How to tell if your current book is old

And it is written on parchment.

It’s set hundreds of years in the future, but still all the women are homemakers.

“I hope you’ve got color film”

Yeah. In my experience it’s the opposite of “old books are the ones falling apart”; newer books are falling apart after only a few years while I have books from decades ago that are in better condition than them. The newer the book, the faster the deterioration.

A character gets home from work and checks their answering machine.

The protagonist hides in a phone booth. Or a video rental store.

McDonald’s having table service (where they bring the food to you when you’re seated)

In fact I think almost all fast food places have transitioned away from table service now they just call your name and you pick up your tray yourself UNLESS it’s an absolutely dead day for them.

And the typeface is Caledonia.

The quality of the binding can vary widely, then and now. Books for children, or best-selling fiction, is often not bound as well as, for instance, classics.

The protagonist has to duck into a business to ask for change for the pay phone.

But seriously though, when has there ever been any kind of situation not ameliorated by knowing the table of logarithms?

McDonald’s has table service right now. Every McDonald’s I’ve dined in at since covid, at least.

The computer display is a printer, or better yet. an automatic typewriter.

Each chapter is headed with a sentence or two summarizing the contents of the chapter, usually starting with “In which …”.

Germany has more than one capital city.

Greece has a king.

A world traveler has just gotten back from Tehran via Palestine after a lengthy excursion to Siam, Outer Mongolia, and Ceylon.

True if based in the US but plenty of countries where that could happen in a modern book.

Dispite being based in 2024 (or earlier) the main protagonist takes a flying car to the spaceport before travelling to mars.

Urgent news is passed on via telegram.

The s’s look like f’s.

You misspelled Serendip :slight_smile:

When the detective staking out the subject has to go into town to use the pay phone to call in, and the subject slips out while he’s gone
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(An actual Nero Wolfe plot point)