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I do not know how I managed to miss this entire thread up until this point. Necromancy be praised. I have loved looking through all the posts and also seeing how many people here love to paw through old books to find some of the most out there things. I especially love seeing how many books I have in common with people that I would file under niche or weird. If you'll indulge me, I have some contributions. I love finding a dusty shelf in a second hand or consignment store that has books no one has looked at in years.       
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Jun 23, 2021 21:22
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:16 |
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      for vintage chaste medical book nudity      This one was not particularly special at first. Last October, Jonathan, a friend of mine and my wife suddenly passed away. He had no nearby family and I was helping clean his apartment and came across this advanced copy of The Graveyard Book. We already have a copy and my wife loved it and it was in a pile of stuff to go through or donate. I figured my wife would like to have Jonathan's copy as a keepsake.  Opened the cover-  
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Jun 23, 2021 23:08
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Gutter Phoenix posted:I'm sorry Neil Gaiman murdered your friend Jonathan. What a dick! I will have my revenge
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Jun 24, 2021 02:18
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E. Oops
Droogie fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2021 20:24
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I have, I think for a year or so, said to myself that I'm going to post here, but I'm a terminal lurker. Been going through our books lately and we definitely have a collection of oddball books because they're odd and wonderful. Here are a few of mine. A 1970's book for children that I'm sure sealed the fate of turtles under a certain size being barred from sale except to educators:  Random thrift find, from the 50's  A fun and scary thrift find, a list of organizations and publications deemed subversive to the US government from 1951   A 1950 booklet-   A tiny little booklet that is little more than 'bible scholar chick tracting' without the illustrations, But I love the cover and the size, it's about 5"x3"  This absolute banger from 1964 I found while I was still in a LEO job. Far more compassionate than current standards, even if the language is of the era.   And here is my unusual rabbit hole- terrible books about Indigenous Americans. I am indigenous and have an extremely fraught relationship with it, I may have written a little about it in PMF, and if I haven't already I should post some of it. It's messy, it's mentally taxing. But I love, love love, terrible books about southwest Native Americans because it's writing about who I am and who I grew up knowing and being. It's important for me to collect these things that are utterly cringe-inducing. This is a 60's reprint of a 50's boy scout merit badge book on "Indian Lore"   This is a personal favorite of mine- a booklet originally copyrighted in 1949, this one is from the late 50s.  My grandparents didn't even get the ability to vote in reality without massive roadblocks until 1965. Think about that when looking at these-    I recently learned about- and was horrified by, a book published in 1922 that my great grandmother contributed to, but it's in regards to my own cultural identity, and I'm not going to make others consider unless people are interested in that and this survivor of a thread. Feels good to finally post here.
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Jan 9, 2023 03:05
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Thanks for posting and I'm interested, very much. Dope, let's talk about an old book and cultural identity. This is going to be largely  and I don't mean to hijack here, but I promise it's about a book.I'm lucky enough that for whatever time is left, both of my mother's parents are still with us, in their mid 90's. That comes with a level of care that we try to split up as much as we can, and on one of my nights to make them dinner a couple weeks ago, some extended family were unexpectedly visiting them. They had brought with them a book that they wanted to show my grandparents, a collection of Native American folk tales and children's stories collected starting around the 1890's and published in 1922 called "Tay Tay's Tales." This was significant because according to them, my great grandmother was one of a group that contributed a couple stories to the book. My great grandmother I was also lucky enough to have in my life for a significant amount of time, she passed in 2006 and was well over 100. Whether any of this is true or not is somewhat immaterial- In current terms, I'm a bit thirsty for stories from my tribe and pueblo for a few reasons. For one, my family has always had a bit of a rocky relationship with the the tribe and tribal government for various dumb reasons, the oldest known being that my great grandmother dared to be christian rather than catholic (Catholicism and native religions have their own very odd, messy intertwining) and this was, at the time a whippable offense. My Grandfather at one time dared to build a youth center (deemed too modern), my own mother was threatened for entering her pottery in art shows and teaching pottery techniques, and I was threatened with disenrollment and legal action (all hollow intimidation tactics) for painting art that was deemed "cultural property." This is by way of saying we're very much so black sheep. Second, my tribe, Jemez (hay-mess or hay-miz) is one of the most insular and tight-lipped in the region, so much so that the language, Towa, has no written component. Intentionally. The language is dying and has been for some time. So stories and tales are hard to come by unless you're lucky enough to be close enough to have someone tell you. For these reasons and more, I feel like I have struggled my entire life to reach out and form a meaningful connection to my own culture, and it just pushes back with force. I have not always been an outside observer, I have my own dance regalia and have participated in sacred dances, body stained with clay and paint and turquoise, a rhythmic thrum of shells and bells competing with gourd rattles. So when I heard that my Great Grandmother (may have) contributed to this book a tale from my pueblo, I looked it up immediately. Luckily, there are still modern versions available as well as a few OG hardbacks if I desire. It also appears that someone had web 1.0 digitized it here. So when I found the two stories that were contributed from Jemez, my heart sank to see they were the shortest possible stories, and that they feel like they were written AT me from 100 years ago. Part of the introduction reminds us, from 1922, that "the tales are not nearly so cruel to the Amerind mind as they seem to us." and "... There is another item of primitive psychology which renders tales innocuous to the tribal mind, and that is the idea of physical life, especially for animals, as a kind of masquerade, something that can be put on and off at will." So because they are so short, I want to share with y'all the stories from my pueblo, the first ending with an unironic use of "many moons": The Deer and the Coyote, Jemez Pueblo Wen-ter – once upon a time – long ago, six deer were lying in the sand talking and resting. "Let us go up on the mountain top and dance," suggested one of the deer . "All right," said the others, and they went to a broad sandy place on the mountain top and began to dance and sing: We are hap-py, hap-py, hap-py, hap-py hap-py. We are hap-py, hap-py, hap-py, hap-py hap-py, we! We dance and sing joy-ful-ly - It is spring - hay, hay! Mr. Coyote heard the deer singing, so he ran up on the mountain. "Good-day, Messrs. Deer, how happy and cheerful you sound. Let me dance with you." "I am sorry," replied the Chief of the Deer, "but nobody can dance with us who hasn't antlers on his head." "Won't you make me some antlers, so that I can dance?" asked Mr. Coyote. "Certainly, I can do that," replied Deer-Chief. So he took a sharp stone and sharpened the ends of two sticks; and then he hammered the sharp ends of the sticks into the coyote's head to make antlers for him. Then Mr. Coyote joined in the dance, expecting very soon to grab one of the little deer and run away with it; but he only danced around the circle once before he dropped in a faint from the sticks in his head. He rolled over and over down the mountain side until he was covered with bruises, and he had to rub himself with herbs for many moons. --- And the second, which really hits close to home for me, mentally: The Rabbit and the Crow, Jemez Pueblo Once upon a time a rabbit lived all alone. Some times he felt very lonely. One day when he was lonely he picked up his drum and went outside to sing. He sang: Sadness, sad-ness go a-way. Tra-a-la-a-la, go a-way A crow was flying near by and heard Mr. Rabbit singing and beating his drum. He flew down at once: "That drum annoys me, Mr. Rabbit. You shall not beat it," said Mr. Crow. Then he caught Mr. Rabbit's right arm, pulled it out and ate it. Next day Mr. Rabbit came out of his hole and beat the drum with his left arm as he sang his song. The crow heard him again. He flew down and pulled out Mr. Rabbit's left arm and ate that up. "I told you not to beat that drum," he said. On the third day Mr. Rabbit beat the drum with his right foot, and Mr. Crow flew down and ate his right foot up. And on the fourth day he ate up the rabbit's left foot. So the fifth day Mr. Rabbit came out to sing. He beat the drum with his head. Immediately Mr. Crow heard him and flew down. He bit off Mr. Rabbit's head and ate it; and then he picked up what was left of poor Mr. Rabbit and carried him up to his baby crows in the nest. --- The End. Thanks for coming with me on an interpersonal journey about some animal tales in an old book making me feel bad. Have a bonus tiny image of a limbless rabbit beating a drum with his face. 
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Jan 10, 2023 02:33
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I've been frequenting and lurking since 2001, and I have always had a difficult time posting, but whenever I post anything more than a paragraph, it always goes well. I shouldn't be surprised but here we are. I've written more before about my struggles with my culture before. It's weird because it's a lonely as hell experience, both being culturally ostracized and writing anything about it. That's all by way of saying I've loved this thread and think it's great. Weird books are the best.
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Jan 10, 2023 05:26
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The best post on this page. Followed closely by the Bigfoot books.
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Jan 12, 2023 00:16
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:16 |
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 Back on my terrible indian bullshit: LET'S PLAY INDIAN!  a Wonder Book (With a washable cover!) from 1950 that I bought my very white wife as a present and a joke. She's an educator of small children, so whenever I can find a weird, preferably vintage or antique book for children, I tend to snag it. This I couldn't resist because of how shockingly bad it was.   The plot is then that there will be a school play about the first thanksgiving and Susie is chosen to be a pilgrim because-  Spoiler: The kid chosen to play the 'Indian Chief' gets sick and Susie gets to live out her dream and ruins the play. The teacher is thankful that the upcoming nativity play has 'no Indians.' This one is not terrible and I never new it existed-  Found as is, no dust jacket, but the simple cover stood out to me at a yard sale. It's a children's book called "Where the Buffaloes Begin" and was published in 1981, written by Frederick Warne, and when I opened it - unmistakably illustrated by Stephen Gammell.    Moving on from ~The Native Zone~ Here's a children's story book, about children, with no publication date but with a gift inscription from 1925   One of the things I love about vintage books is finding inscriptions, drawings, notes or personal bookmarks.  Appropriately cheery material. A fun little (Dutch?) book about cats found in an antique shop, I bought just for the illustrations inside.     I have this poor, ragged book from 1883 I found online: Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight  A poem/story that my wife's late grandmother loved and loved to tell to my wife as a child. So closely associated is it with her memories of her grandmother that she has the phrase tattooed on her in remembrance. Maybe one day I'll chance upon a slightly better version of the same era, but it is on display on a shelf at home.  Droogie fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 02:22
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