of the book are based. To this day, most copies of the book lack the opening chapter. Still, both books are fantastic and worth reading.

Also, in addition to To the Lighthouse, I would like to recommend Virginia Woolf's The Waves. It is really experimental and confusing with its stream-of-consciousness technique and multiple narrators, but it has really interesting themes of conformity, the need for human interaction, and the difficulties associated with losing a loved one.