Monday, July 12, 2010

And now for no particular reason...

...a list of books currently on my Amazon wishlist used copies priced at a single penny plus shipping and handling:

  1. Krishnamurti Reader vol I - Krishnamurti was my favorite reluctant messiah until I found out that Raj Patel is/isn't the maitreya.
  2. A Continuing Education - A book about what books to read by Samuel Pickering, an English professor who was one of the inspirations for Robin Williams' roll in Dead Poets Society.
  3. The Art of Faking It: Sounding Smart Without Really Knowing Anything - Perfect title for exploiting the intellectual insecurity of the middlebrow set.  Clearly I am a sucker for having this on my list.
  4. Review of Contemporary Fiction (Summer 98) - contains an article on Milorad Pavic, author of one of my favorite novels, The Dictionary of the Khazars.
  5. Defence Diaries of W. Morgan Petty - A collection of crank letters written under a pseudonym.
  6. Yotsuba&! vol III - I own volume I and have read volume II.  Though I have read other manga, volume I is the only one I have ever spent cash money on.
  7. Alphabet of Manliness - By the author of the Best Page in the Universe.
  8. Schotts' Food & Drink Miscellany - I have Schott's original volume of miscellany.  Despite living in this wild internet age of instant information I am still amused by small oddball reference works such as Mr. Schott produces.  But then I maintain a luddite-like attachment to the codex as the 'proper' medium for a book.
  9. 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know - Another weird reference book, but with a more conspiratorial bent.  Put out by the folks behind disinfo.com if I recall correctly.
  10. How to Be a Villain: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!!! - I'm not sure if there's anything in this one that I don't already know, but I love the title. 
  11. Don't Try This at Home: How to Win a Sumo Match, Catch a Great White Shark, Start an Independent Nation and Other Extraordinary Feats - Remember when the Worst-Case Survival Handbook spawned a brief fad of books like it?
  12. The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills - I sure do!
  13. The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook - Though I never got the original.
Shipping & handling on most of these tomes is listed as $3.99, so at the moment I could get any one of them for only four dollars American.  Anybody care to share an opinion as to which one I should order later today?

7 comments:

  1. Yay, someone else who likes Dictionary of the Khazars.

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  2. I own "How to be a Villain" and though it's been awhile, I do remember laughing out loud when reading it...

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  3. JMiskimen4:50 PM

    Yotsuba & The Alphabet of Manlines should have ranked much higher!

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  4. I don't think that was a ranked list.
    Jeff, I don't know what you SHOULD buy, but from reading this blog, the Action Hero's Handbook would seem redundant. You already know how to do the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, don't you?

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  5. I haven't read Krishnamurti since I was twenty (about twenty years ago) but I don't think you could go wrong there.

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  6. anything and everything by Bill Miller ("Faking It") is awesome. Check out his "Humiliation" for even better goodness.

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  7. user@example.com3:41 PM

    Yotsuba& is amazing. Having read two earlier volumes, you know this. I suggest you buy III immediately.

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