Check out this page showing books used as materials for visual art.

Posted by Amy as Art & Literature, Unusual at 12:43 AM EDT

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Cooked Books: Real Food From Fictional Recipes:

Not long ago, I attempted to mimic some cooking as it is done in a number of relatively recent novels.

This article charts his progress and ponders the purpose of the description of cooking in fiction.

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Fiction, Readers & Reading, Unusual at 1:24 AM EDT

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Things Found In Books:

Librarians and book collectors have many tales about ephemera left in books. While the legend of the bacon bookmark may be among the more pervasive reports of strange finds, a smallpox sample is probably the most bizarre. There are blogs and discussion boards that record other makeshift markers. Some readers prefer designated over spontaneous markers. Mirage Bookmark has an extensive collection of bookmark ephemera, with Bookmark of the Week and Bookmark Collector also offering noteworthy collections.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading, Unusual at 7:26 AM EDT

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The Voynich manuscript is “a mysterious illustrated book with incomprehensible contents.” Here are some photos of it.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Medieval and Old English, Unusual at 1:57 AM EDT

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The Murthly Hours: “a medieval treasure.”

The Murthly Hours is an early example of the Book of Hours, a new kind of prayer book for the laity that made its appearance in France, England and the Low Countries in the 13th century. At this time books of hours were written for wealthy laypeople, more often than not women, as in the case of the Murthly Hours.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Medieval and Old English, Unusual at 1:54 AM EDT

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I have to confess I’d never heard of xylotheks, or wooden libraries, but now I’ve discovered a website dedicated to them.

The Wooden Library at Alnarp Library defines a xylothek as follows:

a collection of simple pieces of wood specimens placed together in some kind of cupboard. In a refined form it is in the shape of “books” where you can find details from the tree inside, everything arranged as a “library” . . . . Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”).

This site has numerous photos and is well worth browsing.

Via Alone On a Boreal Stage.

Posted by Amy as Science & Nature, Unusual at 5:38 AM EST

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Well, here’s something I hadn’t heard of before: the World Cup of Writers.

As author Craig Taylor reports,

The tourney was meant to be an international gathering where writers could discuss Dante in the evening and hack each other’s shins in the daylight on one of the finest training grounds in Europe.

He notes some similarities to that other World Cup:

the 2006 World Cup of Writers ended much like the real World Cup: the English team came home with nothing but good memories and aching hamstrings.

This sounds like fun. Maybe next year there will be a few more teams.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 6:06 AM EDT

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I’ve recently discovered the Klingon Language Institute. There’s more information about the Klingon language
here than I knew existed.

For example, I learned that the Klingon language does not just comprise a few phrases tossed around on screen:

Klingon was invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies. He invented not just a few words to make the Klingons sound alien, but a complete language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and usage.

The site offers resources for learning Klingon as well as free E-cards in Klingon with messages ranging from “Happy Birthday” to “When Do We Attack?”

After visiting their website, I see that they’ve translated Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing into Klingon.

Apparently a documentary has been made about Klingon and the Klingon Language Institute: Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water.

Via Boing Boing.

Posted by Amy as Language, Speculative Fiction, Unusual at 2:14 AM EDT

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Did you know that “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a legitimate sentence with a clear meaning?

Stop snickering, you in the back.

If you’d like proof, you can check out the Wikipedia entry for the explanation.

There are also examples of other such sentences in English and other languages.

Via robot wisdom weblog.

Posted by Amy as Language, Unusual at 1:07 AM EDT

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Check out the Guardian article titled ”Claws Out Over Hemingway’s Six-Toed Cats”.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to start fining the owners of the musem that was once home to Ernest Hemingway.

Apparently nearly 50 descendants of Hemingway’s cat Snow White roam through the author’s former home. They’re a hit with visitors, but not, obviously, with the USDA.

Via Quill and Quire.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 8:10 AM EDT

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I love history, and I also enjoy sorting my way through the chronologies of series that I read. So I was interested to find the page of Edgar Governo, Historian of Things That Never Were.

He and many others have put together histories and timelines of fictional worlds. A large number of these are fantasy and science fiction, but you can also find the chronologies of such characters as Nero Wolfe, Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, Gulliver, James Bond, and Anne Shirley.

In addition to the fictional worlds found in books and comics, there are links to television, movies, and games.

Via Apothecary’s Drawer.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 4:08 AM EDT

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Here’s a fun site to browse: Alfred Armstrong’s Odd Books: A Safe House For Literary Misfits.

The site is dedicated to “that constant source of delight and wonder, the second-hand bookshop.”

It features such titles as How To Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction, Brainwashing Is a Cinch!, and Recollections of a Society Clairvoyant.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 12:31 AM EDT

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According to a BBC news item, police in Leeds have found a book from the 18th or 19th century lying on a road (likely discarded after a robbery). It was written mostly in French—and bound with human skin.

Apparently it was fairly common practice to write accounts of murder trials and then bind the book with the killer’s skin.

Such a form of book-binding (whatever the reason) even has a name: anthropodermic bibliopegy, and there’s a Wikipedia article about it here.

Via In The Middle.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 4:36 AM EDT

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A while back I blogged about the competition for Oddest Title of the Year and included the website address for people to vote for their favourite.

And the winner is . . . What To Do With People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead.

If you voted for this title, pat yourself on the back—it won by only two votes.

It beat out Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa.

The article about the competition results can be found here.

For our enjoyment, the article includes the following list of past winners:

1978 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
1979 The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
1980 The Joy of Chickens
1981 Last Chance at Love–Terminal Romances
1982 Population and Other Problems
1983 The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
1984 The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
1985 Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts
1986 Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
1988 Versailles: The View from Sweden
1989 How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
1990 Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
1992 How to Avoid Huge Ships
1993 American Bottom Archaeology
1994 Highlights in the History of Concrete
1995 Reusing Old Graves
1996 Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
1997 The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
1998 Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
1999 Weeds in a Changing World
2000 High Performance Stiffened Structures
2001 Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service
2002 Living with Crazy Buttocks
2003 The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
2004 Bombproof Your Horse

Via The Anomalist.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 2:05 AM EST

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Scholars are now debating whether a death mask, found in a ragpicker’s shop in 1842, belonged to William Shakespeare.

You can read the full details about the discovery and the debate here or here.

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 3:28 AM EST

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Writers always try to have titles that will entice readers, but sometimes the effort goes a little too far.

Fortunately, there are organisations out there, ever alert, who help notify the reading public about such excesses.

The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year offers us the opportunity to vote for the weirdest title; just click on this link to see the options and vote.

Although it’s a tough call, I think my favourite from the group is How People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 5:15 AM EST

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