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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?

#381

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Not my story but seems vaguely relevant.

Apparently the lyrics to Sheryl Crow's "All I wanna do" song were taken from a poetry book found in a second hand book store.

After the song hit, the poet got sued by the person he'd based the character of Bill on.

> The lyrics of the song are based on the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper.[1][2][3][4] Cooper was inspired to write the poem by a conversation at a bar with a friend and occasional writer, Bill Ripley,[5][6] in which he said "All I want is to have a little fun before I die", which became the first line of the poem. In a 1994 interview, Cooper said: "The poem isn't really about him. Or me. They're different people. They're people you can sort of see as ... well ... objective correlatives. Symbols of people like us, or what we could have been, or what we would have become if we continued to drink and do nothing with our lives."[7][8]

> Toad Hall Studio, where the song was recorded, was next door to the Pasadena Playhouse.[9][10] Crow's producer (Bottrell) discovered Cooper's poetry book The Country of Here Below in a nearby used bookstore in Pasadena, California. Crow had written a song called "I Still Love You" but was unhappy with its lyrics; she used its melody and adapted the poem for her lyrics to "All I Wanna Do".

> The song earned Cooper considerable royalties and helped to promote his book, originally published in a run of only 500 copies in 1987, into multiple reprints.[7] After the song became popular, Ripley brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Cooper for some of the song's royalties, which ended their friendship.[7][11]

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

#382

Post by vanviegen »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #233
_dain_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Worst "book" I've ever read, legitimately. I would read almost anything else over that. I've never read the review and I only read 5-6 chapters of the fanfic, but everything in that review rings true. The story was so hollow and lifeless that I couldn't bring myself to read further.

> Worst "book" I've ever read, legitimately.

[...]

> I only read 5-6 chapters

So you didn't read it.

As others have mentioned, the first couple of chapters are definitely not the best. But yeah, the book isn't for everyone.

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

#383

Post by weberer »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #14

> He looked around at the faces in the crowd and said, “I’m opening the bidding at one dollar.” I about shit myself. I bid the $1 immediately to get things rolling. Well, after I bid, he looked around and said, “Once, twice, sold that man there for $1.” I just laughed… and wondered how the Hell I was going to get this pallet home and what I was going to do with all those books. > When I asked the auctioneer afterward…

I feel stupid for just now realizing there's a link and OP is not just asking HN.

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

#384

Post by h9n »

Last year I bought a copy of The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, first edition. Inside was a folded piece of paper printed in really coarse old dot-matrix that had

  (I
      (BE
          (NOT
              (RATHER
                       (WOULD))))
      (PROGRAMMING
          (LISP IN)))
If only they'd stuck with it until evaluation order was introduced.

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

#385

Post by busyant »

wrp wrote: post #299
Cerium wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My chapter of Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society) got so tired of how unfair it was that people would share around old tests and decided to do something about it. Since there is no way to stop people from doing this, we got permission from the dean to start a test and study sheet bank and made it publicly accessible on a website.

Over his whole career as a professor, my father was so concerned about test sharing that he kept a file of every test he ever gave and was careful to never ask the same question twice.

> my father was so concerned about test sharing that he kept a file of every test

I finished 2nd in my high school class (humble brag) because my best friend cheated (and got a zero) for an important biology term paper.

Story:

- My friend hated biology and he decided he would save time by submitting his older brother's bio term paper as his (his brother was 4 years older).

- A month after we handed in our term papers, the bio teacher asks my friend to step into his office, whereupon he shows him a copy of his brother's term paper. Big fat zero.

- It dinged my friend just enough that (even though he was more talented) he finished 3rd in the class.

- I ended up getting a tuition waiver to our state university (where we both went).

That laziness cost him about $10K in tuition (in 1980s dollars).

edit: the person who finished 1st in our class went to Yale. She was more talented than both of us combined.

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

#386

Post by Beldin »

6510 wrote: post #325
worthless-trash wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respect, the amount of work to do that is mind boggling.

Its easy to spot the pattern and useful to know what wont be asked.

Errr... many questions can just vary numbers a bit. There's very little value to knowing that the inverse of 3 mod 7 won't be asked this exam - it's trivial to change the numbers and test the same knowledge with a slightly but sufficiently different question.

I imagine there's a somewhat similar type of questions for non-CS disciplines (same case description, different key clue, hence different answer).

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

#388

Post by ryanmercer »

daviddaviddavid wrote: post #40

I realize it is not the same as finding a friend, but I recently found five crisp $20 bills in a used logic text book at an Amvets thrift store. I opened the book because it was written by Irving Copi, who wrote my undergrad logic text. I was paranoid it was counterfeit, but it was very much real money. To make things better, the first $20 I spent was to get a pizza and the employee said a mistake happened at the piz…

Just before covid started a friend of mine found a $100 bill in a purse at Goodwill, all of our friends went nuts on Facbeook reporting back on all the random (never money) stuff they were finding in pockets of purses/garments at Goodwill over the next couple of weeks.

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

#389

Post by mrspeaker »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #381

Not my story but seems vaguely relevant. Apparently the lyrics to Sheryl Crow's "All I wanna do" song were taken from a poetry book found in a second hand book store. After the song hit, the poet got sued by the person he'd based the character of Bill on. > The lyrics of the song are based on the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper.[1][2][3][4] Cooper was inspired to write the poem by a conversation at a bar with a friend and o…

I can't believe you posted that - just yesterday I was thinking about how dark that song was.

The bit that really stood out was how "anti-Billy" it was: "He says his name is William, but I'm sure it's Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy". Like he was lying about his name/nickname. Then later - even when siding with him - says "They're nothing like Billy and me". He bloody told you his name was William!

The more I thought about the song the more I thought that the lyrics made a really interesting poem.

Then the next day I found out why!

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

#390

Post by ryanmercer »

acomjean wrote: post #74
jnovek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want this story to continue, and for each of the five twenties that you spend, some increasingly elaborate and unlikely good thing happens.

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…

>But lamentably my good fortune in the finding of cash has come to an end. Perhaps the rise of the credit card changed my fortunes.

I'm a moderator of /r/silverbugs and we see some fun ones sometimes, if you pop over there and search "coinstar" you'll find the occasional post where members check the coin return on coinstar machines (you dump coins into a hopper, it gives you a gift card/credit at the store) and find 90% silver coins as the machines tend to reject them. Sadly all I've ever found is a nasty penny or two and a 1 euro coin which I think I chucked in the trash given I'm in central Indiana.

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