Odd Book Club

I just found this book today, and of course I haven't read it yet. But it has the greatest contrast between the title of a book and its cover art I've ever seen:



Quite the hardy Norseman there indeed.

A Hardy Norseman was first published in 1890, by nearly-forgotten Victorian English novelist Edna Lyall (real name: Ada Ellen Bayly). More information about her is here.

I dunno when I'll get around to reading it, but when I do, I may post a review/summary if it seems worthwhile.

I found this at a used book store some years ago. "Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression". As the back cover explains, it's a journal which "specializes in collections and studies of swearwords, insults, curses, blasphemies, expletives, slurs, scatology, and other maledicta" (bad words). It's been published off-and-on since the summer of 1977; this is the second issue.

Imcluded among the 200-odd pages are an article about insults in the Bobo language of Ghana; an analysis of the many different uses and phrases involving the word "shit"; an article about Turkish and Slavic insults (one section, rather intimidatingly, is subtitled "On the Role of Verbal Abuse in the Struggle against the Phanariot Constantinople Patriarchate in Macedonia during the Nineteenth Century"; an article titled "A Note on English Sexual Cursing"; and many other such jewels.

In Pooh and the Philosophers, John Tyerman Williams attempts to prove, strictly tongue-in-cheek, that A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books are commentaries upon the whole of Western philosophy, from ancient Greece to modern existentialist philosophers.

The dedication page of this book says: "To Elizabeth Mapstone, whose encouragement and constructive criticism turned a casual joke into this book." No surprise there; this is exactly the sort of book which seems like it grew out of someone's absurd, off-the-cuff joke. When I was in high school, I joked to a friend that the real purpose of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter was to prove that Osiris is the one true god. If anyone had pushed me strongly enough to develop that theory fully, I may have produced just such a book as this.

I can't really recommend it. Not because Williams' arguments are weak and strained; you expect that. The real problem here is that the book isn't particularly funny. For a book which nobody who reads it would ever expect to take seriously, that's a pretty large flaw.

Once upon a time (early 1950s), in Nigeria, there was a government worker named Amos Tutuola. One day, Mr. Tutuola bought a magazine which contained an advertisement; a foreign publishing house was looking for manuscripts. He said to himself: "But Eh! By the way, when I was at school I was a good taleteller! Why, could I not write my own? Ooh, I am very good at this thing."

Some while later, the publishing company Faber & Faber was dumbfounded to receive the manuscript of The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Tutuola's first novel, which was quite unlike any manuscript they'd ever seen before.

What was so unusual about it? The language. All over the world, in countries colonized by Europeans, the natives learnt the languages of their occupiers and twisted it to suit the rhythms and grammar of their own languages; the result- in Nigeria, for example- was a sort of English very different from anything spoken in England or America. Read the opening section of The Palm-Wine Drinkard and see for yourself. It is a beautiful, lovely, fantabulous book; and, to a grammar nazi, it is utterly, utterly wrong.
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The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases is a hilarious book, contributed to by a long list of eminent writers (primarily fantasy writers). It includes descriptions of dozens of bizarre and fantastical ailments, including symptoms, the history of the disease, and treatment.

Highlights include:

Ballistic organ syndrome, in which the body expels its own organs at high speed.

Delusions of Universal Grandeur, a mental disease whose sufferers believe that the universe is extremely big, extremely old, and rapidly expanding.

Flora Metamorphosis Syndrome, in which people are transformed into plants.

Fuseli's Disease, whose victims dream that they are sick, with the sickness growing worse and worse each night; but they remain quite healthy while awake.

Logopetria; when the victim of this disease attempts to speak, no sound is made; instead, solid objects of various sizes and shapes fall from the person's mouth.

Poetic Lassitude. "Victims become preoccupied and introspective. They are often found wandering the countryside and mountain fastnesses staring at tiny flowers. In many cases, they are attracted to water and will be discovered gazing limpidly into a still pool or millpond. A victim may dress eccentrically and lie on a chaise longue for days, sighing..."

There are also several diseases listed which can be contracted simply by reading about them.

For the first post of the Odd Book Club, I present to you: Coalesce, by Roxie Tremonto.



It's an art book, consisting of drawings from the winter and spring of 1971 by Tremonto, who was then a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The drawings are all attempts to combine the forms of various animals together. The artist comments, "These drawings answer my imagination of such possibilities. I drew them, also, for the challenge of drawing- but, overall, it was the device of connecting that contributed to the particular images, and not the need for such animals."

Including the cover, the book contains 32 drawings of impossible, ridiculous, and amusing combined animals. Here are some of them:
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