I can't find a complete list of them all online, only different incomplete lists, some of which reveal books that other don't, so I'll just have to work with hwat I have. A bulky (but certainly not complete) list can be found at here, which I am taking most of my episode notes from to start with.
Being a hardcore fan, my aim is to read all of these Lost books (or all of the ones that sound interesting anyway), and I own a great any of them already.
I've already read quite a few of them (most of them before Lost even aired or before the books wee featured in the show), so instead of reading them again in order to provide a decent, lengthy review, I thought I would just provide bitesize reviews of each to save time, and then longer reviews of each new Lost book I read for the first time, when I get around to them.
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Referenced in: ('Every Man for Himself' and 'The Substitute') This book appeared in prison with Sawyer as his book of choice. Sawyer and Ben later discussed the book on the island. Sawyer also claims it is his favourite book and recounts the novel's ending to the Man in Black in The Substitute.
By far my favourite of the books I studied at secondary school. A touching and expertly crafted novel on the dreams of simple men and the dangers of innocence. And the ending, of course, as Sawyer highlights, is one of the best in literature.
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Referenced in: ('Orientation') The DHARMA Initiative Orientation film was hidden behind this book, on a bookcase, in The Swan station.
Perhaps the novel that poses the best ambiguity: is she insane and imagining the ghosts and the children being deceivers? Or is she sane and thus these paranormal events really happening to her? It's written to carefully and cleverly that you can never be sure either way. It isn't even known which Henry James thought it was, with the exception of some minor hints in some of his letters to his friends if I remember rightly. Is it a coincidence that this pops up in the show just as we are introduced to a character that has spent an entire three years alone in a hatch? Perhaps it is meant to nudge us to question Desmond's sanity upon that first meeting, and if not his mental stability, then certainly the sanity of pushing a button every 108 minutes to stop the world ending.
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Referenced in: ('Not in Portland' and 'The Man from Tallahassee') When Alex, Kate, and Sawyer arrived to rescue Karl, Aldo was seen reading this book while standing guard. Ben has a copy of the book inside his living room in the Barracks.
A little tough to get through at times for someone like me who has a keen interest in such content but has very little knowledge on it. Clearly black holes, the fact that we can achieve time travel in some form for real, etc. are all closely tied to LOST's plot; with the island time jumps for example. Perhaps with this the writers are saying that some SF concepts that we thought were impossible are proving possible through the development of science, so some of the ideas used in the show (an island with unique and strange physics properties for example) might not be so improbable.
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Referenced in: ('...In Translation' and ' What Kate Did') After the raft is burned, Sawyer makes a reference to Jin about Lord of the Flies, in that the survivors might have been civilized before the crash, but have now turned to savages. When the Tail Sections survivors re-unite with the Fuselage survivors, Charlie comments that it seems like they went "Lord of the Flies".
The parallels with the show here are blindingly obvious. A group of kids land on an island and two sides emerge, one led by a savage child and one by a civilized child (Locke and Jack?). An entertaining read, but it just fell short of the mark for me for a true classic of literature. Without it though, we wouldn't have Sawyer's excellent quote "It's Lord of the flies time now".
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone - J. K. Rowling
Referenced in: ('Deus Ex Machina') Hurley makes a reference to Harry Potter when he comments that Sawyer with glasses resembles a "steam-rolled Harry Potter".
I was quite surprised that this was in here to be honest. As can be seen above, the link is flimsy, but still present none-the-less. As much as I may look down upon them now, I admit I did find them immensely addictive in my teen years. Several of the books featured in the show are children's books, and Harry Potter is undeniable a great example odd such. I don't think any parallels can be drawn to the show's design here, however, beyond Hurley's mocking of Sawyer.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Referenced in: ('Collision') As Locke completes a crossword puzzle in the hatch, the clue for 42 Down is "Enkidu's friend", to which Locke fills in "Gilgamesh".
Famed as being the first work of fiction literature ever written I believe (certainly the first fantasy work), I studied this during my degree and found it quite an entertaining read. It's very short, so won't take up much of your time, and is well worth the effort.
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Referenced in: ('The Cost of Living') Juliet enters Jack's holding room and brings a TV with a hidden message about Ben, but before airing it she tricks the cameras into thinking she's showing Jack "To Kill a Mockingbird", a film starring Gregory Peck, based off Harper Lee's novel.
Who can fault Lee's brilliant novel that focuses on race issues and morality all through the eyes of a young girl. It took me a while to get through it, but it is no doubt a masterpiece. Certainly worth your time.
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Referenced in: Likened to Desmond's predicament of being unstuck in time - Billy, the novel's protagonist, goes through the same thing.
Not Vonnegut's best I feel (so far, for me, that goes to 'The Sirens of Titan'), but still an excellent SF novel. It successfully deals with a real life issue - the Dresden bombings - which is probably why it is so accepted (or stolen) by the literature field and at the same deal deals full on with the SF trope of time travel. A great work.
VALIS - Philip K. Dick
Referenced in: Locke gives this to Ben, Ben claims he has read it, but Locke tells him he may have missed something the first time round.
Admittedly, I haven't read this twice yet, as the writers suggest, so I may not have picked up on those 'things I might have missed the first time around', but I love Philip K. Dick and I love this work. Heavily focused on what Dick truly believed was a religious experience that happened to him and detailing his subsequent beliefs that followed that event (for example, that we are all still trapped in the time of the Roman Empire), it is a wonderful head trip through the mind of this genius late in his career. He crucially considers whether his experience could just have been a drug induced hallucination (he was on drugs for his tooth at the time), or indeed whether he was and is in fact insane, as well as considering that he truly was contacted by a divine being. I can't wait to give this a second read. One of his best books.
The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
Referenced in: Read by Sawyer in the Barracks.
One of the first books I bought and read after seeing it featured in the show. The writers clearly drew quite heavily from this one; it concerns an island that a man becomes stranded upon where he finds a marvel of science - it is populated by hollograms that exist on a repeat loop (Morel's invention) that was made so that the people it portrays might have their souls transferred to it so they might live forever. An interesting read that is well worth picking up.
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