Category:
Books
Books
Making Pigeons Pay
Wendell Levi's book is about how to make make money raising pigeons. Not about getting revenge on them. Though the latter would doubtless be a more interesting book.You can read the entire book for free at the Internet Archive.
Browsing through his book, I learned that squab is the term for pigeon meat. (I'm sure most WU readers knew this already, but it was news to me). I've never eaten squab. Nor can I recall ever seeing it for sale in a supermarket, or on a restaurant menu. But it's readily available online, such as at squab.com.
Posted By: Alex - Mon May 06, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Food, Farming, Books
Anne Carroll Moore and her Doll Nicholas
The famous children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore was wont to tote around a doll named Nicholas and make people interact with it.
She eventually wrote a whole book (300+ pages) about Nicholas: Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story.
You can read the book here.
I have tried in vain to find a real photo of Nicholas. However, here is his depiction from the book.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 05, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Books, Libraries, 1920s, Dolls and Stuffed Animals, Mental Health and Insanity
Face-O-Metrics
Jessica Krane was the inventor of "face-o-metrics." This was a technique for removing wrinkles by stroking your face. At least, Krane claimed that wrinkles would disappear.
I like that the blurb on the jacket of her book declares, "BASIC WOO is for you— and so is EXTENDED WOO!"
'Basic Woo' was one of her wrinkle-removal techniques, but of course 'woo' can also mean bunk, poppycock, etc. Was the highlighting of this word some kind of surreptitious message to readers from a copywriter?
My Macbook's dictionary notes that the meaning of 'woo' as bunk originated in the 1970s "probably in imitation of a wailing sound traditionally attributed to ghosts and humorously associated with mysticism and the supernatural." So, since Krane's book was published in 1969, 'woo' wouldn't have yet had it's modern meaning. Still, an odd coincidence.
You can read Krane's book online at archive.org.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 29, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Books, 1960s, Skin and Skin Conditions
One Hundred Proofs That the Earth Is Not a Globe
Bone up on your arguments for this perennial topic!Read the 32-page book here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 19, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Gonzo, Demento, Kooky, Wacky and Out-there, Pseudoscience, Books, Nineteenth Century
Sedimentary Geology and the Civil War
I'm sure Hippensteel's new book (Sand, Science, and the Civil War) is quite interesting (especially if you're a Civil War buff), but the extreme narrow focus of his argument made me laugh. From a review:It "describes the influence of sedimentary rocks and sediments on the tactics employed by both armies during the Civil War and the effects of these materials on the weapons, fortifications, and landscapes from the conflict". Hippensteel believes that "sedimentary geology and sedimentary rocks were important on far more battlefields than either igneous or metamorphic rocks," and that this influence "has been underappreciated by historians."
More info: University of Georgia Press
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 01, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: War, Environmentalism and Ecology, Books, Nineteenth Century
What a Life! An Autobiography
You might enjoy this very silly book.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Nov 18, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Humor, Books, 1910s
If God loves me, why can’t I get my locker open?
A profound theological puzzle. First published in 1980.Lorraine Peterson is also the author of Why Isn't God Giving Cash Prizes?.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Nov 09, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Religion, Books, 1980s
How to read (and finish) Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a notoriously difficult book to read. But Gerry Fialka and his book group figured out a way to do it. They read it very slowly. Very, very slowly. They read two pages a month, and then would meet to discuss those pages.They started doing this in 1995, and a few weeks ago (Oct 2023) they reached the end. So it took them 28 years, but they finished the book. Now they're starting over.
More info: Orange County Register
Related post: The coach with the six insides
Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 30, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Literature, Books
Mental Magnetism
Read it here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 30, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: New Age, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Books, 1920s
Cold War Coloring Books
AboutComics.com recently released an expanded edition of Cold-War Coloring: Political Adult Coloring Books of the Kennedy Era, and WU played a small part in its creation.The book collects together politically-themed, satirical coloring books of the 1960s. Such as the JFK Coloring Book and Khrushchev’s Top Secret Coloring Book.
For the expanded edition the editor, Nat Gertler, wanted to include the Sing along with Khrushchov coloring book, published in 1962. However, he couldn't find a copy of it. There were no copies in libraries and none for sale.
Then he discovered that we here at WU happened to have posted a scanned copy of it online back in 2020. I tried to connect him with the reader who had sent us the scanned copy, so that he could get a higher-quality version of the pdf, but no luck there. But thankfully Nat was able to make do with the copy we had. So now this obscure title is once again in print.
Glad we were able to help prevent it from being lost forever.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Oct 19, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Politics, Books, 1960s, Satire
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |