Fish Who Answer the Telephone and Other Bizarre Books by Brian Lake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a blithe and glorious (yes) collection of such amazing, curious and sidesplitting book titles as:
(double entendres)
Drummer Dick’s Discharge, Beatrix M. De Burgh, Ernest Nister, 1902
Penetrating Wagner’s Ring, John Louis DiGaetani, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978
Boobs as Seen by John Henry, George Vere Hobart, New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1914
Memorable Balls, James Laver, Derek Verschoyle, 1954
Invisible Dick, Frank Topham, D. C. Thomson & Co., 1926
“Jeehosophat! What a disgraceful scene!” said Dick Brett, doing a series of physical jerks behind a bush, as he began to grow into visibility.”
(authors–right or wrong)
The Ethics of Peace and War, I. Atack, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005
Motorcycling for Beginners, Geoff Carless, East Ardsley: EP Publishing, 1980
Industrial Social Security in the South, Robin Hood, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1936
Obesity: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment, Louis Lasagna, New York: Medcom Press, 1974
Metabolic Changes Induced by Alcohol, G. A. Martini, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1971
Frozen Future: The Arctic, the Antarctic and the Survival of the Planet, Daniel Snowman, Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993
There Are No Problem Horses, Only Problem Riders, Mary Twelveponies, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1982
etc etc, going through a wealth of subjects and book types. I feel weirdly proud of owning this book. Apart from being a little treasure all of its own, it reminds me how anybody can publish a book and indeed how many different tiles have been published through the centuries, that we’ll never know about no less. Time to start writing now then!
BTW: I’m not including this to the 2015 reading challenge because I read 95% of it in 2014. In fact it was a gift from my mother. Spot-on, wasn’t it?
I always liked Jehosaphat! as a curse, it sounds very epic.