What is the strangest, most out-there book you have in your library?
I really like that fleela! You're right though, that is a strange one.
For Men With Yen - a book about the hostess sytem in Japan during the 1960s. It's a dreadfully off-colour book about how Western men in Japan can find "hostesses". It is truly a product of its time. I wouldn't normally own this sort of thing, but as a student of Japanese, I couldn't resist it when I saw it for $2 at my local secondhand bookshop!
Darkworld: Although this sin't strange to me, I suspect a lot of others might find it so. The history of the Welsh caves in the Black Mountains and Martyn's trials and tribualtions in exploring them, mostly requiring dive trips.
Luxembourg by Kenneth Charles Edwards -- the title looks innocent enough, but the bizarre thing is that it's a handbook prepared by the Admiralty in 1944 for use by the Royal Navy. I got it for 10p from a British Library duplicate sale, and it's stamped "SECRET" on the title page. It's actually a very interesting compilation of geographical, political and economic information, but there seems to be little that would be of practical interest to captains of battleships.
#7 that would be landlocked Luxemberg would it? They have a lake or two, you might be able to sail in. I'm not sure a battleship would fit though! That is indeed a very strange book.
Message edited by its author, Aug 15, 2007, 10:52am.
Even with a small enough ship, you would have to get up the Rhine as far as Koblenz, then up the Moselle, which might have been a bit tricky in 44.
I imagine that there's a dull and perfectly logical explanation - probably all the people responsible for collating geographical data for the military were brought together in one department, and it just happened to be the Admiralty that had office space. But it's a great thick book, that must have cost a fortune to produce, and been useful for at most a handful of officers. I'd love to find the one for Liechtenstein, if it exists!
Ooh, I have that! It also has one of the longer titles in my library: Full title: A Handbook on Hanging, Being a short introduction to the fine art of Execution, and containing much useful information on Neck-breaking, Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation and Electrocution; as well as Data and Wrinkles for Hangmen, an account of the late Mr. Berry's method of Killing and his working list of Drops; to which is added a Hangman's Ready Reckoner and certain other items of interest, by Charles Duff, New edition enlarged diligently compared and revised in accordance with the most recent Developments. All Very Proper to be read and Kept in Every Family.
"COOKING WITH GOD"
My best friend in college gave me that book as a present. She bought it (god knows where) because she thought the title was hilarious. We both had this absurd idea of a divine being hanging out with us while we cooked spagetti or mac-n-cheese.
One of my favorites is Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics by
Heather Busch. It is exactly what it sounds like - photos of cats painting. The photos are beautiful, and the artwork isn't any worse than what I could do :)
(touchstones not working for the title of the book)
There are more than a hundred copies in LT, so I don't know how much that vitiates its absolute strangeness; but in the context of my library, surely the
CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae is the strangest. I've never taken a math course beyond 1st-semester calculus, and I've never used anything beyond algebra and geometry since college. I got it solely because it includes a table of random numbers. Most of the rest is math that I don't recognize.
The coolest strange book I've ever looked through was in my human osteology professor's lab. I want to say it was
Medico-Legal Implications of Death (not in LT, so no touchstone), but what I can find of that on-line doesn't sound like the one I have in mind. The one I have in mind was more like what you'd imagine a textbook for forensic pathologists would be like nice and gross and not the kind of thing to look at anytime near mealtimes.
> 15
Here's your touchstone:
Why Cats PaintHave you seen the book that is the reverse of that? It's called
Why Paint Cats: the ethics of feline aesthetics, and it's a completely hysterical send-up of a variety of art movements. What's even funnier is that so many people took it seriously! (See
here.)
>17 lilithcat, yes I have! I don't own it but I've checked it out from the library. Also, there's
Dancing with Cats by
Burton Silver. Again, great photos!
Near the top of the list would be
Oahspe. Rather strange in layout: Two related narratives set one on top half of page and second on bottom half. Also strange as an example of 19th century alternative scripture.
Flattened Fauna by
Roger M. KnutsonIt's a Field Guide for identifying road-kill. A scaled 4-1/2" road stripe is provided with every silhouette for size comparison. Some critters are shown in several silhouettes, depending on how they met their demise. Truly fascinating!
OUT OF THEIR MINDS by Clifford Simak. Among the characters in this fantasy book are Snuffy Smith, Loweezy, and Krazy Kat.
Zen Meditation Balls -- no, seriously. There's a little booklet inside how to meditate with them, so it gets an ISBN.
I have about 75 books that no one else on LT has -- although I think that some of those are more a matter of glitches -- slight differences in title or author or edition...
But strangest as in book I bought and used...a baby name book in Norwegian,
Hva skal barnet hete? 2000 gutte- og pikenavn som brukes i Norge, med opprinnelse og betydning...
We wanted a Scandinavian name for our son and this book was interesting and helpful, even though I speak and read very little Norwegian. (We ended up naming our son Thor, which almost 15 years on turned out to be the perfect name for him).
Other than that, we have Stiffs, about what happens to dead bodies, and
Final Exits which talks about the various causes of death listed on death certificates...for example, people used to die from hiccups. What they found, eventually, is that chronic hiccups are a symptom of disease or injury or illness in the digestive tract or abdomen. Random fact for today, I guess.
The Keeper of the Isis Light. The ending is really different from what you expect and the way books like that usually end. It's kind of disappointing.
The strangest is undoubtedly
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski-- a book you have to flip over, turn around, hold up to the mirror, and squint to read. To look at it, you wouldn't even know where to start reading!
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