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What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#151

Post by geocrasher »

russellbeattie wrote: post #71

Not the strangest thing in the world, but I'm currently on a Mark Twain reading binge. He's absolutely amazing - if all you've read of his is Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, you need to read his non-fiction travelogues. His observations were prescient almost beyond belief, and his acerbic humor is laugh out loud funny. Here's the strange bit: His book "Roughing It" is about his experience as a young man of moving to…

"Roughing It" is one of my all time favorite books. I grew up around Virginia City (Reno/Carson) and will be moving back to that region in a couple of weeks. It remains one of my favorite books. I need to give it another read.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#152

Post by gibolt »

miki123211 wrote: post #109

In my middle school German textbook, I found the following note (translation my own): Hi Katie, we should meet up over tea over these images. The first image should be a simple sketch of two dudes playing football, tell the guys in graphics that the one they gave me is waaa too complex. The second image should be a chick playing tennis. The note went on in this manner for a couple more sentences, describing all the i…

Having a thorough description of the page's images seems like an nice unexpected benefit for accessibility.

Do you use any tools to interpret images in other content?

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#153

Post by zw123456 »

I know this isn't what you meant, but I was at a garage sale, and they had a stack of old books, one had a hollowed-out compartment in it that contained a "sex toy". I asked the proprietor of the garage sale where the books came from, and she said they were her fathers and he passed away and no one wanted them.

I put the book back and didn't say anything.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#155

Post by ipaddr »

konschubert wrote: post #104
moron4hire wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Halfway through my college experience (around 2002 or so), the university started putting up blinders in the bookstore while they stocked shelves and wouldn't let you buy your books until basically the first day of class, specifically in an attempt to stymie students finding their books, looking them up, and buying them at 1/10th the price online. I mean, it wasn't my first experience with the university prioritizing…

What happened if you ordered the books only after the first day of class?

In my experience they run out of books

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#156

Post by kaesar14 »

trebbble wrote: post #88
kaesar14 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lived the Half Blood Prince!

That element of the Half-Blood Prince was taken from real life. Used textbooks have been preferred by students for precisely for this reason (well, cost too, but this is a well-known benefit) in colleges since... well, probably since textbooks have existed.

Well of course, but the element of the book being annotated by the professor himself is quite interesting and most similar to HBP.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#157

Post by bobsmooth »

iratewizard wrote: post #46
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a far stretch to "tens of thousands of dollars." A valuable second-hand book can be $50.

The article is about a guy who finds a friend inside of his pallet of books and you're all arguing about the theoretical value of the books.

Never change, HN.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#159

Post by emmelaich »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #24

I wrote about this once before, but I had a very similar situation, except with family photos instead of books. The story was that someone's apartment was cleared out after they were evicted. Well, after a few years of the stuff sitting in storage, I got around to looking through it, and with a bit of sleuthing, I tracked down the person who the family photos belonged to and gave them a call. The call did not go well…

I found a bunch of books and photo albums sitting out for garbage collection.

The albums were full of family photos stretching over years. I tracked down the owner via facebook. She had moved to another country and -- I suspect had separated from her husband.

She was not interested in the photo albums. It seemed rather poignant. I wonder what the story was behind it.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#160

Post by atombender »

kaesar14 wrote: post #156
trebbble wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That element of the Half-Blood Prince was taken from real life. Used textbooks have been preferred by students for precisely for this reason (well, cost too, but this is a well-known benefit) in colleges since... well, probably since textbooks have existed.

Well of course, but the element of the book being annotated by the professor himself is quite interesting and most similar to HBP.

I don't think the parent is saying that the professor annotated the book, as that probably doesn't make any sense.

As I interpreted their story, the professor had a habit of asking questions and then answering them himself, if nobody offered an answer. Students wrote down those answers in the margins of the book.

Over time, the book collected a lot of these notes from different students.

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