The best book in the world that only you've read...

Here's a little question for you:

What is the best book in the world that only you seem to have read?

You know the situation: You're having a discussion about books and everyone is reeling off stuff they really like, to appreciative 'nods' and 'hmmms' from those assembled. You manage to elbow your way to the forefront of the conversation, take centre stage, announce the name and author of a persoanl favourite of yours and then...

Nothing. Silence. For agonising seconds before someone picks up the baton and gets the conversation moving again.

These books tend be ones that you inherit from other people, or buy in bargain bookshops or find in charity shops. They are books that seem to be too oblique, too badly advertised, poorly distributed or just appealling to too small a niche.

They are the books, who like their authors presumably, sit and mould waiting for the public to find them.

So, favourite books for blank looks? Mine is 'The Other Side' by Alfred Kubin. It's an extended manic depressive fever dream about a town owned by the richest man in the world that is invite only. Once you arrive there you find that he is buying up all of the old stuff in the world for his kingdom, which is full of surreal and odd events, and from which it is impossible to leave. I bought it in a charity shop for ten pence in a penguin modern classics edition, with a lovely grey spine.

The Other Side by Alfred Kubin

What about you?