A fascinating find from a street sale that we stumbled on in Ipswich (what a great idea btw). The stories behind the titles, '...a small number of book titles have a rather odd, separate existence, almost as independent literary artefacts.'

(28/09/10)
Dexter deconstructs 50 famous and not-so-famous book titles with a very thorough, if not pedantic, eye for detail, sometimes tracing the history of book themes (e.g. ‘Cinderalla’ of the genus poor-cleaning-girl-finds-her-prince-with-the-help-of-glass-slippers – I kid you not!) Despite each little potted history being only 3 or 4 pages long some are a bit dull, and ancient text or obscure works, and the lack of modern books made the whole thing a bit less interesting. The said there are some real nuggets in here, like, ‘pooh’ the swan, the precursor to Lolita (the worst of a number possible/probable plagiarisms), the metaphorical title ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ and the lack of postmen or any ringing at all in, and finally, Heller originally preferred Catch-18 as a completely arbitrary number, but it was already ‘taken’ by Mila-18

I'm taking this along to the London meet-up...not been to one of these for a while :)

Diomedes took this one, read a bit, enjoyed it, put it down and buried it. Probably several times. Then he unearthed it again one day during a clearout and said, here, you can journal this one for me....
He found it fascinating, I don't have time as there are several piles and boxes of books calling to me with louder voices. So this one is due to move on. Enjoy!

Dear Finder of this book,

I'm so glad it has found a home with you. I hope you enjoy reading it and that you might take a few moments to jot down here what you thought about the book, or about finding it, or about bookcrossing.

If you decide to join bookcrossing, now that you have discovered the site, I'd be delighted if you would mention me - WistfulDragon - as the person who introduced you to the site.

Happy reading

WistfulDragon

PIcked up at the meet-up.

Interesting book, despite not having read/heard of some of the titles. Don't think knowing the history behing Waiting for Godot would have made it any less tedious when I was studying it for my French A Level!

To be left on the book buffet, or somewhere around town.

Hello!
If this is your introduction to Bookcrossing, welcome, and congratulations on finding this book! Enjoy reading the book,and I hope you will let us know what you thought. It is now yours to do with as you wish - keep it, pass it on, but please leave the label, so it can keep in touch with us. If you would like to know what happens to the book after it has left you, then do join - it's private and it's fun!
And if you do choose to join, please consider using me, rahar109, as your referring member.
Happy Bookcrossing!

I have been wanting to read this book for a while now, so I picked it up from the book buffet. Surely it won't take up too much space in my suitcase.

I picked this book up at the convention in Athens because I have always been intrigued by the title. It covered 50 different works, about 1/3 of which I was not familiar with, and provided information on the source of the title and the synopsis of the story line. It was good for a book to read in short sittings here and there and probably would have been enjoyed more if I weren't suffering from jet-lag throughout.

A local BookCrosser contacted me after noticing the title on the "recently caught" page the day I picked it up, asking to read it next. I will set it aside for him.

Rye Toast expressed interest in reading this book, so I will pass it to himat meet-up.

Any future reader or recipient of this book is encouraged to leave a journal entry here on the BookCrossing site to let prior readers know the fate of the book. You can make an anonymous entry without joining the BookCrossing movement, but if you are interested in joining, it is a free and spam-free community where your contact information is not shared with others. Best of all, members receive private messages via e-mail from books like this one when those books are journaled, allowing for long-term relationships between books and readers.

Requested from 6of8.
Hmm. The title sounds interesting. But I'm not familiar with many of the titles.I'll give it a whirl.

Some interesting sections. Many books I don't know about (nor really care about). Still interesting.

Book released at Grace Cafe, 219 South 4th Street, Danville, Ky, a non-profit, pay-what-you-can community restaurant. Based on the nonprofit restaurant business model developed by the One World Everybody Eats foundation(OWEE). The Grace Cafe hosts a book reading club, "Reading Around the World" which meets the 2nd Monday of each month at 2pm, everyone welcome.
www.gracecafeky.org



To the the person who finds this book, read it or not , but please make a journal entry to let me know it's been found.... keep it, pass it on to a friend or release it into the wild.... let the journey continue.....