Jack Handey explains how to find a bookstore's humor section.

Oprah picks The Story of Edgar Sawtelle as her new book club selection. I totally called this weeks ago, if by "called this" you mean "read what other people cleverly deduced and agreed with them."

Weekend stubble discusses the peculiar feeling of seeing your book translated into a foreign language. The occasion is an author discussing his book being translated into Chinese, and the author discovering a new introduction with an epigram by Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. But it was the mention of Jimmy James' retranslated masterpiece Jimmy James: Macho Donkey Business Wrestler that sent me straight to YouTube (actually, straight to Hulu, but their edited clip of the episode is inexplicably missing the line about the Super Karate Monkey Death Car, which captures the inescapable truth of the human condition as well as any Lara Croft quote could):

Seuss sez: Stop making movies of my books.

Stuff White People Like lands $300,000 book deal. In a related story, somebody at Random House has gone completely apeshit crazy. Hey, Random House, turn this blog into a book. Unlike the White People blog, nobody's already read this one, so it'll be all new content (and I won't even have to do anything).

That said, I will be reading the I Can Has Cheezburger book when it comes out.

Having just learned of the existence of How to Do Nothing With Nobody All Alone By Yourself, I was excited to see that the city library has a copy in storage. Should be fun to check out, until I find a copy of I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen.

Also found from Weekend Stubble, be sure to check out this flickr gallery of the abandoned Detroit public school system's book depository. It was apparently damaged in a fire and sold in an insurance settlement, leaving the books and school supplies to rot along with the building. The book-phoenix graffiti is a nice touch.

Used book store owner burns books in "protest." He apparently had some excess books to dispose of, and couldn't come up with a means of disposal that satisfied him. He received lots of advice on how to dispense the books, he said, but none that didn't involve expense, or that "would have us provide our inventory to organizations that compete directly with used bookstores." In other words, some fools wanted him to donate the books to those dens of iniquity, libraries. How dare a library try to reuse books for the public good; not like this noble man, Tom Wayne, who reuses the intellectual property of others for his personal financial gain. I have nothing against used book stores, but still; what a jackass.

So last summer (or thereabouts; I'm saying it was last summer for our purposes here), I read and enjoyed very much The Trouble With Tom, which follows the travels of Thomas Paine's body over the century or so following his demise. So I felt it only fitting, this summer, that I should read Stealing Lincoln's Body by Thomas J. Craughwell, which gives a similar treatment to the remains of the Great Emancipator. In particular, as the title suggests, the book recounts a little-known plot to steal the remains of Lincoln, and hold them for ransom, demanding $200,000 and the release of a convicted counterfeiter. Unforunately, this book is not nearly as engaging as Paul Collin's treatment of Paine, mostly because the story of the conspiracy to steal Lincoln is pretty simple and dull. The crooks were fairly inept, their capture relatively routine, and the story most notable for the paranoia it led to in keeping the bodies (Abraham and Mary Todd) safe from further attempts (Lincoln's corpse was moved repeatedly, his casket opened twice for identification purposes, before ultimately being entombed in concrete). The book uses this basic story as a framework for various digressions, some interesting (Lincoln's funeral, Mary Todd's battle with the Lincoln Monument association, the creation of a secret society to conceal the remains of Lincoln), but most not too terribly gripping. Overall, it's a quick read, well-written, if a bit too strident in telling the life story of every bit player in the scandal, and is worth a look for those interested in Lincoln, or the abduction of corpses for ransom.

It's also worth a look for people like me, who intend to make reading about the corpses of famous Americans an annual tradition. So here's hoping someone writes a book along those lines for next summer, or else I'll have to attempt to defile the corpse of Millard Fillmore (I intend to say that Mallard Fillmore gave me the idea) to give the nation's quirky historians fodder for a new book. Or maybe read a book about who's buried in Grant's tomb. Grant's tomb...hey, that's a nice segue into my visit to Del Taco yesterday. Stay tuned for Del Taco/Ulysses S. Grant confluence madness, coming soon!

I've been remiss in discussing my summer reading on this blog, but I just finished a rather unusual book that definitely warrants a mention: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. I encountered a fleeting reference to the studies in an interview recently, and immediately sought out this book, from 2004, which documents these macabre dollhouses and Frances Glessner Lee, who created them.

Basically, the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are a series of dioramas, meticulously created dollhouses which capture the initial state of repose of various people, whom have dropped dead under mysterious circumstances. All are based on reality to some degree, with most being a composite of several police investigations. Lee created these studies as an educational tool, to train first responders on how to observe, preserve and evaluate a crime scene; the goal of the studies is not necessarily to solve the crime, but to determine what evidence at the scene is pertinent, and what further tests should be performed by the medical examiner. Lee was an early proponent of what was then called legal medicine, and advocated for the creation of medical examiners offices (at the time, many coroners, appointed by patronage, had no medical training).

The book opens with an interesting essay about Lee and the studies, and about the gender and class politics under which Lee lived. But the bulk of the book is dedicated to depicting the studies, through descriptions, line drawing, and lots of pictures. Rather than being strictly representational, the photos take a more expressionistic approach, capturing the tension between the innocence of the form and the violence of the content, and the hope depicted externally in many of the studies through windows and paintings depicting more idyllic environs, a hope the victim, dead in their often squalid homes, failed to reach. And while there are disturbing photos of dolls having reached their grisly ends, most of the photos focus on the incidental details of their homes, the banal belongings that define a time and place, and ultimately, a life. Corrine May Botz, the author and photographer responsible for this volume, quotes Paul Auster regarding the objects of a dead man: "They are there and yet not there: tangible ghosts, condemned to survive in a world they no longer belong to. What is one to think, for example, of a closetful of clothes waiting silently to be worn again by a man who will not be coming back to open the door?" The preserved remnants of a life snuffed out are often more unsettling than the (admittedly creepy) dead dolls.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death would appeal to those whose interests run towards the macabre or the morbid, but it is not limited in its appeal to that audience. While the studies are not strictly speaking mysteries to be wrapped up neatly (though there is a general solution to the studies, since they are still used as a training tool, the solution to all but a handful of the studies is not provided--in general, the solutions are not too terribly hard to fathom, though the kitchen vignette really confounds me), fans of detective fiction and true crime should appreciate this book. And the story of Frances Glessner Lee, a woman whose ambitions were suppressed by the expectations for her gender and the heavy burden her wealthy family imposed upon her, offers interesting insights into the options available to upper-class women in the early twentieth century.

The book's Amazon page has some photos, and you can also see some photos and learn more from articles from American Medical News and 2wice (the former, written well before the publication of the book, has original photos, and more importantly, solutions not offered in the book).

A Series of Unfortunate Events is coming out in paperback. The books look pretty nice, but I don't think they're nice enough for me to buy 13 books I already own.

The original Mad Libs.