Chaos Reading discussion

Sometimes a book title is too good not to share. Here's one I just stumbled across. It won a prize for oddest book title of 2011.



I should note that it's pronounced differently in Thai, and the word "poo" actually translates to "crab" in English. They've totally run with the joke though, and the website also features aprons for sale which read, "I cooked with Poo and I liked it".

Ah - I was looking for a copy of that for this thread, but I couldn't quite remember the title! I need to add it to me eeeuuw-but-thats-awesome shelf!

Let the harvest begin!

Matthew wrote: "Natural Harvest - A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

Need I say more?"

I really, really want this. I collect cookbooks and I think this would look fantastic on my kitchen shelves just to freak out my guests.

I know, right? I think I came across it on Karen's "tastes-like-people" shelf. There's a cannibal cookbook I have my eye on there too...

My "special" cookbook is this one, Don Dunstan's Cookbook- but it doesn't translate well outside of Australia. Don Dunstan was the premier of South Australia when I was growing up there in the 70s - the country's first openly gay politician, builder of all the social infrastructure, patron of the arts, well-known for wearing safari suits and lilac shorts into parliament. Such a cultural icon where I'm from. His cookbook is a collector's item. I paid a fortune for my copy, and it has soup stains on it!

I actually secretly like getting food stains on my cookbooks. I love new, pristine coffee-table type cookbooks with glossy pages and gorgeous photographs but I think something is wrong if they stay that way. I also love buying used cookbooks and finding notes scribbled in the margins like "Needs more salt" or "Great with [other recipe] on p. 46".

While I kind of like the occasional butter-stained page, though, unfortunately during a move several years ago one of my boxes of cookbooks sustained some water damage and now a whole shelf's worth is all crinkly with stuck-together pages. Of course most of the damaged ones were my favorites! That's going a bit too far for me, but I still don't really want to get new glossy ones.

This is making me want to buy more cookbooks. Damn.

Step away from the light, Riona. :)
My cookbooks live in the kitchen, which means they've all been soaked in everything that's ever been spilt on the kitchen bench! Which is a bit sad, considering I've barely used most of them. At least you actually cook with yours!

I contributed one ninth of it, so please excuse the plug, but I was pretty proud to have my fiction featured in Tall Tales with Short Cocks!

I still need to find a copy of Mr. Pink-Whistle Interferes by Enid Blyton.

I'm not sure if that translates outside UK & Australia though ;P

Oh, and "Draw In Your Stool" (1909) Oliver Onions. No GR entry for that one..

I found these in a book I bought on sale: Fish Who Answer the Telephone and Other Bizarre Books

I recently read a mystery about a woman who's a member of an ancient family of assassins: 'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy, by Leslie Langtry.

Clever, funny, and free on Kindle. Plus, the title put Purple Haze in my head all day, which, if you have to have a song in your head all day, Purple Haze isn't bad.

Fallen Underwear by Lucy Lastic

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fallen-...

Riona wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Natural Harvest - A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

Need I say more?"

I really, really want this. I collect cookbooks and I think this would look fantastic on my kitchen shelves..."

Great idea, Riona. Maybe we can get a group discount. :) Would look great next to my collection of church recipe books.

Tina wrote: "LOL Wow, very interesting title "Natural Harvest - A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes" ..... I doubt my sons' would be very excited about dinner if I had that on my shelve LOL"

Oh please take a picture of the expression on their faces!

Just stumbled across this series completely by accident: WOOKIEEPEDIA
Wookieepedia - Galactic Alliance Individuals: Arabelle Lorteli, Athadar Gyad, Baljos Arnjak, Biris J. Te Gaf, Brays, C-3PO, Cakhmaim, Cilghal, Corran

It's a collection of wikipedia articles on the world of Star Wars - from sentient species to royal houses to minerals to business owners. Nuts.

Ruby wrote: "Just stumbled across this series completely by accident: WOOKIEEPEDIA
Wookieepedia - Galactic Alliance Individuals: Arabelle Lorteli, Athadar Gyad, Baljos Arnjak, Biris J. Te Gaf, Brays, C-3PO, Cak..."

...why would you need a paperback book of articles you can find online?

That's pretty crazy.

Katje wrote: "Ruby wrote: "Just stumbled across this series completely by accident: WOOKIEEPEDIA
Wookieepedia - Galactic Alliance Individuals: Arabelle Lorteli, Athadar Gyad, Baljos Arnjak, Biris J. Te Gaf, Bray..."

You don't like paper books?

I love paper books. I'm just wondering what the point is of a book made out of articles from a site like Wikipedia.

The same thing as a paper book versus ebook, I think. Sometimes people like a hardcopy.

Ruby wrote: "The same thing as a paper book versus ebook, I think. Sometimes people like a hardcopy."

Yeah, except the "publisher" is illegally making money off somebody else's work. I think you'll find that no royalties are paid to the authors.

Derek wrote: "
Yeah, except the "publisher" is illegally making money off somebody else's work. I think you'..."

Wait - I thought we were talking about why you would WANT a paper copy?

Derek wrote: "
Yeah, except the "publisher" is illegally making money off somebody else's work. I think you'..."

It doesn't look like anybody's doing anything illegal to me, unless they are making profit (over cost) for the paper copies. I'm not aware that they are.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wookie...

Looks like it's a print-on-demand book anyway.

Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami

I keep this one on my coffee table for company.

Michael wrote: "Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami

I keep this one on my coffee table for company."

I have, in fact, seen that book. Don't own a copy, though...

Michael wrote: "Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami

I keep this one on my coffee table for company."

I have friends who would probably kill for a copy of this.

Michael wrote: "Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami

I keep this one on my coffee table for company."

They're a live performance group from a few years back. Somehow I never got around to actually seeing them live (a grave error on my part). I have seen some clips though. :)

I just went in and uploaded a cover to the book, since the old image seems to be broken. A google images search revealed some gig posters which give you a pretty good sense of the level of class and sophistication inherent in this masterpiece of Australian culture:






*May contain traces of nuts*

Caught them live years ago.

Ruby wrote: "Michael wrote: "Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami

I keep this one on my coffee table for company."

They're a live performance group from a few years back. Someh..."

I will never think of a Roman War Helmet quite the same way again.

Eat your heart out Laurence Olivier.

I found the third image on the site "Things Bogans Like". :)

For the non-Aussies: "Bogan" = Australian redneck. Equivalent to the English, "Chav".

Looking through my library Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch

Ruby wrote: "The same thing as a paper book versus ebook, I think. Sometimes people like a hardcopy."

Err, no, that's not my confusion. That I understand.

But a site like Wikipedia, and Wookieepedia, is open-source and constantly being added to by authors. It's always in a state of flux. As well, it's not completely verifiable -- because quite literally anyone can edit it.

So to me, the idea of taking a bunch of articles from a site like that and going through the trouble of publishing them in hardcopy seems foolhardy at best and a massive waste of resources at worst. And as these articles are written by anonymous people online, I'm not sure how you would get the money to them -- or if you even could.

Or, what the legalities would be around that -- Wookieepedia is about Star Wars, which is owned by George Lucas. He's cool about people using SW because he realizes the importance of advertising, but I think a print-book of Wookieepedia would have to give some profits to him, because it's his universe that they're making money off.

So, it seems to be a really tricky legal landscape to navigate on top of being a time-consuming and resource-wasting project, and I really can't see any benefit to whomever is putting it out there (nor can I see a benefit to paying for what is available for free and is supposed to remain available for free, forever -- that's sort of the premise behind Wookieepedia).

There's a pretty good explanation of the legalities on their copyright page. Also worth noting it's print-on-demand, and I'm not sure what (if anything) is being charged.

I find it a lot easier, particularly with reference books, to use them as hardcopies than to read them on a screen. I like to be able to get a visual sense of structure, and you can't do that as easily with a website. It's difficult to explain if you don't work like that. People absorb information in a lot of different ways.

The big Coloring Book of Vaginas.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Colorin...

For extra fun, check out the "other views" link, and read All About my Vagina.

Yep. I'm done.

Yay! Awesome find, Meghan!

Crap. There's no GR entry. As a librarian, I feel compelled to add one...... sigh.....

Just tidying up my GR shelves a bit and came across these great titles:

Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost
Swallowing a Donkey's Eye
Ella Minnow Pea
John and Dave and the Temple of X'al'naa'thuthuthu
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It
The Princess & the Penis

Pretty sure I've read this one. And memorised it, in fact..

I was in the library looking for Mark Leyner's collection of shorts (My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist), but instead they had The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. How could I resist?!!!

(Of course, this group is way ahead of me as I did a search to see if it had already been mentioned and it came up in a nomination thread for bizarro/weird books.)

I just came across this book in the library where I work, it was hiding in the basement.

Bimbos of the Death Sun

Theo wrote: "I just came across this book in the library where I work, it was hiding in the basement.

Bimbos of the Death Sun"

I actually have a copy of this book. It is pretty funny. It's a mystery set in (and parodying) the world of science fiction conventions (yes, I know - a soft target if ever there was one). One of the characters (grumpy writer, of course) is based on Harlan Ellison. He is purported to have liked the book.

So these books exist, supposedly..

http://themetapicture.com/these-books...

I certainly do believe that Dickson's The Right to Arm Bears exists. I've read it. It's an omnibus and I actually own the second book.

Apparently, he's not the only author to make that bad joke: Right to Arm Bears

Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
The Abortion: An Historical Romance, 1966
The Wasp Factory
Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead
The Third Claw of God
I Am Not A Serial Killer
Why Do Men Have Nipples?
The Science of Vampires
The Devil All the Time
Bible Camp Bloodbath
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Assassination Vacation
, said the shotgun to the head.

All books I've read, except for the last 5, which are books I'm still planning to read. Most of them were pretty good.