Inside Jacket

Who do you think comes best out of this little legal tussle? LibraryThing.com or a company called American Reading? LibraryThing’s response made me laugh.

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.

The idea for this post actually came to me while working on our Jules Verne feature awhile ago. I couldn’t help but think that his beard reminded me of a terrier’s chin.

My quirky mind went from there, matching authors with what I thought would be (or would have been) a suitable pet for them – based on appearance alone, of course.

So here you go, some of my author/pet pairings:

Jules Verne & Scottish Terrier

Agatha Christie & Pug Dog

Walt Whitman & Old English Sheepdog

Daphne du Maurier & Persian Cat

Dashiell Hammett & Partridge Cochin Hen

Malcolm Gladwell & Bichon Frise

J.K. Rowling & Afghan Hound

Herta Muller & Aye Aye Lemur

Ready for your weekly dose of wackiness?

This week in the Weird Book Room we’re featuring a training manual  to help those poor flightless chickens use their wings to become airborne.  The Teach Your Chicken to Fly Training Manual includes fantastic diagrams and detailed instructions to get you started.

We’ve also got a selection of titles dealing with everything from cattle in a big city to nudism in modern life.

Thanks to all our readers who contributed this week’s strange selection that are just too good to miss!  Visit the Weird Book Room now…