Monday 24 March 2008

Gay Bulgaria



David Giltinan, on Goodreads, has reviewed a book called Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities. It sounds fabulous. Here are some of the titles, with excerpts and/or comments, that David particularly enjoyed:

How to Draw a Straight Line, by Sir Alfred Bray Kempe
'The Unexplored Fields are still vast.'

The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry (1934), by George Ryley Scott.
The author treads an indistinct line between condemning this widespread and despicable practice, and telling the reader exactly how to do it.

Correctly English in Hundred Days (Shanghai Correctly English Society, 1934)
This book is prepared for the Chinese young man who wishes to served for the foreign firms. It divided nealy hundred and ninety pages. It contains full of ordinary speak and write language.....

Drummer Dick's Discharge, by Beatrix M. DeBurgh (1902)

Penetrating Wagner's Ring, by John DiGaetani (1978)

Handbook for the Limbless

Gay Bulgaria ('once noted in a survey as the least borrowed book in British libraries')

Was Oderic of Pordenone Ever in Tibet?

The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, by Wallace Irwin (1901)
'Am I a turnip? On the strict Q.T.,
When do my Trilbys get so ossified?
Why am I minus when it's up to me
To brace my Paris pansy for a glide?'

Truncheons: Their Romance and Reality, by Erland Fenn Clark (1935)
with over 100 plates illustrating more than 500 truncheons.

3 comments:

Ms Baroque said...

This is the best thing I have ever seen.

Anonymous said...

Drummer Dick's Discharge? Just guess who's laughing himself silly--lovely absolutely lovely. One wonders if one could get up stage and read all these with a straight face? Mos excellent!

Beau who just sprayed Guinness all over his monitor and keyboard
Somewhere in Seattle needing another Guinness.

Charles Lambert said...

Somewhere in Seattle? I hope the Guinness is good there... We really should buy this book!