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.
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Found 206 posts tagged ‘books’


Restoring the Lost Sense – September 2, 2019 (permalink)

From Pearson's, 1902.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #reading #books
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Yearbook Weirdness – August 2, 2019 (permalink)

From Hanover's 1931 yearbook.

*For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

> read more from Yearbook Weirdness . . .
#vintage illustration #books #vintage yearbook #yearbook #crushed #ex libris #bookplate
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Yearbook Weirdness – July 2, 2019 (permalink)

"The seclusion of the stacks provides a satsifying atmosphere for research." From the Eastern Kentucky State College yearbook of 1966.

*For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

> read more from Yearbook Weirdness . . .
#books #vintage photo #vintage yearbook #yearbook #1960s #bookmobile #mobile library #library books #library on wheels #portable library #stacks #trucks #seclusion #bookmobiles
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Yearbook Weirdness – May 28, 2019 (permalink)

A pathway of books leads to the castle.  From Eastern Nazarene's 1927 yearbook.

*For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

> read more from Yearbook Weirdness . . .
#vintage illustration #castle #books #vintage yearbook #yearbook #illustration
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Restoring the Lost Sense – April 26, 2019 (permalink)

From Maliar, 1906.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #owl #books
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Go Out in a Blaze of Glory – April 6, 2019 (permalink)

It's been said that avid readers always have books at their fingertips, but the real die-hards have books on their fingertips.  Our champion on the other side of the world just snagged five of our publications.  That one pictured at the bottom left is extraordinarily rare, and we frankly can't imaging how he got it: Armchair Time Travel: How to Alter History, Today.  He also got The Care & Feeding of a Spirit BoardA Snowball's Chance in Hell, If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary, and the little-known Six Degrees of Jubilation (a.k.a. Posted Chestnuts).

> read more from Go Out in a Blaze of Glory . . .
#books
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Restoring the Lost Sense – March 13, 2019 (permalink)

You've heard of a "walking encyclopedia," but have you ever seen a walking set of encyclopedias?  From Le Charivari, 1848.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #anthropomorphism #books #walking encyclopedia #bookcase #1840s
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Yearbook Weirdness – March 7, 2019 (permalink)

From Wesleyan College's 1922 yearbook.

*For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

> read more from Yearbook Weirdness . . .
#vintage illustration #books #vintage yearbook #yearbook #ex libris #bookplate
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Yearbook Weirdness – March 6, 2019 (permalink)

A bookplate from Northeastern's 1929 yearbook.

*For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

> read more from Yearbook Weirdness . . .
#vintage illustration #books #vintage yearbook #yearbook #ex libris #bookplate
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Non-Circulating Books – December 12, 2018 (permalink)

From The Judge, 1918.  See our project about non-circulating books: https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?c=NonCirculatingBooks.
> read more from Non-Circulating Books . . .
#vintage illustration #falling #books #book circulation #falling down #slipped on a banana peel #taking a fall #slipping
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This May Surprise You – October 9, 2018 (permalink)

The magical mist surrounding these grimoires is not technically a special effect -- there was condensation on the camera lens.  Yes, these books are stacked in a shop window in the Wizarding World at Universal Studios, Orlando.  We can now reveal for the first time that it was this very window display that directly led to the rediscovery of The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.  One November morning, a stranger wrote from out of the blue, asking for assistance with an extraordinary book of magic.  The stranger was in search of a grimoire that didn't technically exist.  His own research had somehow determined that we possessed the know-how to bring this lost book back from the depths.  It seems that he had seen the esoteric window display at the Wizarding World and had noticed that the lost book in question wasn't there.  The problem was that no surviving copies of the book are known to exist.  Our task was to rediscover and recreate the entire document from quotations and implications in magical literature.  The stranger provided some crucial scraps, trusting that the whole work might be holographically contained within the parts.  Knowing the title and a rough idea of the table of contents, we set to work hunting through cryptic volumes in private libraries of magic (whose locations we're not at liberty to reveal, though we can perhaps mention Hollywood's Magic Castle).  Suffice it to say, we left no philosopher's stone unturned.  The process was very much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in a dark room, with only a flickering candle for illumination.  To our own surprise, the lost book began taking shape almost immediately.  Restoring fragments into sentences and arranging them into paragraphs proved less challenging than one might suppose.  For example, you can surely divine what the last word of this sentence will [...].  Whenever a passage seemed to have something almost tangibly missing, like the absence of a vital book in an occult shop window, I knew to keep digging.  The moment it was clear that the entire Hexopedia was restored, I verified the accuracy of my work with three highly gifted wizards of words: a playwright in New Hampshire, a poet in Pennsylvania, and a teacher of magical arts in Nevada.  Then I sent the restoration to the stranger, who flabbergasted me by suggesting that the book should not come back into print at all but rather remain hidden in shadowy slumber until a more enlightened era.  (Apparently the trickster merely desired a copy for his personal use!)  Having worked so intimately with the text for so long, I felt convinced that the world was ready once again for the Hexopedia ... that it shouldn't rest only in the private library of one megalomaniac.  And the rest, as the former, is history.
> read more from This May Surprise You . . .
#magick #occult #books #esoteric #dark arts #magic book #grimoire #old books
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Restoring the Lost Sense – August 26, 2018 (permalink)

From Judge's Library, 1903.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #anthropomorphism #books #faces in things #smiling book #walking dictionary
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Restoring the Lost Sense – July 15, 2018 (permalink)

Reblog if you've ever started a series of books but ended up finding them distasteful.  From Lustige Blätter, 1908.

[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #books #stack of books
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Restoring the Lost Sense – July 6, 2018 (permalink)

From Fliegende Blätter, 1926.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #books #contemplation #illustration #thinker
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This May Surprise You – June 21, 2018 (permalink)

"There is no danger that we shall be drowned in books."  From Pearson's, 1902.
> read more from This May Surprise You . . .
#books #weird news
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Restoring the Lost Sense – June 17, 2018 (permalink)

"Out of life's throbbing past / Nothing remains / Save books, where thoughts were cast" (Charles Farwell Edson).  From The Step Ladder, 1919.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #reading #books #illustration
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Restoring the Lost Sense – June 8, 2018 (permalink)

From Fliegende Blätter, 1928.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #books #illustration #head wound #on purpose #accident
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Restoring the Lost Sense – May 3, 2018 (permalink)

From Kladderadatsch, 1932.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #books #buried alive #buried in books
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This May Surprise You – May 1, 2018 (permalink)

Books are alive and have souls.  We found these proofs:

"Undoubtedly books have souls" (Joseph Jewell Barton).

"Literature … is alive—not in a vague complementary sense, but alive tenaciously" (E. M. Forster).

"Only an honest book can live" (John Burroughs).

"Literature is alive.  I am literature; it's not merely dead authors with beards.  It's alive" (Azouz Begag).

"Words have souls, and books have souls, and books, indeed, contain the most valuable essence of human souls" (The Open Court, 1894).

It's been said that "it's an author's passion, whatever its form … that makes a pulse beat in the printed page and keeps a book alive through its readers long after the writer is dust" ("The Book" by Barbara W. Tuchman).

It's been said that "the jumping out of planes, car chases and evil people in general is what I think keeps a book alive" (Scorpia, in a book review).

It's been said that "richness and impact characterize the lasting works" so that fifty years after their first appearance they still grip the human mind, immersing it in a rich created world.  (Kathryn Cave.)

It's been said that "It is the revelation that keeps a book alive to the reader" (Adrianne, "The Book and the Real World").

It's been said that references to famous quotations, events, and artworks is what keeps a book alive (Christchurch City Libraries).

It's been said that "It's the critical culture that keeps a book alive" (Yamini Deenadayalan).

It's been said that "it's word of mouth that really keeps a book alive" (Laura Lam).

It's been said that "What keeps a book alive is future books talking about it" (Tom Vanderbilt , "Why Is Literary Fame So Unpredictable?").

It's been said that "What keeps a book alive is not the judgment of critics, not the label of 'classic' attached to it in school-rooms, but the unaffected delight it continues to give to the hearts of men" (H. W. Boynton, "Reading New Books").

It's been said that "it is teaching that keeps a book alive" (Nicholas Birns).

It's been said that "It is only the good opinion of the few that keeps a book alive" (Max Beerbohm).

It has been said that it is the "calling for fresh copies of it after the old copies are worn out" that keeps a book alive (Leon Henry Vincent, The Bibliotaph).

It's been said that "humor that survives from other days" keeps a book alive beyond its own generation (Ladies' Home Journal).

It's been said that "credibility among [the author's] scientific peers" is what keeps a book alive in the minds of readers (Cheryl Knott).

It's been said that "a popular adaptation keeps a book alive" (Thomas S. Hischak).

Previously, we saw that the moment a work is published it appears in another world (either heavenly or hellish.  Bad books are tormented in Hell.)

> read more from This May Surprise You . . .
#books #living books #literature #living culture #books have souls #list
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Restoring the Lost Sense – April 9, 2018 (permalink)

From Fliegende Blätter, 1943.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .
#vintage illustration #books #librarian #illustration
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