Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

noctslackv2.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 481 posts

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

#361

Post by needle0 »

There was a manga comic series called "20th Century Boys" which was a conspiracy thriller mixed with 1970s Japanese nostalgia. One of the story's scenes involved the protagonists rummaging through a library looking for a particular book. When they find the book and open it, a scrap of paper from decades ago falls out, which happens to be the vital clue to move the plot forward.

When you are reading the comic book, right as you come across the scene where the heroes open the book, when you turn to the next page the same scrap of paper seen in that scene falls out of the actual book you're holding. That sent chills down my spine when I first encountered it; pretty genius.

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

#363

Post by stackbutterflow »

floren wrote: post #123
acomjean wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through a couple years where I was finding cash kind of a lot. Not life changing amounts, but something. At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch. I found a twenty in the snow on the street in…

> At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch. When I've worked in secure areas, I've never had the slightest concern about theft. We even did an experiment where we left a couple $1 bills out on the tab…

There are some places in Asia where you can go to a coffee shop, let your $1000+ laptop on a table, go for a 30 mins walk, come back and nothing happened neither to your laptop or your bag. I actually do it all the time.

I'm sure I could be gone all day and nothing would happen but after 40 mins some instinct kicks in and I feel the urge to go back check everything's still there.

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

#364

Post by jdblair »

This is something I left in a book. I keep Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment on my desk, more out of nostalgia than anything. I flipped through it one day and found the receipt ($56!) from when I bought it, in 1995, at a Barnes and Noble in a strip mall outside Cincinnati. I bought it on the way home from my summer job. I had to implement a simple database, and browsing the stacks it looked like the best option. I learned so much from it, but not about databases! There are still sticky notes on all of the sections about file descriptors.

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

#365

Post by RaSoJo »

Not exactly strange, but found something quite depressing. A second hand book that I bought 5 years back had a medical bill with multiple cancer medications listed. The bill had the age and name of the patient - a man in his 20s. To me, it felt like he'd sold the book to cover his medical expenses.

Every time I pick that book up I get reminded of that bill, and haven't been able to finish the book as yet.

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

#366

Post by benj111 »

fezfight wrote: post #258
gtk40 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of over a decade ago I was in a high school AP course. At the start of the course, the teacher recommended we get a AP prep book to study throughout the year, and recommended 2 brands. She specifically said not to get one brand, noting that it was of inferior quality. I had already got the prep book she didn't recommend as I had found it on sale before that remark was made. I later learned that she used th…

Similarly, with a slight twist, a prof I had used to recommend we read the entire text book, not just the chapters required for the class. It was an open book exam so people figured they could annotate the pages or whatever and didn't bother to follow his adcice. He would often say, 'everything [we] ever want to know is in that book!' He was right. The final exam was verbatim the practice exam given at the end of the…

I had an exam once where we were told to read the entire question paper first.

At the end it told you to ignore all previous questions and just do this one.

2nd favourite exam question after an economics multiple choice exam where we had to calculate the probability of passing the exam just by guessing.

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

#367

Post by Engineering-MD »

danielodievich wrote: post #227

In 10th grade I wasn't sure I could register to a chemistry with one teacher so I didn't. But when school started, the teacher who was supposed to teach the class was different and accepted me into the class. However, I didn't anticipate needing the textbook, so she sent me back to the class library where there was some hard-worn copies of various classbooks. I was in luck that the book she wanted me to have was ther…

Harry Potter and the half blood prince?

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

#368

Post by actionfromafar »

selimthegrim wrote: post #356
cafeinux wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you put it on libgen?

I may soon - there is a book scanner in the med school library and I doubt very much they care about a Soviet copyrighted book (if USSR even asserted such a thing abroad or Russia does now for them).

Russia increasingly does not care about copyright of foreign stuff, so there's that symmetry going too.

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

#369

Post by savingsPossible »

_dain_ wrote: post #208
shepherdjerred wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you recommend HMOR? I’ve never heard of it, but the Wikipedia page sounded interesting

no it's terrible, see: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/

I liked reading HPMOR and I am enjoying this "rebuttal" as well.

Especially the first few chapters, because there were more attempts at science explanation in HPMOR's initial chapters.

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

#370

Post by triyambakam »

sleepybrett wrote: post #304
13of40 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, my collection of books ebbed and flowed based on how much spare cash I had. In lean times, I'd end up selling them, then eventually accumulate more. Once I got my career on a more consistent path, I collected books and ended up with a pretty diverse set, but in the back of my head I used the fact that I hadn't sold them as a barometer for my financial stability. Anyway, a couple of years ago, at the…

When I moved out of my parent's home I of course left a bunch of random stuff behind including a few boxes of books that I didn't want to haul. Left them in the garage and forgot about them. A few years later my dad was cleaning up the darker corners of the garage and called me up, 'Hey there are some boxes of books in the garage, do you want them or can I just take them to goodwill.' I didn't want them at the time,…

That's so cool. Synchrony
Post reply on HN