That cute girl at the coffee shop alone in the corner with Margaret Atwood. That attractive guy on the bus immersed between the pages of Jonathan Lethem. It’s a known fact that reading makes people sexier. So the next time you grab a book and head out for a little literary fun — don’t forget to bring protection!
Title: Book Soup Matchbook Condom
Price: $2.00
Start off the new year with some fun – our Weird Book Room has 6 new books!
Featured this week is The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. Take a look at the history of this little item and the impact it has had culturally.
Also, don’t miss the guide on being cool, if not awesome and an in-depth look at fleas. Looking for a new fitness routine for the new year? Do we have a book for you!!
Head on over to the Weird Book Room…
You expect to find Granny’s trinkets, barely used “As Seen on TV” products and even less used fitness equipment at car boot sales but how about a book bound in human skin? And selling for just a couple of pounds at that!
That’s the find that Dorset historian and author Rodney Legg came home with. The tattooed skin binding came off the book at some point in time and was preserved in a small bottle of oil and that’s how it was bought by Legg.
“I saw it at the sale and bought it out of interest for a couple of pounds,” he said.
The skin is believed to have been removed from the back of a man who was executed after he attempted to shoot a British major during the 1839 Chinese Opium War. The only clue to help identify the man is an anchor tattoo on the skin which indicates that he may have been a sailor. Says Legg, “‘It seems that the man was killed and flayed after attempting to shoot Major Simpson dead, but when and where it happened is unclear.”
Why the pocket book was made is unknown but possession of the book has been traced to the Egerton family of West Stafford in Dorset.
A letter that came with the book indicates that Mrs. Caroline Egerton found the book while clearing the Stafford Rectory after the death of her father, Canon Reginald Southwell Smith, in 1895. She wrote, ‘I have only this morning discovered the long lost pocket book made out of the skin of the man who shot your father!’
95-year-old Major-General Sir David Boswell Egerton – 16th baronet in a line created in 1617 says he had no knowledge of the book and that he “can’t think why anyone should want such a relic.”
Me either.
After 2 years on the lam, a British man has been charged with theft of 13 volumes worth £50,000 from the Royal Horticultural Society’s London library.
William Jacques allegedly signed into the library under the false identity of Mr Santoro and then stole the books by hiding them under his jacket.
Jacques is “of no fixed address” so I guess we can presume the books weren’t added to his personal library…
Here’s a short list recalling some of my favorite reads of 2009. Feel free to add to it:
– "Delicate Edible Birds," a collection of short stories by Lauren Groff.
– "Pops," a new biography of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
– "And Another Thing …" Eoin Colfer adds to the late Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series.
– "Invisible," Paul Auster’s mystery, told from several viewpoints.
– "Eiffel’s Tower," Jill Jonnes’ account of the ambitious, contentious construction project, and the people surrounding it.
– "The Missing," a moody novel of self-discovery by Tim Gautreaux.
