I’ve got several of the cartoon Big Books also (Conspiracies, Paranormal, Freaks, Urban Legends, Weirdos- I really wish I got Death), the first two Cartoon Histories of the Universe, Stang’s High Weirdness by Mail & 3-Fisted Tales of Bob, Shea & Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy & various other related Robert Anton Wilson books, an autographed Mike Warnke’s The Satan Seller, OH! and Ed Gein- America’s Original Psycho by Judge Robert Gollmarr who tried the 2nd Gein case, not very technical/legalistic but more a fun read full of cool anecdotes.
New purchase today, appropriate for this thread:
Mutter Museum copyright 2002 The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
A lavishly illustrated volume of photographs of specimens from the museum’s
collection. Found it for a dollar at the thrift shop.
Le Petomane, a 1967 biography of the famous fartiste.
My husband thinks I’m lying when I tell him about Le Petomane. I’ll have to try and find this.
I have a great, two volume, “The Encyclopedia of Sex” written in the 50s that filled with witticisms. I’ve got the Re/Search Freaks book but I don’t really consider those weird - they’re more “historical.”
I used to keep a copy of “Physics 101” in my bathroom because it was pink, and it went with the bombshell decor. I don’t think I ever opened it, though.
The Silent Miaow, a book on the care and feeding of cats. No, wait a tic, I take that back, it’s a handbook for cats, written by a cat, on how to take over a household of humans: what gestures and sounds to use, how to cadge food at the table, how to pose for a camera, etc.
Final Exit For Cats- A Feline Suicide Guide
Mrs Milburn Drysdale The Master has written on LePetomane
Thank you! I’m printing it out and bringing it home.
Amongst the more bizarre religious literature that I’ve found, I have copies of a couple of Aliester Crowley’s diaries, which include The Book of the Law, and I also have a copy of The Satanic Bible.
I have a 19th century anti-Christian/anti-liberal rant called MIght is Right, written by someone calling himself Ragnar Redbeard.
As far as conspiracy/kook type stuff goes, I have the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as *Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief * by Donna Kossy.
I’ve also got a lot of situationist books, including Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle.
I’ve got several of Robert Anton Wilson’s “Cosmic Trigger” books.
And DeeDee Ramone’s autobiography.
How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art by Kathleen Mayer
Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Reader Institute
KRC
I thought Lavey had plagiarized much of the Satanic Bible from Redbeard’s book. Kossy used to have a wonderful online Kooks Museum. But it shut down several years ago.
Back To My Bookshelves
Eccentric Lives And Peculiar Notions A great book if you enjoy kooks. Wonder at the oddness of Sir Francis Galton. Meet the congressman who wrote a book on Atlantis. Weep at the unsung genius of Pyke, who devised a method for making massive battleships from ice and sawdust.
You guys are weeeiiirrrddddd…
<chirpily> Can I come over and borrow some books? 
I have…
…The Tao of Chaos, in which Katja Walter attempts to merge DNA, fractals, the I Ching, and cosmic evolution. Hven’t yet decided whether it’s crackpot or genius or both. I also have several other books along the same line, such as Terence McKenna’s The Archaic Revival.
…two copies of Alain Daniélou’s Music and the Power of Sound, in which the author asserts that Western music is flawed because the musical knowledge the West inherited from the ancient Greeks was built on a fragmentary, garbled, and incomplete copy of the ancestral Indian knowledge base, and therefore we use such things as equal-tempered tuning and chords, and are unable to evoke the spiritual and emotional experiences that music was intended for.
…Toasters 1909 - 1960. I created a cartoon character named Toasterman, and a friend gave this to me as a joke. I had no idea people collect toasters…
…Ted Nelson’s legendary early-seventies opus against tyrannical technological, bureaucratic and corporate mediocrity, Computer Lib, in which he argues passionately in favour of giving computer knowledge and power to the people, speaks glowingly of the artistic and technological wonders that could be. It was reissued in the mid-eighties by… Microsoft Press.
…and the pièce de résistance: the original 1983 Abbeville Press edition of Franco Maria Ricci’s Codex Seraphinianus: a beautifully-illustrated artbook, in an unknown script, depicting inexplicable entities doing unguessable things with incomprehensible objects. Architecture, geography, history, culture… it’s all there, but the book is the most alien thing I’ve ever seen. I was working my first summer job, back in '83, and it was very expensive, something like seventy dollars, but I had to buy it.
The 1914 edition of the British Army’s Manual of Physical Training, formerly owned by a certain Regimental Sergeant-Major H. Denham, M.M. of the 1st Battalion, Battleford Light Infantry.
The Masters of Luxor, a published edition of the script for the original second ever Doctor Who story that was ultimately shelved in favor of the first Dalek story.
I love eBay.
I also have a stack of these goofy early 60s “Midnight Reader” books with cheesecake covers and wonderful titles like Flesh Fools, Strip for Action, Motel Sex Club, Naked Holiday, Sin Hungry and my personal favorite: Sin Devil.
They’re hysterically silly books. Most of them contain about 200 pages of the literary equivilent of panning away as the girl takes off her shirt. And the back cover blurbs all read something like this:
“SWEET LUST…
Joyously taken in the golden shimmer of the Caribbean moon, where a dusky play-by-play girl can give an eager American engineer the time of both their lust lives … where the rough-and-tumble of a U.S. engineering crew can include some pretty twisted desires–if one of the engineers is a brunette wanton! Down where the Calypso drummers pound out a sin-beat as old as Adam and Eve, and the sea-soft beach is a mile-long open-air lust bed, where the nights are warm and the passions are blazing when big-city morals drop away as casually as a loose bikini at the passion hungry call of –
…WANTON NIGHTS!”
How are the actual books? As if that matters.
The oddest thing on my bookshelf is a very rough (handwritten) illustrated comic-type thing called ‘Labour’s Crimes Against Aotearoa’ published in the early 90’s, calling on all New Zealanders to haul Roger Douglas and try him for crimes agaist all New Zealanders. (Roger Douglas was Finance Minister for the Labour party in the 80’s in NZ, and orchestrated the sale of state owned assests, deregulated the dollar, generally made NZ a financially exciting place to be, before the crash. Also slashed welfare and was resposible for huge unemployment). The anti-capitalist alliance, who published ‘Labour’s Crimes Against Aotearoa’ painted him as the antichrist. I picked it up from a sale the uni library was having. A bias that rabid is rather refreshing, sometimes, and makes my leftist tendancies seem very mild and rational.
I have Eccentric Lives… also, I refer back to it occasionally (btw, young Nesta Webster was hot!) Also, I was at the Kooks online museum a few months ago, it’s still online tho I think it’s not updated at all. Kossy also wrote a book called Strange Creations which I’ve not yet read but deal with ODD Origins theories (6000 yr old Earth & Human-dinosaur cohabitation are normal compared to these)- Ancient Astronauts (which she attributes to Blavatsky), Aquatic Apes, & Humans bred as pets to Intelligent Dinos. I gotta get!
LaVey plagiarized a LOT- check The Satanic Rituals, his Illuminati one was actual the “This is the Law-Are We Not Men” rite from H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau.
I have Soup for the Qan, a translation of a very early chinese ‘cookbook’. I know the author=)
Take a Thousand Eggs, a compenium of recipes from roughly 1300 ad western europe. hm, i know the author as well
Cariadoc’s Miscellaney, a compendium of medieval and renaissance cookbooks. hm, i know this author too…
De Re Metallica - check
Annotated Sherlock Holmes - check
Queen Elizabeths Wardrobe Unlocked - sort of what it sounds like, the worldly clothing and accessories of QE the First taked from her household documents, and illustrated with copies of period portraits
Gee, I think I must be SCA also…[east kingdom, barony beyond the mountains, canton of fennbrycg]
You on the sca metalworkers list?
Someplace around this house, Brainiac4 and I have Music Among the Zu’ Wa-Si and Related Peoples of Namibia, Botswana, and an Gola.
No, sadly, I do not work metal myself, but I love collecting references. I’m a leather/woodworking guy myself. Middle Kingdom, the brand-spanking new Barony of Brendoaken.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushashi has started several conversations.
My mom gave me a 2nd edition Barracks Ballads and Departmental Ditties by Rudyard Kipling, I’ve got a cool mom.
Stand-outs:
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
The Voynich Manuscript
For the literary-minded:
Finnigan’s Wake
Gravity’s Rainbow
Cryptonomicon
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
For the historically-minded:
Malleus Maleficarum - 2 volume set in both English and Latin!
Also - the illustrated edition!
A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture
In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires
Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds
The Atlas of Legendary Lands: Fabled Kingdoms, Phantom Islands, Lost Continents and Other Mythical Worlds
How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Translating Maya Hieroglyphs
A random selection:
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time…
I Lick My Cheese and Other Notes From the Frontline of Flatsharing
A Handbook on Hanging
This Is Not a Book
This Book Does Not Exist
For when the above just won’t do:
Fish Who Answer the Telephone and other Bizarre Books
How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books
Unfortunately I can’t recall the names of most of the strange books I’ve collected.
Two off the top of my head: Nerconomicon. Basically I spent $50 on a high quality hard back just so I could have a book on my shelf called Necronomicon.
A first edition of the Christian Science handbook.
I own a The Household Physician that I think my Grandparents got as a wedding gift around 1915.
Some strange treatments in that book.