The Lost Bookstore

This is the very best place to get fully submerged into LOST.
Our very own SCS is keen on all the literary reference in LOST so if your a book fan, youll be a fan of her’s as well- check out more of her published material here.

To read more about the INSPIRATION of LOST check out Lewis Carrolls Alice series —————— FOR BOOKS BY SEASON SEE BELOW

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For information on individual books please see below carousel…

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a children’s fantasy novel, written by Salman Rushdie, and first published in 1990. The book is set in a city so old that it has forgotten its name, and is an allegory for several modern societal problems, particularly those in the Indian sub-continent.

Lost References:

**Desmond reads this novel while on Oceanic Flight 815 during the flash-sideways timeline. (“LA X, Part 1″)
* ‘Haroun’ is a variant of the Hebrew name Aaron.
* Haroun, the main protagonist, spends most of the novel in a story world called Kahani that has characters and issues similar to Haroun’s real world. At the end of the novel, the reader is left to wonder whether Kahani was real or a dream, and whether strange changes to his real world are a result of his visit to Kahani or mere coincidence.

Fear and Trembling presents a highly original and provocative interpretation of the Binding of Isaac story as told in Genesis Chapter 22, and uses the story as an occasion to discuss fundamental issues in moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion, such as the nature of God and faith, faith’s relationship with ethics and morality, and the difficulty of being authentically religious.

Lost References: Found in a backpack in the cave outside the Temple. (“LA X, Part 1“)

Of Mice and Men is a Depression-era novel written by John Steinbeck, centering around two friends trying to save up enough money to start their own ranch and no longer be under the thumb and employees. George, the more business minded, also watches over Lennie, whose slow wit tends to affect their grand plans.

The book is critical of the American Dream, and all dreams in general, suggesting that they are, quite often, ultimately futile.

• A track on the season 4 soundtrack is called “Of Mice and Ben.” It plays during a montage of various characters on the island and freighter, concluding with Ben approaching and being knocked out by Keamy. (“There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1″)
• Three years later, Sawyer tells the Man in Black that Steinbeck is his favorite author. The Man in Black says he has never heard of the book as it is “after [his] time,” and Sawyer describes the book and its ending, in which George shoots Lennie in the head. He then draws his gun and threatens to do the same thing to the Man in Black, who talks him out of it. (“The Substitute”)

• One of the central themes in the novel, and in the show (especially pertaining to Sawyer) is isolation and finding a place to fit in in the world when you are different. Ben emphasizes this point across when he shows Sawyer they are on a smaller isolated island, talks about his suppressed emotions towards Kate, and then quotes the book: “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. It don’t make any difference who the guy is, so long as he’s with you. I tell ya…I tell ya, a guy gets too lonely, and he gets sick.”
• In the novel, the character Lenny has frequent dreams and visions of rabbits. The episode seems to reference this in Sawyer’s psychological torture scene.
• The last line is “Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?” suggesting that compassion is important, as two antagonists in the book speak these lines together. This is used to parallel the episode, where Sawyer (uncharacteristically) shows compassion in both the flashback and the present.
• In the novel, the characters play horse shoes, which is similarly seen in the episode “The Other Woman”. Hurley appears to beat Sawyer, in a way similar to how Crooks beat the rest of the characters in the novel.
• As described above, Sawyer describes the novel’s violent ending to the Man in Black, then attempts to recreate it. The Man in Black talks him out of it.

Trivia:

• John Steinbeck has written numerous novels, one of which is entitled ‘The Pearl’.
• John Terry, who plays Christian Shephard, has the role of Slim in the film adaptation.
• In the 1992 film adaptation actors Gary Sinise and Ray Walston portray George Milton and Candy. They also appear together in the TV miniseries The Stand, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name which has been confirmed as a major influence to Lost.