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.
Reblog only if you're a recreational reader and can relate to the special joy depicted in this photograph. From the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's 1951 yearbook.
What a concise way to communicate a title, year, edition number, publisher, city, editor's name, and ten major contributors. That's sixteen units of information! From Wheels by Edith Sitwell, 1916.
Given how a booklover's shelves tend to sag, making the world one's bookshelf might be a practical solution. From Moline Community College's 1961 yearbook.
The setting mapped on the endpapers is even divided into acres, as in "the Hundred Acre Wood," in this rather blatant "tribute" to Winnie the Pooh, two decades later. We decoded the young reader's squiggle. It says, "Christopher Robin did it first." From Poo and the Baby Bunny Rabbit by Edwin Megargee, 1947.
It's been said that "The author should be invisible every step of the way" (Angela Ackerman). And that includes the title page, apparently. This page is exactly as scanned by Google Books: "The Works of."
It's been said that the only book to have is Every Thing About Every Thing by Every Body. We've read it, and while the beginning was quite compelling, about midway through we lost our bookmark and decided not to try to find our place again. From The Martlet, 1977.