I’ve noticed that eyebrows tend to raise when people note the lineup of Gray’s Anatomy, Elements of Physiology, DSM-III, and an eight-year-old Nurse’s Drug Handbook on my shelf – especially since I’m not a med student or anything.
But no eyebrows are raised at my Asterix and Obelix collection … or at least, no eyebrows worth inviting back. 
Student as Nigger by Jerry Farber. It’s a book from 1970 that argues that the student/teacher relationship echoes the slave/master relationship. But the real message I got out of it is that the author wants to sleep with his students and not feel guilty about it.
I bought it at the used book store where I used to work, and the coworker who rang me up was a black activist. I felt like kind of a jerk, but she didn’t seem offended.
ivylass–Broom closet? Ha ha!
Wow, I tool a completely different tack on the term “eyebrow raising” in the title than most, who seem to link it to eroticism and/or kink. I thought “controversial” as in disputed by the mainstream.
On my shelf are:
Infamy by John Toland. He is (or was) a well respected historian who has come to the conclusion that FDR and General Marshall knew about the Japanese fleet heading toward Pearl Harbor in advance and deliberately did not issue a specific warning to our forces, because FDR wanted an attack on our forces to get us into the war. This is the one major 20th Century conspiracy theory I DO believe, and if anyone would like to discuss it, we can open another thread.
A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan, his interpretation of the Vietnam war as reflected through the life and death of one of the war’s more heroic figures, Colonel John Paul Vann.
Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen, an examination of what the German civilian population knew about the Holocaust.
The Price of Power by Seymour Hersch, an expertly done (and well deserved) hatchet job on Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
The Arrogance of Power by Anthony Summers, an expertly done (and well deserved) hatchet job on the entire political career of Nixon.
The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish
Celtic Magic by DJ Conway
Encyclopedia of Hell
heh. I read the whole thing when I was a kid. I was bored, and I kept waiting for it to get good! It never did.
I’m just finishing Susan Minot’s Rapture… an excellent book, about two lovers’ perspectives on their relationship. The whole thing takes place while she’s giving him oral sex. A great premise, and tastefully done. I don’t know if I hide it from the babysitter, but it would definitely raise some eyebrows.
The book that my wife and I would (and do) hide when the babysitter’s here is Aqua Erotica, a collection of erotica written around the theme of, you guessed it, water. The cool thing about the book is that it’s waterproof! grin
This thread has resulted in about ten new titles being added to my Amazon shopping cart.
As for my own, my books on serial killers, body disposal, torture, execution, and manufacturing homemade weapons have unnerved a few people.
Let’s see…I’v got “Complexity Theory of Real Functions”, “Introduction to Lattices and Order”, “Computability and Unsolvability”, “A Vector Space Approach to Geometry”, and quite a few others in a similar vein. They do raise eyebrows.
I have a multi-volume collection of Kipling’s works that have a small, tasteful “reversed swastika” on each cover. That is, it’s not a Nazi swastika as the books were printed pre-Hitler and facing in a different direction.
Currently, my bookshelf holds “Dirty Movies,” a study (with a few pictures) of vintage porn. But a lot of my stuff was in the graphic novel section, now dispursed through ebay. That included my small collection of undergrounds (R. Crumb, Skip Williamson, etc.), and my signed hardcover “Omaha the Cat Dancer” (anthropormorphic animals doing all kinds of naughty things. See everything.).
I also sold my four “Cream Lemon” picture books from Japan. “CL” was an anthology animated series. One episode in particular was set in a science-fiction world and featured tentacle sex.
If I had the money, I would buy “Evidence” by Luc Sante. That’s a collection of crime scene photographs taken in NYC at the turn of the century. Instead, I scanned some into the computer and use them occasionaly as my desktop.
i have a few mills and boons novels laying about the house from when i was very young which i havent gotten around to throwing away, mostly because i hate giving away book no matter how crap they where.
the romance novels always get an eye brow raise, simply because they look so out of place on my shelf wedged between “grays anatomy” and “the red ripper - chikatilo”.
it seems everyone i know expects violence blood and gore from me but not romance, bizarre.
I used to have Nigger. It was written by a black guy who was, among other things, involved with the Civil Rights Movement.
I can’t remember his name for the life of me. Anyway, that book raised one or two eyebrows.
I also like the Hot Blood books–anthologies of “erotic horror.” Very good. I reread certain stories fairly often, so there’s usually one or more of the books sitting around in plain view at my place at any given time.
I went through a WWII phase of interest for a while, so there’s lots of books with swastikas around my place as well.
I also have a lot of books about the occult and, even “worse” as far as my fundie in-laws are concerned, books about evolution.
Some people I’m sure raise eyebrows at my art books–there’s naked people in some of them, you know.
Leechboy and I set out to raise eyebrows by having a carefully placed “display” of the following:
Bible
Mao’s Red Book
Mahabarata (sp?)
Other than that
“Truly Madly Viking” - a truly badly written romance novel with badly drawn cover art (it was only 50c and I just had to have it).
Leechboys collection of serial killer books.
Loving Sex, Happiness in Mateship - given to me by my mum.
Nothing too out there.
Is that Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word? If so, the author is Randall Kennedy. I keep reminding myself to read that book; it sounds absolutely fascinating.
How to Good-Bye Depression : If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?.
Ok. I confess. I don’t actually have it. But I someday plan to get it simply for the “eyebrow raised” factor.
Well, that and that it promises that it’ll teach me how to "Do 3-week fasting, save sex energy and rotate vortex
Part 4 Stare, shoot out immaterial fiber or third attention, succeed in concentrating, behave with abandon-largess-humor and beckon the spirit"
And who amongst us hasn’t wanted to shoot out immaterial fiber?
From the author’s homepage:
Someday, when I have nothing better to do with $18.00…
Fenris
hiyruu wrote a book?
Thanks, Fenris. I now have a headache. That thing is a hate-crime against the English language.
I actually enjoy raised eyebrows a great deal, but I don’t get too many. The sort of people I generally invite over are rather hard to shock. How to Build a Corpse did engender a bit of comment when I left it out on the table, though.
The mummy in the corner and the hand protruding from under the couch get more notice than my books do, really.
I love that anthology! I even submitted a story to Aqua Erotica 2, but it got rejected.
Definitely one of the best erotica anthologies out there.
Sheri
Only one? I have a small library of Chaos texts from a misspent youth in the IOT.
Loved that book! Fascinating!
Top notch book! And I read the whole damn thing cover to cover.
Guess it depends on whose eyebrows we’re talking. I also have a few shelves of occult literature, including widdershins’ mall-version of the Necronomicon (only mine is hardback, bound in leather, with silver-gilt pages and a satin ribbon marker–way cooler than the paperback version), the Key of Solomon (both greater and lesser), several on Enochian magic, works by Blavatsky, Crowley (including one titled 666), Waite, Regardie, Agrippa, Levi, Paracelsus, etc.
Other than that, probably my photography collection. Any photographer that gets the fundies in a froth (and yes, I’m referring exclusively to the uptight, intolerant idiots; not fundamentalists in general…the alliteration was too good to pass up) can potentially get my vote. Thus Mann sits next to Sturges sits next to Hamilton on my shelf: my shrine to sanity.
It was Dick Gregory, I think. I just hit Google long enough to get a couple book descriptions to pop up, and I’m getting the name from that–sorry, but I’m too lazy to actually read much of the web pages tonight. It’s late here.
Now, from memory: Dick Gregory (I think) was a poor black kid who grew up in a time when poor black kids were expected to amount to nothing. Dick, however, had other ideas. A high school runner, he became something of a big track star and ended up going to college. He then served for a while in the Army and started doing comedy. This turned out to be the kid’s niche. He worked hard to become a comic while working a day job. Somewhere along the way he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. I remember that he was somewhat troubled because while he was supposed to be fighting against the plight of black people in America, he was also doing comedy that made fun of black people–sort of parodying his “blackness” on stage for the amusement of predominantly white audiences. Of course, the guy did other stuff with his life, too, but that’s about all I remember. It must have been a good book, though, because all the stuff I just related comes from the memory of somebody in his thirties who read the book somewhere around age eleven. I remember the author talks about the controversial title of his book in the dedication at the begining, which went something like this: “Ma, next time you hear the word “nigger,” just remember, they’re advertising my book.”
I don’t know if I’d enjoy the book now–or if it’s even still in print–but I guess it made an impression on me in middle school.