# Books of an unusual nature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [August 4, 2026, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141 "2026-08-04T13:54:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/81 "2026-08-06T05:23:46Z")
Calvino had that [novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_on_a_winter's_night_a_traveler) in which there are actually ten different novels, but none of them are ever finished, but their titles taken together form a sentence, and that is only half of the book, the rest being about the Reader, whoever that is (you?), except “you” is sometimes someone else, and so on… ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/82 "2026-08-06T06:01:17Z")
Maybe it’s mentioned here, but I read recently about a full-length novel that is a single, grammatically correct sentence. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/83 "2026-08-06T07:09:37Z")
It won the Pulitzer Prize, but I have not read it yet, so do not have too much to say about it. You can find the long sentence style in the final chapter of _Ulysses_, for instance; also in works by Virginia Woolf, Gabriel García Márquez, a bunch of others. Wikipedia says _Angel Down_ has 304 pages, but _Zone_ has over 500. More of a stream-of-consciousness effect than the book itself being physically unusual… ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/84 "2026-08-06T07:13:35Z")
German and other WW2 codebooks were printed with water-soluble ink on blotting paper to facilitate quick destruction: [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Kenngruppenheft.jpg) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Kenngruppenheft.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![themapleleaf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themapleleaf/32/14349_2.png) [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/85 "2026-08-06T08:47:36Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > Graeme Base’s **The Eleventh Hour** also has the pages containing the mystery’s solution sealed off, albeit with regular paper printed to look like a wax seal. Ah yes, another wonderful book we had in my middle school library. Most of the books we had by then were chapter books, non-fiction, etc., but there was a corner with a selection of picture books at a higher reading level that might be appropriate for older kids, often with some kind of gimmick or twist or other feature. I have a story about “The Eleventh Hour,” one of Graeme Base’s richly-illustrated books. It’s about an elephant who lives in a palatial mansion and who invites his friends to a costume party to celebrate his eleventh birthday. During the party, a theft occurs and the reader is left to solve the mystery. Anyway, this book was presented to my class by Ms. Cummings, our very nice school librarian. She said she did not want to open the seal at the end of the book because she wanted the solution to remain a secret for people to figure out themselves. Anyway, I took out the book and tried to figure out which animal was the thief, but I don’t know if I could find a relevant clue. Neither do I remember whether I settled on a candidate. As luck should have it, someone _had_ broken the seal by then (I think it wasn’t me who did it) and so I found the answer. I was very surprised by it (I won’t reveal it here 🙂 ) – it was a character who seemed an unlikely candidate for the job and who I would have eliminated right off the bat. The author’s final solution to the problem was brilliant. This reminds me of another book we had at that school library,[**The Mysteries of Harris Burdick,**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysteries_of_Harris_Burdick) a 1984 book by Chris Van Allsburg. We had several books by this author / illustrator, who you might know best as the creator of _The Polar Express._ Anyway, the premise of this book is that a man who introduced himself as Harris Burdick once entered the office of a children’s book editor and brought fourteen illustrations with a caption for each illustration taken from the relevant story. He said he would bring the stories the next day, but never showed up. This left the images and captions available to be published alone, and the reader was free to make up their own story. The black and white images certainly did exude an aura of mystery. One of the illustrations is also used for the cover image (see Wikipedia article linked above) and it shows some young people from the back, sailing across a sea, but instead of in a boat, they are journeying in a windwagon.across a railroad track going along a spit built across the sea. I don’t remember taking the time to make up any stories around pictures. I wonder what ideas others have come up with, and whether Van Allsburg himself might not have had his own plots behind the images and captions which plots he might never have disclosed. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/86 "2026-08-06T10:46:32Z")
> [@themapleleaf](#): > > seal You remember how you would run across the occasional book whose folds had not been opened and you had to take a knife and cut them apart (and you _knew_ nobody had been reading through that copy previously)? I would say that today that counts as unusual. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/87 "2026-08-06T11:26:49Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > You remember how you would run across the occasional book whose folds had not been opened and you had to take a knife and cut them apart (and you _knew_ nobody had been reading through that copy previously)? I would say that today that counts as unusual. I have a complete edition of the Richard Burton translation of The Arabian Nights, in which an awful lot of the pages have not been cut. I think it may be the first, numbered edition. Clearly the previous owner(s) have not read it. I have read the first volume and part of the second, and have been faced with a quandary – do I cut the pages, or not? Doesn’t that decrease the value? But I want to read the books! Fortunately, I now have a way out. Two, actually. I was lucky enough to find an almost-complete set of the same edition. And you can actually read the Burton edition online. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/88 "2026-08-06T14:45:32Z")
They were also not published and released to the general public. Secret messages do not usually qualify. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/89 "2026-08-06T15:09:11Z")
Technically (and confusingly), what you’re talking about are called “unopened” pages. “Uncut” means the pages are separated but the edges are not trimmed smooth. Although I’m not an expert, my understanding is that having unopened pages rarely adds value to a book. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/90 "2026-08-06T15:11:35Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > _Griffin and Sabine_ was something of a hit in the '90s. It’s a novel made of the correspondence between a British man and a woman in the south Pacific. When they exchange postcards, you see the face of the postcard on one page and the back of it with their missive written on it on the other side of the page. When they write letters, there’s an envelope stuck to the page with a physical document inside that you can take out and unfold to read. It gets kinda weird toward the end. I loved that book; if memory serves, there were two sequels, with a similar format, as well. And, yes, it gets a little trippy. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/91 "2026-08-06T15:27:35Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Technically (and confusingly), what you’re talking about are called “unopened” pages. “Uncut” means the pages are separated but the edges are not trimmed smooth. That might be a technical booksellers term, but the colloquial use of “uncut” I’ve always heard is that the folded quarto printed pages were not severed at the edges. The context I’d heard it in was someone making sure that all the pages in a loaned book were “cut”, the point being that if those pages had not been cut apart the book couldn’t have been read. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/92 "2026-08-06T15:32:08Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > “Uncut” means the pages are separated but the edges are not trimmed smooth. A.k.a. deckle edging. The Penguin Deluxe edition of Thomas Pynchon’s **Gravity’s Rainbow** has this “feature,” which makes the pages both harder to turn and more likely to attract dust. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/93 "2026-08-06T15:36:53Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > A.k.a. deckle edging. The Penguin Deluxe edition of Thomas Pynchon’s **Gravity’s Rainbow** has this “feature,” which makes the pages both harder to turn and more likely to attract dust. So does the Emily Wilson translation of **The Odyssey** I’m currently reading. It’s artsy, but annoying. I just did a quick look through internet sites. Most people seem to use “uncut” pages in the way I do. Example: > **[Uncut pages](https://rhollick.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/uncut-pages/)** > > We all know that it happens (or happened) but when was the last book published with uncut pages? You read in Victorian novels about readers sitting with knife in hand, cutting the folds of the page… > We all know that it happens (or happened) but when was the last book published with uncut pages? You read in Victorian novels about readers sitting with knife in hand, cutting the folds of the pages as they go. In modern book manufacturing the edges of the book block are trimmed off before the book is inserted into its case (after, if it’s a paperback), so we don’t have to put up with this chore any longer. I ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/94 "2026-08-06T16:04:16Z")
The distinction between uncut and unopened is almost exclusively made by antiquarian book dealers today. Unopened is the more valuable. As said above, common usage has shifted uncut to mean unopened. Another very good reason not to collect antiquarian books. The learning curve is steeper than the prices. Unopened books are still being made, usually by small publishers for small runs, often for chapbooks of poetry and suchlike. Every variation is still being made by someone. I’m sure I’ve read about people making their own papyrus paper to use on a hand press they’ve made. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/95 "2026-08-06T16:15:53Z")
OMG that would have been helpful in high school! ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/96 "2026-08-06T16:28:21Z")
Here’s a pedantic explanation about the difference between “uncut” and “unopened”. > **[Uncut, unopened, untrimmed, uh-oh | Folger Shakespeare Library](https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/uncut-unopened-untrimmed-uh-oh/)** > > Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Join us online, on the road, or in Washington, DC. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/97 "2026-08-06T16:41:15Z")
Hollow books have a long history, says the [Clements Library at the University of Michigan](https://clements.umich.edu/from-the-stacks-two-hollow-books/). > Such book boxes, also known as “book safes,” have a long history of use. They have been used to hide valuables from theft, smuggle weapons, drugs, and other contraband, and camouflage recording equipment and explosive devices. When backgammon was banned in England during the time of Henry VIII and all backgammon boards were ordered to be burned, people crafted them inside hollow books to conceal them. Hollow books were used during Prohibition to smuggle bottles of alcohol. Hiding an object in a book is also a popular plot device in fiction and film, including the movies _From Russia with Love_, _The Shawshank Redemption_, and _The Matrix_. And then came Irving Fishlove. His specialty was gags, the kind of silly to stupid stuff found advertised in the back of magazines or in specialty catalogs. He loved hollow books, buying the cheapest thrown away discards, cutting out the middle and pasting something inside that made the title he pasted on into a joke. How to Clean Up on Horses isn’t a book about betting. Inside is a tiny broom and shovel. Gag gift! It took me this long into this thread to remember I had written an entire article on Irving Fishlove, called of course [Hollow Books](https://greatforgottenhumorists.com/hollow-books/). _What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is._ ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/98 "2026-08-06T16:49:24Z")
This was, in fact, the book I was going to mention, but deleted my comment above, since its weirdness has more to do with the contents, rather than the structure. You can actually see the whole thing [here](https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/CodexSeraphinianus.pdf) [in .pdf format]. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/99 "2026-08-06T20:10:45Z")
I made a hollow book once as a gift to a friend. He knew me well enough, and knew that I knew him well enough, that when he got a package the size of a paperback, slightly flexible, he naturally expected it to be a book. It was actually a deck of Magic cards. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141/100 "2026-08-06T20:50:02Z")
Speaking of documentarty novels and collections of different-sized and formatted papers, I have to bring up **Jackdaws** These were collections of reproductions of original documents related to British history, along with supplementary material, all of it contained in a durable folder. I discovered these at the UK pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal and bought several. **Magna Carta** – contained a photoreproduction of one of the surviving copies of the Magna Carta, along with other period docyuments **The Mayflower** – contained copies of the Mayflower Compact and other Pilgrim documents, along with photos of Mayflower II **The Peasant’s Revolt** Later on I picked up a few more, like on on **Hadrian’s Wall** They’re no longer published, but you can get used copies online. They’re pretty pricey nowadays, but still used a lot by teachers > **[Jackdaw Folder | eBay](https://www.ebay.com/shop/jackdaw-folder?_nkw=jackdaw+folder)** > > Explore a wide range of our Jackdaw Folder selection. Find top brands, exclusive offers, and unbeatable prices on eBay. Shop now for fast shipping and easy returns! [https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/jackdaw-history-collection-documents-1853381419](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/jackdaw-history-collection-documents-1853381419) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-of-an-unusual-nature/1032141.md?page=6)