Now that we have a
tag mirror to see what other people have tagged your books, what's the weirdest tag/book combination you've come across.
I don't own any computing books at all, but have eight works tagged "operating systems" They've only been given that tag once, presumably by the same person - but to me its a weird selection to tag that. It includes 4 (out of many) maps and three novels.
My tag mirror looks just like my tag cloud. Oh well.
5 people tagged The Hobbit with chinese.
Do you actually see "operating systems"? I just get "os" in your mirror, so probably Ordnance Survey for the maps, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean for the others.
I'm quite curious why someone tagged
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 'civil war'.
Mine looks similar to my tag cloud, but there are some interesting differences. I'm surprised at the size of 'german' in my mirror, for one, though I'm sure it's because a lot of the books have been translated into German.
the Dilbert Principle was tagged 39 times with management, and all the rest of my dilberts had Management as well. The question is, does it mean 'These are good management books' or 'These remind me of my managers'?
I wonder if os had been combined with operating systems and someone separated them between your two posts.
#6 is right. I was exploring the tags and saw OS combined into the operating systems tag and seperated it.
Curiously, Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio have both been tagged "romance", but the Paradiso has not.
My tag mirror shows a fairly large tag for Ireland but, when I look at it, I see that all of my Jane Austen's have been tagged Ireland. That makes me curious. Did they read them in Ireland or keep them at a house in Ireland? Similarly, Australia showed up larger than I expected and when I looked at that I see that 3 people have tagged
Bill Bryson's
Lost Continent as Australia.
It's interesting to see how people have tagged things but I want to know why!
Message edited by its author, Aug 23, 2007, 1:30pm.
I was intrigued to see the alternate history tag in my tag mirror and I was surprised to see that other people have used that tag on the Deryni books. Doesn't alternate history as a genre need to intersect with real history at some point? And if
Footfall can be tagged that way then nearly any science fiction book can as well.
And two people tagged
The Temple and the Lodge as alternate history, which to them I guess means history that isn't mainstream.
The adult tag is kind of a strange mish-mash. In my tag mirror it includes such works as
The Hobbit,
The Princess Bride, and
Watership Down by which I presume some people are trying to counteract the presumption that these are children's books. On the other hand other books with this tag are
The Prince of Tides,
Anna Karenina and
Inorganic Chemistry which no one would think are books for children. But there are hundreds of other books in my library that aren't children's books, why aren't they tagged adult?
I've found a bunch of novels (mostly fantasy) tagged bce I'm sure its an abrevitation for something, just not sure what. And then a presumably personal tag b5 has slipped into the mix, the tag page is all babylon 5 books, but none of mine are. It doesn't seem to be combined with anything either. They are all only 1 tag, so maybe the sums needs tweaking a bit as to what displays on the mirror.
>12
Yesterday the tags b5 and Babylon5 were combined. They're not anymore.
I have books tagged "os" - what is that?
Operating System? Ordnance Survey?
BCE is common book talk for Book Club Edition.
I also have the os tag for a bunch of related-looking books--maybe someone's initials? a location? O s*** I can't believe I bought this books?
I also have books tagged "ideas". Anyone ever seen a book without ideas?
Message edited by its author, Aug 24, 2007, 3:04pm.
#16 - that'll be it, thanks
#15 OS was combined with Operating system, it isn't as of yesterday and has dropped out of my mirror, which should say something about how the calculations are done. But I'm not sure what.
Tag "Made into a movie" applied to
Salmon of doubt - really I don't think so, I'm only aware of one of Adams' works having a movie
Also applied into
A brief history of time Just how dull would that be, And Stephen doens't have any movies to his credit surely?
BCE is also "Before the Christian Era," used for dates.
Actually it means "Before the Common Era", and the whole point was to make our calendar religion-neutral :) I don't think it worked.
And CE instead of AD (i.e., Common Era, instead of Anno Domini -- in the year of "our" lord -- not everybody's lord).
Today I was looking up a book in LT to lend to a friend, and was so startled to spot the tag
tigers that for a moment I thought that someone had hacked my catalogue. I had completely forgotten that I had applied the tags
small boys and
tigers to
Calvin and Hobbes. I guess the logic was, you know, if you're looking for books about small boys and/or tigers, you'll definitely want this one. That'll teach me to tag while sipping sake...
Message edited by its author, Aug 25, 2007, 12:27am.
Someone had tagged my
Human Anatomy textbook 'anasthesia'. I looked at in bemusement for a bit before remembering that it was a very, very boring text. I'll probably forever wonder if that's what they were actually getting at.
#23 They may be referring to the sheer size of it and the results of its impact on the cranium.
Nah.
In my mirror most everything looks fairly normal except a couple of people thinking that the Wild Card series of books edited by
George R. R. Martin are comics.
Message edited by its author, Aug 25, 2007, 6:22am.
#24, another good interpretation!
#23, IIRC, there was a short-lived Wild Cards comic series or graphic novel... I wonder if that was it...?
#17,
A brief history of time has indeed been made in to a movie. I think I have even seen it and it wasn't boring at all. See
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103882/ I listed some of my favorite findings in this thread
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph... , message #136, but I think I'll copy it over here as it seems to fit better to this discussion thread.
This is simply fascinating! The first one on my list of “adult” is –
The Hobbit.
War and Peace 4 is about agriculture.
Animal farm,
Little Prince,
The Calvin and Hobbes tenth anniversary book,
War and peace,
Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) by
Walter Bosing,
Origin of Species,
Heart of Darkness and
Slapstick or Lonesome no more are autobiographies.
The Annotated Alice,
Name of the Rose,
Dracula and
Frankenstein are biographies, as well as
1984 and
The Screwtape letters.
Breakfast of champions is a biology book.
Decamerone is about christianity.
The Prince by
Macchiavelli and
Cryptonomicon are comedies. I must be deeply indoctrinated, as I haven't noticed that the classical Swedish crime story series by
Maj Sjöwall and
Per Wahlöö is all about communism. I’m happy to know people have noticed that
The Idiot and
Bhagavad-gita are fantasy. However, I wasn’t aware that
Animal farm is folklore. I was never any good in geography, but now I know that
Lolita and
The Magician’s Nephew and
The Hobbit are happening in Ireland. It’s nice to know that
The Lord of the rings and
Secret garden are memoirs. Of course,
The Stranger by
Camus and
Silmarillion are about music. The
Da Vinci Code seems to be situated in New York, as well as
Brothers Karamazov. Oh, and I’m happy to know that
Les Misérables is a satire. And finally,
Canterbury stories by
Chaucer,
The DaVinci Code,
Brave New World,
1984,
Slaughterhouse five and
The Island of Dr. Moreau by
H. G Wells present nicely the “young adult” genre.
I think the juvenile tag is funny.
The Bell Jar, anyone?
(qu1d: I love the Sjöwall/Wahlöö communism tagging!)
Also,
Sense and Sensibility has been tagged 'angst' by someone. I wonder what he/she thought of
Persuasion!
Plato's
Republic is 'queer'.
I think my favourite might be the 'trivia' tag someone slapped on
Dracula. Most classics should be reduced to mere trivia, after all!
The hilarity of geographic placement is marred by the fact that people might tag their books for location - this could explain the
Brothers Karamazov's stint in New York.
#29, I've noticed the 'hardboiled' tags on Discworld. I think they see Vimes that way... guess I can understand it though it makes me chuckle too. As for The Historian, maybe they thought that the protagonist should have hired Buffy instead ;-)
My newest addition to the list:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is tagged 'piano'. Maybe they've composed a suite in honor of the book.
Maybe they have the book on the shelf atop the piano?
#3, what's odd about that? They probably own the Chinese translation (and speak English as well, or they wouldn't have tagged it as such).
lorax: I agree, I've tagged quite a few Harry Potters German/Italian/Spanish, &c, as I seem to own them in every bizarre translation known to man.
Chamekke: from reading his introduction,
Robert Burton certainly considered the
writing of it 'self=help'! :)
Wuthering heights is a vampire book!
This message has been deleted by its author.
I guess my personal weirdness is that I have a few books tagged 'gender' and 'feminism' because I've used them for research purposes. One of them is the
Sex and the City : kiss and tell book; perhaps not a traditional 'feminism' choice!
Some of the weirdnesses from my tag mirror:
Someone tagged
The Diary of Anne Frank as "sex."
Moby Dick is tagged as "bible." So is
The Koran; sacred text confusion?
Who knew
Night by Elie Wiesel, the Ender books by Orson Scott Card, and
The 9/11 Report were about Chicago? (I'm guessing someone must have read them in Chicago, or be keeping them in Chicago.)
All my Animorphs books are tagged as "Virginia."
Little Women is tagged "dogs."
All seven Harry Potter books are tagged "satire" and "vampires."
Anguished English by Richard Lederer, a collection of funny mistakes people have made with the English language, is apparently a dictionary!
Romeo and Juliet is tagged "special education."
#32> Maybe they have the book on the shelf atop the piano?
That's not nearly as fun :)
#39, now I'm wondering what a religion with Moby Dick as its holy text would be like...
LOL You all have way more interesting and funny ones then I do!!
I think the weirdest one I've come across is "smiley", and for the life of me I cannot figure out what it means (unless it actually means that the books made the person smile??).
Heather
Heather19: What book? =)
(Tag used 599 times by 31 users. Maybe it's a novel by John le Carré, or one in his style? Espionage? Random guesses!)
Robert Burton did write the Anatomy to alleviate his own melancholy inclinations
Anna Karenina is "Chick Lit", and so is
The Family Markowitz.
Anna Karenina is (un?)fortunetely also "Culture".
Elements of Style also has this double nature, some chick lit that make us look somehow cultivated. When will French fries that make us lose weight be invented?
Atonement is "9/11". Is this tage does not refer to the date the book was read, I am at loss offering an explanation.
Message edited by its author, Nov 20, 2008, 7:10am.
Someone's tagged several of Jasper Fforde's books with "art history" (I hope a single person was responsible for all instances). Also so tagged are
Bulfinch's Mythology and
The Chicago Manual of Style.
Someone's tagged
The Mayor of Casterbridge with "12th century"!
I'll keep looking.
I have to confess that I am currently guilty of weird tagging.
The Diary of Anne Frank is currently labeled in my library "New England,""Renard," (Fox) "Finland,"and "Recipes." "Recipes" could work, as Anne Frank describes the making of strawberry jam in the last pages of her journal, but tagging her diary as a recipe book is not only weird, but sinister.
Why these bizarro tags? I have just discovered the "power edit" feature for tagging (I am a late bloomer...), but I forgot to uncheck the Anne Frank Diary before tagging another book, ah! I offer this explanation for some of the weird tags mentioned on this thread.
I will leave my bizarre tags for a while, hoping that at least some people can have fun discovering my crazy tagging, and wondering what kind of dufus I am...
This didn't come up in my tag cloud but I did come across someone's tag the other day of "non-fiction fiction". wth???
OK, so it's probably a typo... surely! But it made me chuckle.
It could mean fiction written in the style of non-fiction, like newspaper reports for example.
ETA: After looking at the two books marked this way it seems to mean fiction written about a real event.
Message edited by its author, Nov 23, 2008, 1:59pm.
Ah, ok. So it's.... fiction.
I still think it's weird, but hey, each to their own tags. Mine certainly aren't perfect! :)
Christian fiction - has been applied to Lord of the Rings ? and Die Trying by Lee Child, and Well of lost plots by Jasper fforde.
And in a simialr vein Snow Crash, the cult cyberpunk, internet counterculture novel, has been tagged "christianity".
?! people are strange.
Message edited by its author, Nov 26, 2008, 9:05am.
This may shed some light on the Snow Crash / Christianity angle. The book has quite a bit to say about religion, though not so much about Christianity specifically.
I randomly came across the book, An Englishman Abroad while tidying up Philip Ball's author page. I love that someone has tagged it: "something to do with men kicking balls around". Ha!
On a talk page a while back there was also some talk of someone who tagged a book "acquired in strange circumstances" - or something to that effect. Wish I could find it again!
Message edited by its author, Dec 21, 2008, 7:21pm.
Granted, this is not quite a tag mirror result because I don't have it in my library. But this came up in my recommendations as filtered by everyone's tags. Under "art history" I found
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom a book on tarot reading that someone has indeed tagged "art history".
>47
"Color" for "Amélie" makes sense, at least, if you wanted to tag movies with unusual or very conscious color choices.
>56
Try "
aquired in weird circumstances" (with the typo and everything)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is tagged "Austen" once -- which is as many times as has
First Among Sequels. For the latter book, the tag makes sense (as it involves one of Jane's more famous works). But how this tag got associated with a Harry Potter book, I have no idea.
Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 11:34am.
I think calling Emma a "major" influence is, shall we say, an overstatement. I really don't see anything Emma-ish in any of the books*, or I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place.
* The movies are a different story, but only because of a few casting choices.
Perhaps it was a typo and the person meant Austin (i.e. it's located at their Austin residence).
I won't rule that out (as far as I'm concerned, it's indeed a lot more plausible). But I'd place that kind of thing in the broader category of "spelling mistake", rather than in "typo" -- the I and E keys aren't even typed by the same
hand.
Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 4:19pm.
No, I don't see anything Emma-ish or austenesque about HBP either. But someone might conceivably be interested in the less direct, less visible sort of literary influences, and find them important enough to tag certain books that way.
I more often see Austen misspelled as Austin than vice versa, but then I don't read about Austin a lot.
64>
Indeed, "Jane Austin" is a common enough error that people have constructed an entire
fictional author by that name, as a parody. (Note: the two linked words go to different places.)
Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2009, 5:41pm.
This wouldn't happen to be the same lady who ghostwrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?
All right, that made no sense at all. I must be tired.
Some poetic soul found Wittgenstein's
Tractatus "funny".
Chesterton's
Orthodoxy is about "self improvement", or perhaps reading it was meant to have that result.
Dracula has been tagged with "violin". I'm stumped.
Treasure Island is an "encyclopedia". So is the Bible.
Oh, and
Matilda is, or contains, "advice". Should I listen?
Message edited by its author, Apr 27, 2009, 6:41am.
(stopped editing previous post, too many touchstones)
I also don't understand the "unicorns" tags (two of them) on
Dracula.
However.(back to top)
