[archive] [characters] [current] [thoughts]
Makes a great gift! Buy one for your girlfriend today! The one book that sends the twin messages "you should lose a bit of weight" and "you should behave more like the sex object I want you to be."
Is this the book Rimmer found the "Wormdo" line in? I suspect the single worst thing you could do while trying to make someone love you would be to leave this book lying on the coffee table the first time you invite your target into your home.
This book is the follow-up to How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less.
Since I'm addicted to a series which actually does involve dating dead men, I don't know that I really have much room to talk about this one, really.
Turns out this is a novel about politicians.
I bet a ninja kick does a lot of damage when it's delivered by someone wearing pointy heals.
You've likely heard it proposed that eating meat is akin to murder (and maybe it is) but this book would like to convince you that it's actually more like rape. Or that rape is very like eating meat - i.e. very tasty and enjoyable but somehow unacceptable in certain areas of society. Thought provoking stuff, or it would be if it didn't just make me hungry. I'm sorry.
This puts me in mind of the story of the peg-legged bride - "Well, you wouldn't eat a girl as fine as that all at once!"
A source of much potential confusion when discussing library fines.
Also, if you're currently writing a book, might I suggest you avoid (re-)using this as its title.
Apart from the interesting title, this also has the distinction of having been illustrated by the coincidentally named J. K. Potter.
Some people just don't have a clue. But now, they too, can use the toilet, or, possibly, the neighbor's front lawn. Tips and tricks from the clever dog on the cover (not only does he go outside, he writes books!) to all those people out there who don't know not to shit where they sleep.
The dummies titles are ridiculously easy targets, so I try not to fall back on them too often; sometimes, however, one comes along that I just can't resist.
How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed
I've been an advocate of slowness for years; I'm glad to see it finally coming into fashion.
I thought I'd do something a bit different for this week's title. The American re-titling of British novels (and films) has always bemused and annoyed me and it seems, at a glance, that most of Agatha Christie's novels have undergone this treatment. It is, I suppose, possible that a larger percentage of Americans would purchase a book called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw than one called 4:50 from Paddington, if that decision was based solely on the book's title; however, it's reasonable to assume that it was Agatha Christie's name on the cover that moved the books out of the shops whatever side of the Atlantic they were on. This sort of thing continues in American publishing today, the most obvious recent example being Scholastic's mindless re-titling of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Even had they not already been accustomed to changing the title of Agatha Chrisite's books, her American publishers would almost certainly have started with her 1939 novel Ten Little Niggers. Unlike her previous novel - Murder is Easy in England and Easy to Kill in America - there really seems to be some reason for not printing this particular phrase on the front of something you'd like to see displayed in the bookstores. The American title And Then There Were None was eventually picked up by the British publishers as well. Both titles reference lines of a nursery rhyme that was used as a central motif in the novel. A later, craftier American publisher excised the word "nigger" from the book completely, replacing it in each instance with the word "Indian"; this was published as Ten Little Indians. Though the current versions of both the British and US editions are published as And Then There Were None, the US edition takes place on Indian Island instead of the UK edition's Nigger Island. In more recent years, the US edition has raised complaints from a few groups who feel it is offensive to American Indians.
The general reading public has never been seriously offended by Christie's novel - probably because its contents aren't actually all that offensive, at least no more so than any other book on the subject of murder - and more copies of Ten Little Niggers have been sold worldwide than of any other mystery novel.
"200 Slow Cooker Recipes to Heat Up the Bedroom instead of the Kitchen." It's always better when you do it slowly...
This is the third in a series of hard-boiled dinosaur detective novels; the first two were Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex. Dinosaurs didn't go extinct, they just starting dressing in latex human suits.
The one and only book that helps you "Study for - and Pass - Your LATs (Lesbian Apptitude Test)."
I'm so glad I found this book this week, as Amazon.com has this to contribute:
If I'd come up with that title I would have had to write a cookbook too.
Well, duh - you have to die before you can rise from the grave and at the moment of your death, even if you were married before, you're not anymore. I suppose it would be possible to marry after becoming undead, but we don't even let all the living people in this country get married.
...and cats with wigs?
[Delve more deeply into the archive.]
Checked Out comic strips, characters and website © 1999 - 2004 Tim Hinkle