The New Century Standard Letter-Writer

You might have fun browsing through this book on correspondence.



The section on Love Letters is lots of fun.



Also, for some reason there are four pages on Etiquette, reproduced below. I would hope every lady and gentleman among us would follow these enlightened precepts.

Posted By: Paul - Sun May 01, 2022 - Comments (5)
Category: Etiquette and Formal Behavior, Correspondence, Telegrams, Letters, and Other Written Communications, Books, 1900s

Death’s Doings

Next time you need cheering up, have a gander at this jolly volume, available at the Internet Archive.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Apr 26, 2022 - Comments ()
Category: Death, Books, Nineteenth Century

Ugly Belgian Houses

A chap named Hannes Coudenys has made his hobby of photographing deplorable architecture in his native Belgium into two books.




Click on the book names below to find them at Amazon.

You can read an explanatory essay by him here.

This is his Tumblr page.

His Instagram page.

Ugly Belgian Houses Book One



Ugly Belgian Houses Book Two

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 25, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Architecture, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Books, Europe

Blue Eyeshadow Should Be Illegal

Paula Begoun calls herself "The Cosmetics Cop". And as such she firmly believes that blue eyeshadow is violating some kind of law.

You can read the full book (published 1985) at archive.org.





In 1991, she came out with a follow-up: Blue Eyeshadow Should Absolutely Be Illegal. Evidently her feelings on this matter had only grown stronger over time.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 14, 2022 - Comments (4)
Category: Cosmetics, Books, 1980s

The Golden Age of Patents

Alex is a master at finding oddball inventions that received a patent. Surely one of his spiritual ancestors must have been Wallace Peck, who did a humorous book that imagined such inventions.

You can read the whole text here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jan 30, 2022 - Comments ()
Category: Humor, Inventions, Patents, Books, Nineteenth Century

Sex on an Animal Hide Rug

The subtext in the ad is obvious. Fur rugs, fake or real, are for making love on. It's the staple of a thousand PLAYBOY cartoons.

But where did the trope originate? Most likely with writer Elinor Glyn. Her novel THREE WEEKS (read it here) featured such a scene that became so notorious, it inspired some doggerel.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jan 02, 2022 - Comments ()
Category: Animals, Domestic, Books, 1900s, 1970s, Sex

Odd Showers

Read it here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 14, 2021 - Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Weird Facts, Weird Studies and Guides, Books, Natural Wonders, Nineteenth Century

Dolls the wide world over

A book that could be shelved in either Art or Horror.

Available for loan at the Internet Archive.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 06, 2021 - Comments ()
Category: Books, Dolls and Stuffed Animals

Webs In The Wind

Webs in the Wind, published in 1949, is an odd, obscure book. The author, Winifred Duncan, decided that she wanted to learn more about spiders — creatures about which she previously had almost no knowledge.

To do so, she caught spiders outside, released them in her house, and then patiently observed their behavior as they went about building webs in her curtains, between pieces of furniture, behind her toilet, etc. Her book is full of illustrations of the spider webs throughout her house.

Only after observing the spiders for months did she start reading any of the existing scientific literature about spiders.

Used copies of her book are quite expensive, starting at around $35. But you can read the entire book for free at the Hathitrust archive.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 28, 2021 - Comments (1)
Category: Insects and Spiders, Books, 1940s

C. W. Leadbeater, Theosophist

Anyone with even a passing interest in the weird has heard of that famous eccentric Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.

But less attention is paid to her interesting comrade, C. W. Leadbeater.

Read his pretty short book THE LIFE AFTER DEATH here.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Nov 17, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Death, Eccentrics, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Books, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century