CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Two books on the market purport to provably read the minds of their readers: Clive Barker’s horror novel Mister B. Gone and Anthemion Buckram’s grimoire The Young Wizard’s Hexopedia. You could tell the person who has everything that this book pairing gift suggested itself.
"I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, while a roar like the crack of doom rang in my ears," from With the Colours by Richard Mounteney Jephson, 1881.