The Ultimate Unauthorized Resource to the Stories Behind Lost
Lost is a complex and mysterious tale, one that draws on many sources for its themes and ideas—sources you must understand to become an advanced Lost expert. Lost's Buried Treasures is the ultimate unauthorized guide to the ideas that have influenced the show and its writers—and is completely updated through Season Five.

Explore:
Books and movies important to the show and how they are connected
Geographical clues
New and old theories
Musical references and the meaning behind the incredible soundtrack
The best online resources
The video and role-playing games and what they've revealed
Cast, writer, and director biographies
And much more

NO TRUE LOST FAN SHOULD EVER WATCH AN EPISODE WITHOUT THIS CRUCIAL GUIDE IN HAND. Explore all the interconnected stories and mysterious references that make the show so fascinating.

DISCLAIMER: This book is an independent work of commentary, criticism, and scholarship. Neither this book, nor its author and publisher, are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by, or affiliated in any way with the copyright and trademark owner of Lost and/or the creators of Lost.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Chapter One

Is There an (Ancestor) Text on This Island?

Even before the library in the Swan Hatch, entered for the first time in "Man of Science, Man of Faith" (2.1, the initial episode of Season Two), and that Bible Mr. Eko finds in the Arrow Hatch, the one the Tailies stumble upon in "…and Found" (2.5) made Mystery Island more bookish, tomes were common enough on Lost—not as common as miniature liquor bottles, but not exactly rare either.

Throughout Season One, we find the unlikely avid reader Sawyer page-turning a variety of books, from Richard Adams' Watership Down (a book he rereads in "Left Behind," 3.15) to Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. In Season Two, he continues to read from his word horde: Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret and Walker Percy's Lancelot. In The Swan even more books have screen time: James' The Turn of the Screw, Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and, most notoriously, O'Brien's The Third Policeman, an obscure Irish novel that became a surprise bestseller due to its unintentional product placement cameo. And speaking of product placement, in "The Long Con" we find Hurley reading the manuscript of Bad Twin, a Lost tie-in novel written by the late Oceanic 815 passenger Gary Troup, later released by Hyperion, the publisher of official Lost books. Season Three continued to be bookish. The opening scene of the first episode ("A Tale of Two Cities," 3.1) shows a book club—the assigned book Stephen King's Carrie. Later, in "Every Man for Himself" (3.4), Ben evokes Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in his humbling of Sawyer, and in "Not in Portland" (3.7), Aldo is seen reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. In Seasons Four and Five the books kept appearing: Philip K. Dick's VALIS and Casares' The Invention of Morel in "Eggtown" (4.4); Joyce's Ulysses in "316" (5.6); Castaneda's A Separate Reality in "He's Our You" (5.10); and Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge in "The Incident" (5.17).

To paraphrase a question literary critic Stanley Fish once famously asked in the title of a book: "Is there a text on this island?" Many, many texts is the answer. On the official website a Lost book club has been established, and though it's not likely to rival Oprah in sales, it is impressive nonetheless. Astonishingly, given that Lost is the story of the aftermath of a plane crash, not a single John Grisham novel has been found.

Not all the "texts" are literary, of course. Cinema ancestors—disaster films, Cast Away, Jurassic Park—and television series—The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilligan's Island, Survivor, The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, The X-Files—have all influenced Lost's themes, its mise-en-scéne, its characterization, its narrative style. The postmodern, as Umberto Eco has noted, is the age of the "already said." Books, films, and television have all had their say on Lost.

Each time a new Lost text opens for perusal, the fans go wild and speculation runs rampant as the Lost-fixated begin to read, backward and forward, an extraordinarily complex, still unfolding, still entangling narrative. The threads of a text, a "kind of halfway house between past and future," the critic Wolfgang Iser would write, always exist in "a state of suspended validity" (370), and such threads are particularly well-suited for today's avidly conjecturing, anxious to conspire "fan-scholar."

"Quality" television series, according to Robert Thompson's authoritative delineation, are "literary and writer-based" (15), and most readily, proudly acknowledge their ancestors and their influences. When Twin Peaks' Black Lodge turned out to be in Glastonbury Grove and Windom Earle and Leo Johnson cozied up in their Verdant Bower, the Arthurian legends and Spenser's Faerie Queene were born again in a new medium. When Tony Soprano sobbed uncontrollably at the ministrations of Tom Powers' loving mother in Public Enemy (as seen on TV), televised and filmic mobsters became brothers in the same gang—and genre.

Books, film, music, television, as well as other manifestations of both low and high culture—to borrow the witty formulation of film scholar Robert Stam—are governed by the same principle as sexually transmitted diseases. To have sex with another is to have had sex with all of his or her other sexual partners, and every "text"—every new novel or short story, song, or movie, or television series—is far from innocent; each potentially carries the "contagion" of every other text it and its creators have "slept with."

Lost is highly promiscuous, sleeping around with a wide variety of textual "partners." We divide these partners, one form of buried treasures, into three sections: Books in the Narrative considers texts that have actually put in a physical appearance on Lost. Ancestor Texts2 offers accounts of Lost's literary predecessors. Must See TV and Movies provides a guide to the series' film and television predecessors.

Books in the Narrative

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret—When caught reading Judy Blume's novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret ("The Whole Truth," 2.16), Sawyer downplays his interest in the preteen drama by calling it "predictable" and with "not nearly enough sex." (Though Sawyer belittles the book for its lack of sex, Margaret is, according to the American Library Association, among the top 100 frequently challenged books in libraries because of its frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Needless to say, it is certainly more than a simple, preteen drama.)

With its focus on the title character's experiences with menstruation and buying her first bra, Margaret is often referred to as the quintessential teen novel, but it is just as much about struggling with spiritual development. Margaret grows up with a mixed religious heritage—one Christian and one Jewish parent—and the novel follows her efforts to come to grips with her own beliefs. Menstruation and training bras aside, it is a story of religious quest.

Lost often delves into the importance of faith, of good vs. evil, of scientific vs. spiritual. Like Margaret, the Losties have trouble deciding if they buy into spiritual mumbo jumbo, and, like Margaret, they receive many mixed messages about faith—at once bringing people back from the dead and pitilessly killing off members of the group.
(amazon)
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Lost's Buried Treasures is a book by Lynnette Porter, David Lavery, and Hillary Robson. The book is an examination of recurring topics and themes such as geography, fan theories, music, and electromagnetism. The authors provide an extensive guide to the clues and secrets of the show, detailing the connections between the secrets and anticipating what they will mean for the Lost's ultimate mystery. The edition described here covers seasons 1 through 3.

Topics.
Geographical clues
Exploring electromagnetism
New and old theories
References: music, books on the Island, ancestor texts, movies and TV
"The science, pseudo-science and social science of Lost"
Locations
Online resources
Top 10 lists.

Authors.
Lynnette Porter, an associate professor in humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, is a contributor at The LOST Wikia.(Unlocking the Meaning of Lost, 2nd ed., p. 249) David Lavery is the author of nine books, including studies of Lost, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hilary Robson is an independent scholar and author, and a contributor to recent books on Alias and Lost.
(Викия.)

If you’re feeling as lost as the survivors, then Finding Lost — Season Three: The Unofficial Guide will help to put the pieces of the puzzle in place. When author Nikki Stafford released her first volume on this series, covering seasons one and two, the book was an immediate success, and fans everywhere were touting it as the best of the Lost books on the market. Stafford’s was the only book to cover each episode in–depth, as well as provide chapters on books referenced on the show, historical figures, religious iconography, and other background materials that put her readers far ahead of other viewers who weren’t catching all of the clues.

Now, in Finding Lost — Season Three: The Unofficial Guide, Stafford continues to delve into the mysteries of this show to help her readers piece together the puzzle. With bios of the new actors, analyses of the two worlds that have collided between the Losties and The Others, and examinations of books such as A Tale of Two Cities and Of Mice and Men, this book is sure to be as well read as her first one. Similarly, she will include photos and addresses of the show’s filming locations in Hawaii, as well as dozens of exclusive photos taken on the set.

Both casual and diehard fans will come away from this book feeling more informed about the characters, their backgrounds, and the island. Armed with these clues, this book aims to finally help viewers “find” Lost."

Nikki Stafford is the author of several companion television guides, including guides to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Alias. She lives in Toronto.

This book goes over everything from a description of each and every book seen in Lost to all the guest stars and air dates for each episode of Lost.
This book covers everything in Season 1 & Season 2, that's the first 65 days on the island.
The book has a chapter of filming locations with a map of Oahu, so fans could actually seek them out.

"The Finding Lost series is quite simply the best resource for fans. Not only is the information concise and complete, Nikki Stafford’s commentary is insightful, relevant, and entertaining. No matter how well you know the show, Stafford’s analysis of the themes and symbolism of Lost will renew your desire to go back and watch over and over again." —Jon "DocArzt" Lachonis

Throughout the first three seasons of Lost, we saw the Lostaways trying to get rescued, adapting to the island, and then dealing with the "natives" of the island, the Others. But the jaw-dropping fourth season was the turning point in the series, giving fans a glimpse of the future through flashforwards of those who made it off the island. While this season provided answers to earlier mysteries, it also raised new questions and muddled viewers' brains with time-traveling bunnies. This book helps put those pieces back into a context that begins to make sense again. Finding Lost is the only Lost guide that analyzes the show episode by episode, and includes:

• An in-depth look at every episode of season 4, with highlights, little-known facts, and nitpicks

• Chapters on time travel, the popular time loop theory, philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the online game Find815, and the Lost mobisodes

• Sidebars chronicling fun trivia such as Sawyer's nicknames, the meaning of Abaddon's name, favorite online Lost parodies, and many more

• Bios of the new actors on the show

• Analyses of the show's literary references, including Slaughterhouse-Five, The Tempest, VALIS, The Invention of Morel, and the Mystery Tales comic

• Photos of the filming locations in Hawaii

With exclusive photos and enough background to put you leagues ahead of other viewers, this book will help you "find" Lost.

Full of secrets, flashbacks, twists and turns Lost is a unique and captivating television experience that both challenges and entertains. This official companion to the critically acclaimed multi-award winning series chronicles every aspect of the making of Lost. Enjoy and explore the genesis of the show and the survivors' first few weeks on this mysterious island.

“[Lost is] the show with perhaps the most compelling continuing storyline in television history.” Bill Carter, The New York Times

Through in-depth interviews and articles gain a deeper insight into this incredible show:

- Exclusively written intro from executive producers Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse
- Detailed interviews with all the show’s stars
- Original concept art and storyboards
- Engrossing commentary on the making of key episodes
- Scores of stunning photos direct from the set
- Extensive interviews with the show’s creators, producers and many crew members

The book at one point refers to Boone and Shannon as half-siblings, which is incorrect, as they are step-siblings.
The book continually refers to Liam Pace as 'Ian'.
The book also claims that Danielle's daughter Alex is a boy.
The book incorrectly claims that Sawyer burned his letter to the real Sawyer.
The book incorrectly states that Kate's surname is "Ryan."