Susan and I were in an antique store and found a 5 volume set of what can only be called “antique erotica.” It had all been owned by the same man (his plate was in each book) in the 1930s and had been privately printed. I looked up his name on Google and, I’ll be damned, there he was! He was a history professor at the College of William and Mary. Susan and I picture him as a little, Mr. Peepers-type guy, living with Mother in an old house in Williamsburg, who, every so often, would get a new edition of pornography. BTW, the material is really tame by current standards - some De Sade, “Memoirs of Casanova,” and some erotic Greek poetry translations.
I also have “Hippies, Drugs, and Promiscuity,” which was printed in 1969 or thereabouts.
A “marriage manual” from the 1920s, the title of which esacpes me. Lots of articles about how awful masturbation is and how every woman should remember that men have “urges” that must be satisfied (but not by masturbation, apparently). I gave this one to Susan as a wedding present.
I have a great many books on many bookshelves, (as do most of us I imagine) and one of my favorite impish things to do was to place at random intervals about 20 copies of I’m OK Your OK and see if anyone noticed.
I have been asked about these books with a nervous smile…
High Weirdness by Mail a subgenius how-to hobby!
De Re Metallica medieval metalworking manual
Guns a huge photo encyclopedia of, what else? guns!
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes I have about every kind of published tale, anathology, commentary and what-not concerning the writings.
Basics of Biblical Greek a helpful textbook, came with a CD!
Armoured Combat Handbook not really a book, but I printed out the SCA manual that’s online and had it bound at kinko’s for reference, and on that note…
The Known Worlde Handbook a Society for Creative Anachronism how-to manual.
Good Lord, I actually own several of the books people have listed here. I also have quite a few of my own weird books
The weirdest one, though, has to be End Product: The Last Taboo – a comprehensive book about ---- uhhh — poop. Heavily footnoted and surprisingly entertainingly written. I found it at a used book store, and have never seen another copy anywhere. There are other books on the subject out there (I’m amazaed and ashamed that I know this), but this is the best one. The Snouters – a very weird German parody of Dartwin’s discovery of evolution. Instead of observing finches on the Galapagos, the fictional narrator discovers adaptive radiation among mouse-like creatures on some other island. Some of the adaptations are downright gross (the book is profusely illustrated – and I think some of the author’s enemies end up as siome of the more disgusting creatures). My copy is an English translation, but I ordered a German original for my Ph.D. advisor. You May Smoke – a paperback put out by some cigarette-company think tank in the 1960s that argues that all the cancer and emphysema statistics are wrong and inglated. LDS SF, a collection of Mormon Science Fiction that I bought from the editor at an SF film festival in Salt Lake City. I suggested to him that he should have called it Zion’s Fiction, but he had apparently heard that one way too many times. High Weirdness by Mail – the least weird of this bunch. I actually bought it in a real bookstore. It’s by “The Reverend Ivan Stang” of the Church of the Subgenius. Describes all of the strange stuff you could get for the price of a stamp and a SASE. This book is practically obsolete now – all these folks listed here now have Internet sites. It’s interesting to note that there was a vast market of eccentrics, weirdos, and obsessive people out there using the U.S. Mail as a distribution system, and that the Internet simply streamlined and broadened (and didn’t create) this community.
I have that right here at my office desk, and it is indeed a very good Photoshop job. I am considering the Charlie Chaplin-butt cat for my New Year’s card this year . . .
I have that too - it is a wonderful book (actually 2 books) and I enjoy it immensely. Since you can not buy it new anymore, I ordered a used copy (1960s) from the US. Cost me a fortune for shipping, but worth every penny.
My stranger books include:
Sex lives of the popes
This should actually be a really short book, but it’s not …
The bizarre sex life of the animals
A series of true crime books focusing on autopsies (titles translated from the original German):
The language of the dead
The games of the dead
The traces of the dead
Eva, there’s one other person I knew from college who’d have a Chechen-English phrasebook, and that’s 'cos she actually worked there after Georgetown.
All my books are on my floor at this point (too poor for furniture yet!) but I think one book that would make people do a double take is Obabakoak, a very highly regarded novel in the Basque Country - in the original Basque. It was a gift from a half-Basque friend I met in Russia.
Can’t think of anything else at the moment, although it’s possible most of my foreign language collection would make the average Joe from the street boggle for a few minutes.
I’m pretty boring. Like a previous poster most of my books are still in boxes but all I can think of that I have that may be weird is some writing books on weapons, poisons, police procedure and forensics.
I also have a big thick book titled “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett, about all sorts of viral and bacterial diseases. I have read it a couple times and one of my favorite things to do is take it with me to Doctor’s appointments and read it in the waiting room … while making little coughing noises. So, maybe that might qualify as a little weird.
I have several minor oddities–Gaelic and Tagalog dictionaries (which are rather rare around here) and a number of books already mentioned in this thread (I need to look for a copy of The Poisoner’s Handbook). I also have the beautifully illustrated Nobilis: A Game of Greater Powers, the only RPG manual I’ve ever seen that would make a good coffee-table book for non-gamers.
The book that catches the most attention, though, is one I believe I’ve mentioned on the boards before: How to Build a Corpse (In the Privacy of Your Own Home). It’s a Kinkos-esque production, with a plastic ring spine and a floppy transparent cover, that details the process of making a realistic-looking prop body on the cheap, with tips for adjusting the design to the appropriate level of…juicyness. There’s a picture of a particularly shriveled specimen sitting on a park bench on the cover.
Just as a small highjack for Balance, here in Vancouver you can watch the TV news in Tagalog on our local multi-cultural station. Putting on Mandarin news and Hindi movies I can understand, but seeing Tagalog up there seems pretty odd.
For weird books, I don’t have much that’s really out there, and they’re mostly in boxes.
One is The Next Hundred Years by C. C. Furnas (1936), a preview of science and society that’s already wrong. We’ll see how it comes out.
Another that I’ve mentioned before is Winni ille Pu (sp?), a classic Latin tale about a bear and his friends. I also have the English version.
Finally, I still have the first book I bought with my own money. I had to save my allowance for ages to order The Wonders of Life on Earth, a Time-Life coffee-table book from the late 50s. I remember my father helping me fill out the order form.
High Weirdness By Mail, by Ivan Stang, is indeed a fascinating look into a bygone time, back when you had to depend on the mail to get a look at some of the crazier elements of society, rather than just fire up the internet. I picked this one up in 1988, and still have many of the bizarre pamphlets I ordered from various loony groups (my fave is still the one declaring that Steven Spielberg is the Antichrist).
A Field Guide To Demons, a sort of folklore guide to the demons and evil spirits of a variety of cultures.
Necronomicon, the old black-leather hardbound edition from the seventies. Gets a lot of commentary. I keep it next to the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, which had my special edition DVD of *Army Of Darkness * in it…
Guerilla Warfare, by Mao Tse-Tung. In English. You never know.
The Big Book Of Losers
The Big Book Of Vice
The Big Book Of Weirdos
The Big Book Of Death
The Big Book Of Conspiracies, all from Feral House publishers. Hysterically funny facts and events, presented in cartoon fashion, all within each given subject area. Nearly the first entire third of **Conspiracies ** deals with the JFK assassination…
**Tales From The Doc Side, ** a bound compilation of various essays I’ve written over the years, many of which can be found on this message board. It’s always fun to see people do double takes when they see my picture on the cover…
The Cartoon History Of The Universe (vols. 1 and 2)
The Cartoon History Of The United States
The Cartoon Guide To Communication
The Cartoon Guide to Physics
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics…all by Larry Gonick and others. Basically, they’re textbooks in cartoon format. Great for grabbing teenagers’ interest in given subjects.
Let’s see…most of these belonged to Mr. Bunny before we got together, and were one of the things that attracted me to him, actually.
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Serial Killers The Encyclopedia of Superstitions The Pop-Up Book of Phobias AND The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares A Criminal History of Mankind Cause of Death: A Writer’s Guide to Death, Murder and Forensic Medicine Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook
Do you know that The Cartoon History of the Universe Part III has been out for quite some time now?
There’s also The Cartoon Guide to Computers and, I think, one or two others. I’ve got 'em, too.
If you like Gonick’s take on US History, you might like Stan Mack’s History of the American Revolution. Mack is the guy who did (does?) Stan Mack’s Real-Life Funnies.
