This year there are several entries for the Least Appealing Title of the Year. I, for one, will not be reading Easy-Gaited Horses, nor The Forgotten Half of Change, which appears to be a self-help book and not a guide to what to do with all those leftover euro coins.
On the other hand, do not be put off by The Gene that Makes You Smell Like a Fish. This pioneering work by Lisa Seachrist Chiu exposes some of nature’s most peculiar genetic quirks: the black urine gene, the werewolf gene, the gene that makes you hate broccoli and (my particular favourite) the Dracula gene, a mutation in zebra fish that causes their blood cells to explode on contact with light.
But the overall prize for The Book I Am Least Likely to Read goes to The Sex Life of Food by Bunny Crumpacker (I’m not making this up). Bunny has put food on the couch, to bring us “Food and Gender: Subconscious Symbolism” and “A Freudian Look at Flour”. Read this book, and you will never feel quite the same way about baking.
Wait a sec... I am so grossed out by the notion of a gene that makes your urine black!! I mean, I was so amused by Bunny Crumpacker, and then I just kept looking back with horror!
I wonder, what's the most ridiculously unappealing book in your home collection?
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16 comments:
"a guide to what to do with all those leftover euro coins"
funny.
my home book collection? i'm trying to give up my book-reading habit. it's too expensive and space-consuming. if it's not on a blog or a podcast, i don't have time.
For my daughter, the Free to be...You and Me "revised" fairy tales.
barf.
Some Better Homes & Gardens meat cookbook from the 1960s. The photographs of glazed meats, the recipes for cooking parts of animals I didn't realize people actually ATE ... blech. And I'm NOT a vegetarian.
Anal Warts and You: A Lifetime Commitment.
Anselm,
We still have the Free to be ... You and Me album. Ick.
Book: Left Behind
Me, I want to be the guy that first films an exploding Dracula Zebra Fish!
"roll camera....sound...lights!"
Poof!
Can we still get Christopher Lee to do the naration? Excellent...
This is where having a medical student on your blog really hits paydirt, Ann.
"Inhibition of neuronal apoptosis by a metalloporphyrin superoxide dismutase mimic"
It's a page-turner!
Cheers,
Victoria
Well, some people have a gene which makes their urine excessively sweet.
MSUD -- Maple Syrup Urine Disease
So named because the researcher allegedly gave it a taste-see.
Ahh. What we do in the name of science.
Cheers,
Victoria
Ann Adair Althouse-
Pantherine Aviatrix
Nice! Although...
Ann Adair Althouse
Squirrelous Dominatrix
Sounds more legit.
Cheers,
Victoria
The Prayer of Jabez. Awful --though a well-meant gift it is utter tripe.
Oh and the copy of 101 Sex Postions (with [h]airbrushed photos as a guide) given to us by my mother-in-law.
Ick X 100
"Shopping for a Better World, 1991 Edition."
I promise to get to it soon.
Victoria, your title gives me severe cephalodynia!
Well, Victoria, I suppose I must ask the obvious; can you both the black and maple syrup urine genes? and who got bit by that radioactive spider?
"Just stick a tap in him and let the sap run out." -- Groucho
At least the black urine would be slimming...
It's an interesting assumption which reflects upon the prosperity of our age that the readership of this blog is likely to have an extensive book collection (from the 100s (like myself) to the 1000s to 10000s (most probably have at least one friend with over 10000 books)).
When looking at the Times 100 books list I noticed that the list price of the books in the 30s was $2.50 or $3.00.
At EH.NET they have a relative value calculator for comparing past prices to today's dollars (up to 2003) and $3 in 1934 varies from $34.03 using the GDP deflator method of calculation to $498.69 as a relative share of GDP.
As far as ridiculously unappealing, that's a toughy since I kept all my school texts from all the different classes I attended.
Some might see Collected Restoration Plays and turn their noses, while others would blanch at Color Consciousness, and still others would look at The Riverside Chaucer in its dictionary like heft, mass and archaic language and runaway.
Personally the book that still sits in my home that I should burn or give away would be Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, I can not put into words how much I loathe that novel.
(and Victoria re:MSUD ewww, ick, I always thought the name came from odor, color or viscosity, not TASTE, again, ewww, ick (must have been a German doctor corprophiliacs, the lot of them!)
I used to have a copy of "The Corrections," the most over-rated book EVER. If I hadn't pitched it in the trash in disgust, it would qualify.
P.S. You guys need to get that "Free to be You and Me" crap out of your house, ASAP... there's nothing grosser.
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