A gallery of dull, curious or odd book covers

Bookride, the wonderful book dealer's blog, has a fun gallery of "dull, curious or odd book covers." Here are a few:

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

GawainLavers

D’oh! Boinged.
http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/ Peter Hassett

f#$% this post and its missing oxford comma
- http://twitter.com/tkaraszewski Tyler Karaszewski
  
  Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
  - Donald Petersen
    
    There are those of us.
    - jackie31337
      
      As a technical writer, it drives me crazy to see sentences with open punctuation. I prefer using the serial comma (AKA the Oxford comma) to avoid ambiguity.
- jackie31337
  
  I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Nigel-Bouvart/1645520514 Nigel Bouvart
  
  And ironically enough, you’re missing an apostrophe.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1596848055 Lynn Finkelstein
    
    Nigel, “its” as a possessive has no apostrophe. The contraction for “it is” uses one.
  - http://twitter.com/bmcraec Bruce M Campbell
    
    No he’s not. That’s the one exception exception to an otherwise unblemished possessive pronoun. It’s perfectly correct that its apostrophe is missing.
Gorgonaut

Some books are not meant to be read. some books are meant to be hollowed out, and made into secret stashes for drugs, porn or guns.
- Takashi Omoto
  
  Gilbert Anderson, MNCP knew that better than anybody else. “There Must be a Reason” came pre-hollowed out with a Derringer and a can of whiskey.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Now I’m further intrigued… whiskey comes in cans?
morcheeba

My friend found this book at the library this weekend…
Donald Petersen

But now I’m intrigued… why should she start wearing a bra?
Ernesto

MNCP? Is that a name?
Great title though.
growf

If I was F.C.KING I might have been tempted to use mixed-case in my surname to, you know, avoid the similarity to the offensive intensifier…
http://twitter.com/bsdf asdf

NICE F.C.KING POST
BarBarSeven

Another day, another F.C.King book.
dross1260

1. F.C.King books are for use.
2. Every reader his [or her] F.C.King book.
3. Every F.C.King book its reader.
Teller

The History of Crying
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

I’ve never understood my tortoise.
Ever!
And he’s never made any attempt to understand me.
So F.C.K him!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Spitty-Sumo/100002601661770 Spitty Sumo

this is my favorite oddest book cover EVAR — i catalog library books, and this one certainly made my day. sorry for the poor photo, but i only had my antique 6-year-old cellphone available.
- Nicky G
  
  Wait… does this book have anything to do with the movies? I’m confused mightily either way…
- planettom
  
  Did you look inside for some explanation of the swan?
thebelgianpanda

Well, there’s nothing dull about those examples.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

What a delight!
Guest

‘a man with a whim of iron’

*snort*
diginferno

Thank you all, it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed so hard =))
surreality

Apparently “There Must Be a Reason” is sheet music, according to one of the commenters on the linked blog, which is even weirder…
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FKHDCIS27XPE6ZFY6MWMN5UYRQ grima

Jimmy, what are you doing in there?

Aw geez mom, I’m just trying to understand my tortoise.
mat catastrophe

I might ditch this name in favor of F.C. King from now on.

Now, I have to go edit this post elsewhere because something malfunctioned.
robuluz

Life imprisonment. Pffft.
bocomo

only somewhat related:

i used to work in the file room for a state licensing board for contractors and wish i would have kept track of all of the best names

my fav. and the only one that comes to mind is Doug’s Dirt Business

oh yeah! you need dirt, i got a guy…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Spitty-Sumo/100002601661770 Spitty Sumo

Nicky G, planettom:

the swan is there for absolutely no reason at all. that’s why i LOVE it so. the publisher of the books (“Books LLC”) essentially sells bound copypasta from wikipedia (in this case, about those movies) — it’s public domain, so i suppose they can do that…? insert shrug here.

i catalogued this around the first of the year, and before i shelved it, i stuck a tiny purple cut-out post-it-note drawing of a chestburster on the swan. i just pulled it from the shelf, and it’s still there! :D
- robuluz
  
  You did what HAD to be done.
http://profiles.google.com/davidabarak David Barak

It takes a whole book to tell us why SHE needs a bra? What about all the other billions of women?
mati

I was really hoping that F.C.King would present his own unique way of gardening with compost, but he didn’t. There was no F.C.King way.
RJ

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
bkad

If you want to see boring covers, check out graduate physics textbooks. Some have no cover art at all. But, alas, they usually aren’t funny books.
Pickleschlitz

I’ve got a great paperback titled “How To Look Rich and Achieve Sexual Ecstasy” by Rhona Barrett.
george57l

Not only do I bemoan the lack of Oxford comma, but also express my dismay at the “every child must have a medal” culture that says every post can have a “Like” button but there is nary a “Dislike” button to be seen anywhere on the intertubes. Come on BB – let’s have a CHOICE of how to express our views on some of the less than wonderful things/comments.

Oh – and imagine my disappointment at seeing a book with “The Blue Book of Grammar” on its cover, but no cussing rules at all inside.
- http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot
  
  Man, who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? I’ve seen those English dramas too – they’re cruel.
zuludaddy

Anyone else having a hard time seeing the attached image files? Clicking on one brings the article page back up, but no larger image. Zooming on the thumbnails renders the titles illegible…

(edit: Hmmm, oddly working now – popup window with image…)
MollyMaguire

The book covers are great but what really made my day was learning about Oxford commas (I use them, but I never knew they had a name!)
- Donald Petersen
  
  It’s been on people’s minds lately.
  
  Damn, I forgot; links aren’t red anymore. In the sentence above, “on people’s minds” is a link to a Salon story from a month ago about the Oxford comma, and the fact that the Public Relations department of Oxford has decided to stop using that comma, and you can imagine the outcry.
  
  Any chance at all we can get our red links back?
Astin44

I can smell used bookshop now.
Cristóbal Fernández de Soto Ta

Closed:Nobody won this item.

Closed: 9:21 am, Monday, 2 May 2011

Ref: 7pkg4m

There
Must Be a Reason (Hardcover)
by Gilbert Anderson

Having narrowly missed being obliterated by German bombs on more than
one occasion during the Second World War obliged Gilbert Anderson to ask
the question ” Why?” m and from there to thing that There Must be a
reason for his being spared, These experiences were compounded when both
he and his wife Ruth were cured of medically incurable conditions, by
natural or spiritual healing —this compelled him to learn all he could
of these remarkable powers and led his into a completely deferent walk
of life
…

The seller: aabrothers
(284)

Verifications:

Member since: October 2007

Location: North Shore City, Auckland
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1126983061 Kat Tromp

I’m the proud owner of Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper, by Wallace Reyburn. Short and actually rather interesting.
Also have a copy of If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive…Discorporation and U.S. Patent 4,666,425 by Chet Fleming. Quite the tome and some of the reviews at Amazon.com are the kind that need to be shared! http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Severed-Head-Alive-Discorporation-Patent/dp/0942287029
And I’ve got the Mothman Prophesies around here somewhere. Bit of a letdown, that one.
Robert Johnson

As a writer of synopses of academic books for a book catalog, I was instructed to always use the Oxford comma and also am a supporter of the Oxford comma just as an individual. It avoids any misunderstandings and with merely one small symbol. Why wouldn’t one use it?

Further, based on my experience with this job, I can tell you that the top example has far more sparkle and pizzazz than the vast majority of books from that publisher, Kluwer Law International, and I’ve seen hundreds of examples, at least, over the years.
http://www.skillsolutions.com.au Johnluis

nice gallery thanks for sharing this gallery….
http://www.facebook.com/ptbartman Bart Falcone

Understand Your Tortoise sounds like a euphamism.

Johnny you’ve been in the bat long enough , what are you doing in there son?

Uhm, just understanding my tortoise mom. Be out in a minute….
GawainLavers

To whoever it was who beat me to the last copy of “Understanding your Tortoise”…damn you sir/madam.