The Weird Book Room

AbeBooks does some interesting pages.
I got THIS ONE in my inbox last week, and just had the time today to peruse some of the list. I ordered Clean and Decent from the library.

Which titles would you like to read?

I remember the "101 more uses for a dead cat". It was, as you might imagine, preceded by "101 uses for a dead cat". These books were very funny.

Of course, there was another related book that came out later. It was, "101 used for a dead human: a cat's revenge".

Treat Your Own Neck by Robin McKenzie is a book I acquired recently. Doctors recommend the McKenzie methods for back and neck.

I don't understand what is weird about tractor books. :(

Those I am enjoying from the list:
Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: and other Practical Advice In Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom- I have found a chicken coop full of lifeless chickens, the blood completely drained from them, so I know this is practical.
Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car's Engine! - The pun is too good to be ignored.
Holy Housewifery - Must have been written by Robin's wife? Or Robin, praising his wife?
Saucepans and the Single Girl - I. Just. Can't.
Whose Bottom is This? A lift the flap book - Really, this has to be a joke.

Ha! I own one of them! What Kinda Cactus Izzat? A Who's Who of Strange Plants of the Southwest American Desert - It is a delightful book, and one my very young son loved so much that it inspired him to draw and read.

I was surprised to see all those tractor books, too. We have all sorts of them at our house. Pictorial Poultry Keeping also seems more practical than humorous.

Maybe Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom would be a good professional investment, while The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry could open up new vistas for me.

I recently read One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw. I wasn't impressed.

One book that I really would like to read is The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. I like Henry Petroski's books.

This was a great treat! Here's what I would do with some of the weird books:

We are the people our parents warned us against I'd like to have given this one to my mother.

A Lust for Window Sills This one would be for Feather and Sandy, the cats.

Breeding Stud Sheep, Innards and Other Variety Meats, The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook - these ones I would leave around the apartment with various bookmarks in them just to scare C.

How to Live with an Idiot This one I could give to C to help him live with me.

Ductigami: The Art of the Tape I actually gave this one to C for Christmas a few years ago.

The Practical Pyromaniac This one I would let my landlord catch me reading in his restaurant.

Still Stripping After 25 Years I'm sure I've read this one and many others of Eleanor Burns

How to Poo on a Date: The Lover's Guide to Toilet Etiquette: I think I just might get this one for C for Christmas this year.

Let's Make Mary: Being a Gentleman's Guide to Scientific
Seduction in Eight Easy Lessons : Do you think he really meant Mary? Poor Mary.

The invention of curried sausage is the only one on the list I've read. It doesn't really belong there: it's a novel with a funny title, not a weird non-fiction book. A very good novel, incidentally, and quite a well-known one in Germany. But I have read several books by the author of London Transport bus garages since 1948 (who did not write Ulysses, in case you're wondering). And the Petroski toothpick book is on my list.
There are several that turn up on all the lists of weird books (How to poo on a date and How to avoid huge ships, for instance).

I was thinking of getting the Poo book for my son for Christmas. Practical advise is always welcome. ;)

See, I knew this group would be familiar with some of these.

I'd be interested in Raymond Moody's take on Elvis After Life. I know Elvis is still hanging around in some of the fiction I've read - Odd Thomas, Good Omens and the Sookie Stackhouse series.

What a delightful list! There are several books here I'd certainly buy if I ran across them in a book sale. How Tea Cosies Changed the World has been on my wishlist for a long time -- I tell myself it's because I aspire to knit tea cosies, but really it's because I like the title.

Another book they could add to their list is Seagoing Gaucho, a book we used to see in library sales years back. (I was disappointed to find out later, though, that "Gaucho" referred to the name of the author's boat, not a South American cowboy.)

Anticraft is goth crafting. Good if you like that sort of thing.

The Devil's Cloth is a social history of striped clothing. It's overly French, in the sense that the author is big on theory and short on facts.

I gave my daughter a copy of Crafting with Cat Hair but she has never made me anything. She says she's saving her cat's fur. She ought to have several pounds by now.

Death in the Pot is really not worth it. It's mostly a list of food poisoning incidents, instead of anything thoughtful about adulteration in the food supply. It has the feel of something just tossed off.

I would buy some other things that are on that list.

I'd like to see both books on Smocks. I already own English Smocking and used to do some.

I do have Still Happy Though Married, though it's not by LeHaye, it's a tattered book on right living.
I may have How to Make your Own Shoes or something very like it.
And I've downloaded the free version of The Humanure Handbook, because I do bucket compost waste at my cabin. (Plenty of sawdust is the secret to no odor.)

I've ordered several more of these titles from the library, and I'll try to remember to report on them.

Meanwhile, what titles do you have in your libraries that might seem 'Weird'? If I were still a librarian, I would make up a display celebrating such fun topics.

It's hard to know what titles other people would consider weird. They don't seem weird to me, but I suppose some of these titles might make people wonder.

From Farm to Plate : Egg production in Canada, 1972 to 2012
Mom Can't See Me
Clean : an unsanitized history of washing
Ingenious Inventions of Domestic Utility
Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench In England, 1600-1770
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality
Four-Foot Cucumbers, Juvenile Delinquents & Frogs from the Sky! : snippets of life in Victorian Canada
Sex, Nursery Rhymes, and Other Evils
The Man Who Grew Two Breasts : And Other True Tales of Medical Detection
Flow : the cultural story of menstruation
The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms
The Compleat Loo
Backhouses of the North
Outhouses of the East
The Vanishing American Outhouse

Hmmm. When listed like that, it looks like I have a weird fascination with bodily functions.

>12 SylviaC: Hehehehe. It may be one of the qualifiers for being put on such a list. I've read 3 or 4 of your titles too. Loved The Earth Moved.

What an excellent list, SylviaC! I especially like the title Ingenious Inventions of Domestic Utility.

I must see what I have now. Back later..... (or tomorrow)

>13 2wonderY: Which other ones have you read? Probably not the Egg Production in Canada one...

>14 MaggieO: It is a neat book. On one page it shows a picture of an Ingenious Invention, and you can try to guess what it is, then it gives the name and explanation on the back of the page. If you zoom in on the cover photo, you can read the ridiculously long subtitle.

Well, I think I got the recommendation from you on The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms.

And I've read Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench In England, 1600-1770 and I thought I owned The Vanishing American Outhouse, but I don't see it on my shelves.

Flow : the cultural story of menstruation seems very familiar, but I think maybe I just remember it from the Borders Bookstore I worked in.

I took a look through my catalogue to see what I have that might qualify, but it isn't easy. I've always got in the back of my mind the reason why I acquired it in the first place, even if in some cases it was purely to save the book from being thrown away...

I have a lot of things that probably qualify as absurdly specialised, but in all probability would sound dull rather than weird to outsiders (e.g. a 450-page history of The Waterloo & City Railway, a line of the London Underground that is less than a mile long). Maybe the classic monograph on The bicycle wheel by Jobst Brandt would strike non-cyclists as a strange thing to want to have on your shelves, but it is actually a rather useful book (or at least, it would be, if I could be bothered to build my own wheels....).

A few books have over-conspicuously been overtaken by history, like a 1902 history of aviation, a 1957 book on transistor circuits, a 1961 book on the Channel Tunnel project, or a 1970s tourist guide to Czechoslovakia, and seem like rather pointless things to keep, but they were perfectly sane and sensible when they were written.

I also have some very specialized books, thorold, that might seem weird to others, such as:
The World of Wooden Bobbins
Books for Sammies: The American Library Association During World War I
(Sammies? I thought they were called Doughboys??)
Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog

Here are some others that might qualify for the weird book list:
Fun with Coffee
Fun with Ramen Noodles
Tofu Madness
Say it in Esperanto
The Cat Made Me Buy It!
Weeds and What They Tell
Uplift: The Bra in America

>18 MaggieO: I too have The Cat Made Me Buy It! and now I need the last two on your list. (dang gossipy weeds!)

Earthworms are fascinating--I believe Charles Darwin studied them--but they are an alien species to the Americas. (So are honeybees.)

I am sure many books in my library would be considered odd by some people. I found a little New Mexican cookbook in the library I volunteered at, and the other volunteers and librarians were saying, "Who would want that?" but I snapped it up.

I think my strangest book might be Folklore of the Teeth but Textiles and Fabrics: Their Care and Preservation is in the running. It's basically an old-fashioned book on dry-cleaning and laundering. It covers problems like "horse slobber" which I suppose is a concern in certain circles.

ETA:
Thesaurus of textile terms covering fibrous materials and processes is odd if you aren't interested in controlled vocabularies and textiles. Can a see a show of hands? Thought not.

I almost forgot A streetcar to subduction and other plate tectonic trips by public transport in San Francisco which is pretty much as described. The city practically sits on the San Andreas fault (it's actually out to sea, and arrives on land just south of the city limits). Some people, including the author, just don't like to drive, which is why all the sites are accessible by public transit. (You can get anywhere by public transit, actually.)

>12 SylviaC: Sylvia, don't they have outhouses in the south and west? Maybe if they included those directions they wouldn't think outhouses were vanishing.

I have The History of Ladies' Underwear which is the best history book I've ever read. (Touchstones give it a different title.)

>20 IreneF: Thesaurus of textile terms covering fibrous materials and processes sounds interesting.

Not quite as interesting as Thesaurus des objets religieux: meubles, objets, linges, vêtements et instruments de musique du culte catholique romain which is a multilingual (French, English, Italian) guide to any sort of Roman Catholic object - like what sort of shoes a pope wore when ...

>22 MarthaJeanne:
That Thesaurus des objets religieux would be even more interesting if it were expanded to more religions. How do the objects of one religion map to another?

This book is already enormous.

It could be a web site.

Sent Uplift: The Bra in America back to the library after a quick read.

It dealt more with the history of the industry rather than the sociology of undergarments Toward the end they talked about an informal survey they conducted and were surprised at how many women admit to not wearing bras at all. It's especially common with older women.

MarthaJeanne's new thread elsewhere reminded me that we have our own Weird Book Room.

I added Electricity in Gynecology (which BTW is online, so everyone can read and be fascinated) to my wishlist, and googling the author, looking for her photo, gives up other wonderful titles.

The Practical Pyromaniac

Life and Laughter 'Midst the Cannibals

Making Men Happy with Jams and Jellies

Shindai: The Art of Japanese Bed-Fighting

>27 2wonderY: Why is the second one tagged 'playroom' and 'parenting'?

>27 2wonderY: I'm having trouble with the link to, "Making Men Happy with Jams and Jellies".

;-)

>28 MarthaJeanne: You know how children are...

>29 pgmcc: You can't get there either? It's just a sign of the times.

>30 2wonderY: You mean like the time one of my sons played with matches in the room we had most of our books in? Luckily he didn't have much luck in getting flames started.