# Strangest Book You Have Ever Found **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2005, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110 "2005-12-05T00:09:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/81 "2017-02-06T05:55:41Z")
> [@Bibliothecarius](#): > > What, no mention of the [_Codex Seraphinianus_](https://www.amazon.com/Codex-Seraphinianus-Luigi-Serafini/dp/0847842134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486276475&sr=1-1&keywords=codex+seraphinianus) yet? I have a copy. ---
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/82 "2017-02-06T07:03:04Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > I actually have several of the books mentioned here. > I can’t remember the title but there’s a book written by Phillip Jose Farmer. Basically it’s about Doc Savage meeting Tarzan. You would think that a book about such an interesting subject written by such a good writer would be interesting. It reads like a fan fiction written by a teenager. Heh, this thread got me thinking about “Venus on the Half-Shell”. I thought it was pretty strange, but even stranger was the pulp novels Simon, the protagonist, was reading. ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/83 "2017-02-06T17:28:58Z")
We have quite a library at home, but nothing too weird. We do have (I forget the title) an illustrated napkin-folding guide and _The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World_. It include fashion, meal plans, manners, etc. My wife likes being fancy every once in awhile. Oh, and a Bible written in Icelandic. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/84 "2017-02-06T17:44:27Z")
I saw a copy of a Humument at a library once [Tom Phillips - A Humument](http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument) - now that’s a weird book. ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/85 "2017-02-06T19:08:09Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I saw a copy of a Humument at a library once [Tom Phillips - A Humument](http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument) - now that’s a weird book. Dude had a lot of time. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/86 "2017-02-06T19:32:28Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I saw a copy of a Humument at a library once [Tom Phillips - A Humument](http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument) - now that’s a weird book. Thanks for posting this…I own three different editions of this work (Phillips repeatedly revised and added new and different artwork over the years) plus the app version, and now I see that a “Final” edition has just been published, which is a must-have for me. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/87 "2017-02-06T21:48:00Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > **The Man Who Folded Himself** is a time-travel yarn with a weird wrinkle. Our hero is presented with a time machine built into a belt by a strangely familiar old man. Along the way, he finds out that every time he travels, he leaves himself in a separate reality stream. He starts to run into himself all over the place. Somehow, one of him becomes female, and he mates with her. He happens on to a place where he dies, over and over again, witnessed by several of him, and her. He figures out that the old man who gave him the belt was him. Very strange. > It starts out odd, and gets really weird. It’s very funny. It’s brutal, too, but more funny. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > That’s by David Gerrold, who gave us (among other things) The Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”. TMWFH was an attempt to jam every time travel cliche he could think of into a single story. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Sounds like he ripped both stories off from Heinlein. The time travel story appears to be a mix of _By His Bootstraps_ and _All you Zombies…_, while tribbles bear an uncanny resemblance to the martian fuzzballs in _The Rolling Stones_. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > In his book **The Trouble with Tribbles** (which is about writing the script, not a novelization), Gerrold claims that he didn’t have Heinlein consciously in mind while writing “Tribbles” – he says he thought he was retelling the story of rabbits in Australia. It wasn’t until later, when somebody pointed out the similarity that he realized it, and recalled reading the book and the flatcats. Some people claim that he got permission from Heinlein, but that’s clearly not true. I believe that he contacted Heinlein about it at one point, and Heinlein was cool with it. > > As I noted above, TWHFH was a conscious attempt to cram every time travel cliche into a single volume, so of course he referred to Heinlein’s stories – as well as everyyone else’s. It’s not exactly a “rip off”. I’ve not heard Gerrold’s explanations, only the observation that several of his novels seem “inspired directly” (cribbed?) by Heinlein. Not only _The Trouble With Tribbles_, and _The Man Who Folded Himself_, but _When Harlie Was One_ being inspired by _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ - not so much the whole plot but the AI aspects. TMWFH is a solipsism extension of Heinlein’s two stories, most explicitly with _All You Zombies_, where the protagonist is a time traveler who was born a hermaphrodite but fertile female who was seduced and impregnated, during delivery the organs were damaged and she was surgically transformed to be a man, who then went on to seduce himself. TMWFH takes that further, by running into alternate reality versions of himself. In each case, every major event in their lives is dictated by another version of themselves. > [@jtur88](#): > > I found one British phrasebook, telling me in the other language what time “half six” is. Luckily I knew the other language well enough to translate “half six” from British to American. Bur now I’ve forgotten, and can’t remember if it is 5:30 or 6:30. I believe it means “half hour before 6”. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > As a Friends of the Library volunteer, a lot of strange things come our way, and one of the strangest I’ve seen, simply because of the age group it was aimed at, was a book about abortion, from the pro-life Catholic perspective, aimed at lower elementary children. :eek: 😕 I couldn’t imagine a child that young having the life experience to understand what it was about anyway. It’s called “pre-indoctrination” - get 'em early before they know anything by which to evaluate it. “This is the way it is,” at the time when everything a child learns is “This is the way it is” from a “trusted” source. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/88 "2017-02-06T22:00:26Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > I’ve not heard Gerrold’s explanations, only the observation that several of his novels seem “inspired directly” (cribbed?) by Heinlein. Not only _The Trouble With Tribbles_, and _The Man Who Folded Himself_, but _When Harlie Was One_ being inspired by _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ - not so much the whole plot but the AI aspects. And of course, “A Matter for Men” is certainly inspired by Starship Troopers (not that there’s anything wrong with that). ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/89 "2017-02-07T00:12:30Z")
At a Saskatoon Public Library book sale, I once bought a copy of a fairly thick book that was named something like “Population Statistics of Ringed Seals (1973-1978)”. It was somewhat dry reading. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/90 "2017-02-07T05:27:11Z")
Several years ago, my brother found out that our 3rd grade teacher’s master’s thesis was available through inter-library loan (not sure how he found this out) and requested it. He said it was actually fairly interesting; it was a collection of case studies of boys who had benefited from being held back at the kindergarten or 1st grade level. She got that degree in the early 1960s, and died about 20 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/91 "2017-02-07T06:01:09Z")
I’m surprised I didn’t post in this thread the first time around. My oddest is probably [Golfing for Cats](https://www.amazon.com/Golfing-Cats-Coronet-Books-Coren/dp/0340209984), although I have an older edition with [different cover](http://www.deutschlanduberelvis.com/.a/6a01127917f7ad28a401310fe7da1d970c-500wi). Oh, and I have a German dictionary of American slang, but I haven’t been able to find it in a while. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/92 "2017-02-07T06:41:28Z")
I picked up a used copy of **Black Box** , which as its name suggests is a cpllection of final communications from doomed airline crews who realize their existences are about to wink out. The really weird thing was the bookmark that I found in the book: a boarding pass on a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, back in the eighties. So someone apparently considered this to be appropriate reading while flying. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/93 "2017-02-07T10:55:07Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > My oddest is probably [Golfing for Cats](https://www.amazon.com/Golfing-Cats-Coronet-Books-Coren/dp/0340209984), although I have an older edition with [different cover](http://www.deutschlanduberelvis.com/.a/6a01127917f7ad28a401310fe7da1d970c-500wi). … OK, that ‘different cover’ certainly increases the ‘strange’ level. Is there actually a reason for it, or is it just random weirdness? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/94 "2017-02-07T14:47:54Z")
As a kid I came across a book in out house that was the US Census for Oregon. For 1860. Just page after page of tables. Surprisingly good sized. Not just an odd book, but apparently no one knew how it was obtained nor why it was kept. ---
**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:** [February 7, 2017, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/95 "2017-02-07T15:12:29Z")
Here’s a genuinely weird book I found in the bookstore at the American Museum of Natural History many years ago: **The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades**. It’s a translation from the German original **Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia** by Gerolf Steiner, writing under the pseudonym Harald Stumke. The book is an elaborate parody of Darwinian evolution, only instead of finding a Galapagos full of adapted finches, the fictional author finds an island group populated by mouse-like creatures that have adapted to fill ecological niches in truly bizarre ways, many of them involving their noses 9hence the title) > **[The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades](https://speculativeevolution.fandom.com/wiki/The_Snouters:_Form_and_Life_of_the_Rhinogrades)** > > The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades is a book originally published in 1957 in Germany (original title: Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia) by Gerolf Steiner, which wrote most of the book with the pseudonym of Harald Stümpke. This book... > **[Rhinogradentia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinogradentia)** > > Rhinogradentia is a fictitious order of shrew-like mammals invented by German zoologist Gerolf Steiner. Members of the order, known as rhinogrades or snouters, are characterized by a nose-like feature called a "nasorium", which evolved to fulfill a wide variety of functions in different species. Steiner also created a fictional persona, naturalist Harald Stümpke, who is credited as author of the 1961 book Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia (translated into English in 1967 as The Snouters: Form an... Maybe calling it a “parody” isn’t accurate – the author was a zoologist fully familiar with (and presumably supportive of) the Theory of Natural Selection, but he carries this to wonderfully absurd extremes. The book is heavily illustrated, so you are treated to images of the Snouters that mimic plants, or that hop on their noses, or that use nasal mucus to ensnare their prey. Several of the drawings appear to be caricatures of people, presumably colleagues. As the Wikipedia article shows, people have gone out of their way to fabricate taxidermic models of some of them. This is light years beyond “jackalopes” as taxidermy hoaxes. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/96 "2017-02-07T16:01:36Z")
I once stumbled across a particularly weird bit of crank literature called _Somebody Else Is On The Moon_, which purported to prove that aliens have been building giant devices and cities on the moon, that the astronauts discovered this, and that the gummint is covering it up. The key “evidence” was a batch of photos where some perfectly ordinary feature of the lunar landscape is circled and labelled as some sort of alien artifact. :dubious: :rolleyes: ---
**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:** [February 7, 2017, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/97 "2017-02-07T16:12:15Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > I once stumbled across a particularly weird bit of crank literature called _Somebody Else Is On The Moon_, which purported to prove that aliens have been building giant devices and cities on the moon, that the astronauts discovered this, and that the gummint is covering it up. The key “evidence” was a batch of photos where some perfectly ordinary feature of the lunar landscape is circled and labelled as some sort of alien artifact. :dubious: :rolleyes: I’ve seen that book. It’s not just a LOne Nut – there were several people drumming that particular drum, from at least the 1950s on. You can read about some of the others in Frank Edwards’ books (_Stranger than Science_, [I[Strange World\*, _Strangest of All_…) Edwards was something of a nut, himself. Anyway, at first the “inhabited Moon” nuts had to rely on observations and telescopic photographs. Later they had NASA images from the lunar orbiters and such. If I recall correctly, the book you’re citing uses NASA pictures and claims to make out “X-drones”, constructions that look sorta like chromosomes. They’re big sloppy crossed tubes that he thinks are (were) excavating lunar soil for some nefarious purpose. The thing is, there was a time when this didn’t seem – pardon me – looney. Look at this headline from **The New York Times** (!!!) from 1911: > **[The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos](https://www.nytimes.com?res=9D04E2DE163CE633A25754C2A96E9C946096D6CF)** > > Live news, investigations, opinion, photos and video by the journalists of The New York Times from more than 150 countries around the world. Subscribe for coverage of U.S. and international news, politics, business, technology, science, health, arts,... [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The\_New\_York\_Times/Martians\_Build\_Two\_Immense\_Canals\_in\_Two\_Years](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/Martians_Build_Two_Immense_Canals_in_Two_Years) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/98 "2017-02-07T18:17:35Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > I once stumbled across a particularly weird bit of crank literature called _Somebody Else Is On The Moon_, which purported to prove that aliens have been building giant devices and cities on the moon, that the astronauts discovered this, and that the gummint is covering it up. The key “evidence” was a batch of photos where some perfectly ordinary feature of the lunar landscape is circled and labelled as some sort of alien artifact. :dubious: :rolleyes: I’ve actually read that book! It was as wacky as it sounds. I also recently (as in within the past 2 weeks) watched a “documentary” about the same topic. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/99 "2017-02-07T18:23:59Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I’m surprised I didn’t post in this thread the first time around. My oddest is probably [Golfing for Cats](https://www.amazon.com/Golfing-Cats-Coronet-Books-Coren/dp/0340209984), although I have an older edition with [different cover](http://www.deutschlanduberelvis.com/.a/6a01127917f7ad28a401310fe7da1d970c-500wi). > [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > … OK, that ‘different cover’ certainly increases the ‘strange’ level. Is there actually a reason for it, or is it just random weirdness? In the foreword, the author explains, facetiously, I think, that the three best-selling topics for books are golf, cats andNazi Germany, and that the cover was designed to tap into that popularity for increased sales. The book itself has nothing to do with any of them; it’s just a collection of columns written by Alan Coren. Alan Coren, incidentally, was the father of Victoria Coren Mitchell, who might be familiar to folks around here for her appearances on _QI_ and other British TV shows. ---
**Author:** ![by-tor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/by-tor/32/266_2.png) [@by-tor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/by-tor)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110/100 "2017-02-07T21:05:13Z")
As a teenager interested in the occult, I found a book supposedly translated from a book written by an Arab person who was relaying the teachings of Simon Magus’ son (or maybe grandson). It started with a stern warning that only the strongest willed person could control the demons that the following spells would unleash and even then, disaster was almost inevitable. Then the rest of the book were a series of numbers arranged in square patterns that you were supposed to carve on plates of specific precious metals. I think jewels were somehow involved as well. Each “numbers square” was for a different spell, such as flying or gaining wealth and they all involved summoning demons to bend to the summoner’s will. There were other notes on the rituals to perform for each spell. Whoever created the book would have made a cool DM. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strangest-book-you-have-ever-found/334110.md?page=6)