| Author | Message | ||
     David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 2.219.133.41 |
Well this is quite amazing. I'm sure someone could get a horror story out of this too. http://themetapicture.com/hidden-messages-in-books/ | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.204.182 |
Someone linked to that on Facebook a few days ago - marvellous stuff, I thought. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
Never seen anything like it before, and I've come across a couple of odd books in my day, believe me. What if the drawing underwent a subtle change every time you looked at it? Jamesian possibilities there . . . | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
It is amazing. Never come across that myself either. Wish there were still some second-hand bookshops left around here now - I'd be thumbing through all the pages! Love the idea of a Jamesian horror story based on this. So, which one of you writer folks is going to write it? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.111 |
I have several old books with gold trim round the edges. I'm going to have to dig them out and check them now... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
What is the oldest book in your possession, fellow RCMBers? I think in my case it's Oraisons funèbres (Delagrave, Paris 1870). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.111 |
Off the top of my head I have a copy of the Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, which, from teh inscription, was given as a birthday present in 1910. I think I've got older books than that but the publishers dating the books is comparitively recent so it's hard to say for definite. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.111 |
I have a book called Poets of the 19th Century with an inscription that I can't quite read the name on but appears to say "Miss Johusou January 26th/99". I don't have any books I can accurately date further back than that. Interestingly, despite featuring poems by 92 different poets, there's no Poe in there. The Rev Robert Aris Willmott (compiler and editor) mustn't have been a fan. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.204.182 |
I have a copy of "Narrative of The Field Operations connected with The Zulu War of 1879" (snappy title!), a reprint from 1907, with a pocket at the rear containing maps of Rorke's Drift and other places. No spine, and the front board is adrift, but still... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.204.182 |
Ah, and I also have "The Citizen's Atlas" from 1898, a large format hardback with 120 maps and other stuff in it. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
Not that my thing is worth much; there's currently a reprint edition from 1897 on e-bay which fetches less than five bucks. Oldest horror books: M.R. James's A Thin Ghost, Edward Arnold, London 1920, ex aequo with W.H. Hodgson's The Ghost Pirates, Holden & Hardingham, London 1920. No idea what they're worth. The latter is in a sorry state, so I'll mention the runner-up, Hodgson's The House on the Borderland, Holden & Hardingham, London 1921, which is in very good condition indeed. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Weird—just last week, my mom gave me an old book she found in a box: Monism: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science, by Ernst Haeckel (translated into English from German), a reprinting published in April, 1895. Somebody wrote his/her name in it in pencil: "L. Ruddock," dated January 10, 1905. Hmm... there seems to be other books over the years (judging by Amazon queries) that link this author/book to the rise of Fascism. Maybe I better just sell the thing. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
Why would you? You wouldn't get rid of Darwin's The Origin of Species just because the nazis were into social darwinism, would you? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I guess I should read it and make up my mind then, Hubert. It's pretty short. It looks pretty dull though. Is Haeckel even anyone that anyone knows or reads anymore? I have some Darwin books that are pretty old too, now that you mention it. I wish I had some really cool old books... like, the Necronomicon.... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
The closest I've come to owning an actual forbidden book in the Lovecraftian sense, is Eliphas Levi's Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual - apart from the laughable 'Simon' Necronomicon (Avon 1980), that is. There are several quotations from the Levi book in HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. |