Comments on: A gallery of dull, curious or odd book covers

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:55:00 +0000

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

By: Bart Falcone

Bart Falcone — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:17:00 +0000

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….

By: Johnluis

Johnluis — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:35:00 +0000

nice gallery thanks for sharing this gallery….

By: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:54:00 +0000

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.

By: Kat Tromp

Kat Tromp — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:01:00 +0000

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.

By: Cristóbal Fernández de Soto Ta

Cristóbal Fernández de Soto Ta — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:45:00 +0000

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

By: Bruce M Campbell

Bruce M Campbell — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:20:00 +0000

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.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:10:00 +0000

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?

By: Astin44

Astin44 — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:46:00 +0000

I can smell used bookshop now.

By: MollyMaguire

MollyMaguire — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:06:00 +0000

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!)

By: zuludaddy

zuludaddy — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:50:00 +0000

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…)

By: Lynn Finkelstein

Lynn Finkelstein — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:33:00 +0000

Nigel, “its” as a possessive has no apostrophe. The contraction for “it is” uses one.

By: AwesomeRobot

AwesomeRobot — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:05:00 +0000

Man, who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? I’ve seen those English dramas too – they’re cruel.

By: Nigel Bouvart

Nigel Bouvart — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:51:00 +0000

And ironically enough, you’re missing an apostrophe.

By: george57l

george57l — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:11:00 +0000

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.

By: jackie31337

jackie31337 — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:02:00 +0000

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.

By: jackie31337

jackie31337 — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:52:00 +0000

I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:01:00 +0000

There are those of us.

By: Tyler Karaszewski

Tyler Karaszewski — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:37:00 +0000

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

By: Pickleschlitz

Pickleschlitz — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:14:00 +0000

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

By: robuluz

robuluz — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:00:00 +0000

You did what HAD to be done.

By: bkad

bkad — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 03:21:00 +0000

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.

By: RJ

RJ — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:54:00 +0000

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

By: mati

mati — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:43:00 +0000

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.

By: David Barak

David Barak — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:37:00 +0000

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

By: Spitty Sumo

Spitty Sumo — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:23:00 +0000

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

By: bocomo

bocomo — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:09:00 +0000

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…

By: robuluz

robuluz — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:50:00 +0000

Life imprisonment. Pffft.

By: mat catastrophe

mat catastrophe — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:48:00 +0000

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.

By: grima

grima — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:45:00 +0000

Jimmy, what are you doing in there?

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