Thursday Things: Weird Books Edition
29 September 2022. Vol 4 No 39 By Dan McGirt. #164
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Not saying these particular books are weird. For illustrative purposes only! Photo by Natalia Yakovleva on Unsplash
Weird Books For You
I love old books. Obscure books. Forgotten books. Books from the 19th century. Old, obscure, forgotten books from the 19th century. Books in the public domain. So you can guess where hours of my time have gone since I discovered this…
A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books
The creator of this search engine and author of the article concisely encapsulates the appeal of old books:
Old books are socially and culturally fascinating; they give you a glimpse into how much society has changed, and also what’s remained the same. The writing styles can be delightfully archaic, but also sometimes amazingly fresh. Nonfiction writers from 1780 can be colloquial and funny as hell.
And man, they wrote about everything. Back in those centuries they wrote books about falling in love via telegraph wires, and about long-distance balloon travel. They wrote books that soberly praised eugenics, and ones that inveighed against it. They published exuberant magazines of men’s fashion and books on how to adopt vegetarian diets. The past being the past, there’s a ton of flat-out nativism, racism, and gibbering misogyny — but also people fighting against that, too.
So what’s this search engine all about?
You can read the post for the thinking behind it (and many old book links), but basically the author has a notion that we should “rewild” our attention by escaping the algorithms that feed us content on most sites these days. His search engine is designed to introduce an element of serendipity to your browsing by serving up one random public domain book per search (drawn from the vast online collection indexed by Google Books). He’s doing a bit of jujitsu to un-Google the Google algorithm, if that makes sense.
Behind the scenes, here’s what it’s doing, which is pretty simple: i) You type in a query, and ii) my app sends it to Google Books, and filters the results for pre-1927 public domain. Then iii) it picks one at random and displays it to you…
… I can open it up, throw in a search term, and within seconds be flipping through a weird old book.
Here’s the link to the Weird Old Book Finder
Have fun! And if you discover any cool old books, please share and we’ll do a follow up here for other Thursday Things readers.
Spooky Japan
There is nothing more terrifying than little Japanese ghost girls crawling out of wells or popping out of your kitchen cabinets. What was that movie? The Ring. Yeah, I’ve never seen it and never will. The trailer was enough for me. And that was the Hollywood remake. I’m sure the Japanese original is even more terrifying.
Japanese ghost stories are terrifying. But maybe you like that sort of thing. In that case, here is a public domain book for you:
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904)
Deriving its title from the word for "ghost story" in Japanese Kwaidan is a book by scholar and translator Lafcadio Hearn in which are compiled an array of ghost stories hailing from Japan. Hearn writes in his introduction, written only months before his death, that the majority of the stories were translated from old Japanese texts (some of which themselves were based on earlier Chinese tales) … Among the many curious and spooky happenings related in the other stories, we hear of a musician called upon to perform for the dead, man-eating goblins, a mysterious face appearing in a cup of tea, and, rather terrifyingly, a featureless girl with a face as smooth as an egg.
Yeah, I’m done. I don’t want to know anything more about Featureless Japanese Egg Girl because it already sounds like nightmare fuel. But you have fun with that … if you dare.
A Tree Grows In Chile
It has long been said that the oldest tree in the world — and, indeed, the oldest living thing on Earth — lives in California:
In eastern California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine known as Methuselah has long been considered Earth’s oldest living thing. According to tree-ring data, it is 4,853 years old — meaning that Methuselah was well established by time ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza.1
However, old Methuselah has some competition for the crown:
But wait — a challenger has emerged to vie for Methuselah’s record, reports National Geographic’s Craig Welch. In Chile, a Patagonian cypress known as the Alerce Milenario or Gran Abuelo (great-grandfather) could be 500 years older than the current reigning champion.
Scientist Jonathan Barichivich computed the Alerce Milenario’s age using tree-ring data from a partial core sample, combined with information extrapolated from statistical models. Though his methods have been met with skepticism by some specialists, Barichivich expects to publish his findings in a scientific journal in the coming months.2
The new would-be oldest tree is getting a bit of press:
‘It’s a miracle’: Gran Abuelo in Chile could be world’s oldest living tree
In a secluded valley in southern Chile, a lone alerce tree stands above the canopy of an ancient forest.
Green shoots sprout from the crevices in its thick, dark trunks, huddled like the pipes of a great cathedral organ, and water streams down its lichen-streaked bark on to the forest floor from bulbous knots in the wood.
“It was like a waterfall of green, a great presence before me,” remembers the climate scientist Jonathan Barichivich, 41, of the first time he encountered the Gran Abuelo, or “great-grandfather”, tree as a child.
Which tree is older? In one sense, it doesn’t matter. Arboreal bragging rights aside, both of these trees are more than 5,000 years old. What’s a few more centuries either way, give or take? Both Methuselah and el Gran Abuelo are remarkable organisms that deserve our respect, protection … and a bit of awe.
Thank you for reading!
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https://www.conservation.org/blog/the-worlds-oldest-tree-is-facing-competition-3-stories-you-may-have-missed
Ibid.