Speaking of Marriage...

Just saw this over at Boing Boing: images from and commentary about a 1962 book titled When you Marry.

Future Advice Book Collectors, Take Note

Just came across this handy list, for anyone thinking of starting a book collection in oh, about 50 years. Just think, your collection could take a loving look back on the quaint era of the early 2000s!

Awful Library Books

What may not belong in a library any longer, could have a home on my bookshelf. These books are great, in an awful way, as the bloggers so rightly describe. Librarians, send them my way!

Mr. America

There's a new biography out, by Mark Adams, about one of my favorite authors, Bernarr Macfadden.

It's called How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet.

The Post had a review today - I haven't read the book yet but plan to pick up a copy!

Birthday Chats with Tomorrow's Man - a little family history

cover
Originally uploaded by Miss Abigail.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing from a woman named Robin, the granddaughter of Louis Le Claire Jones, author of the 1940 Birthday Chats with Tomorrow's Man. She had done a Google search after finding a photocopy of her grandfather's book and stumbled across this site. She writes "I've known for years that he had created this book for his sons Bob, Dick and Bill Jones (Bob was my Dad. Dick and Billy were my Uncles)... I never got to meet either of my Father's folks. Daisy, his Mom, died while the sons were fairly young, and Louis died a few years before I was born in 1948. I can only assume that the dedication in the front of the book is referring to her...." She told me that he was a musician, as was Daisy. The book is illustrated with some cartoons, and we both wonder if Louis created these (she thinks he might have). She goes on to report: "Here is a fun bit of info for you: beneath the printer's name in the front of the book, you will see Distributors: Richards and Williams 112 S. Scoville Ave, Oak Park, IL. Richard and William were my Dad's younger brothers, and 112 S. Scoville is where they grew up!! I think Louis had a sense of humor."

To get a taste of some of her grandfather's advice, visit Tips for the Turned Down and The Nerve!

Thank you, Robin, for sharing this wonderful information! I love to hear from the families of authors of my books; if there are others of you out there, please get in touch.

Cataloging in the New Year

I've been spending the last few weeks adding more of my many, many books to my LibraryThing catalog. I'm up to over 550! Woohoo! About halfway there! (This is a slooow, manual process, since most of my books don't have ISBNs or LCCNs I can't take advantage of their auto-import function.)

My book database originally lived in an old Filemaker database that runs on an old Mac operating system that I no longer have access to. In the spirit of digital preservation (which I live with every day at work), I have been migrating my book collection database to LibraryThing over the past few years. This offers me a better, easier, more fun way to share my collection with you and others, and also allows me to export the books and use them in other new and exciting ways.

Which leads me to point out a database (available by subscription hopefully at your local public or university library) product from Alexander Streets Press called Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Sex, Gender and the Family. I learned about this database from some work colleagues at the Library of Congress. Since there was an obvious connection to my interests and collection, I got in touch with Alexandria Street. We're currently in talks about how we might share information. There is some overlap but they've got stuff I don't, and I have titles they don't, so it'll be fun to compare notes.

And if you can get access through your library, do check it out. They've done a fabulous job scanning the books in full color and providing access. A joy to see (well, I am just a bit biased!).

Merry Christmas!

[Sorry for the delayed post, I tried to put this up Christmas eve but blogger wasn't cooperating, arg]

I picked up a few books at a used bookshop on the Eastern shore of Maryland in early December, and thought I would share a little from two of them on this lovely Christmas Eve.

The image [well, I tried to post it here but am having trouble with Blogger. Click here for the image] is from the 1936 Health by Doing, and the text below is a game from a 1928 book titled Hygiene and Health. So if you're feeling a little bored tonight after dinner, have a little fun with this game!

**********
Night Before Christmas

The players form in a circle and each is given the name of something connected with the story of Santa Claus, as sled, chimney, bells, mittens, fur coat, stockings, candy, etc. One player is chosen to be "it" and stands in the center while he tells a Christmas story in which he uses now and then the words given the players as names. Whenever he mentions the name of any of these things the one who has this name must turn completely around. If Santa Claus is mentioned, all players must turn around. If the one who is "it" can tag any player before he has turned around, the one tagged must be "it" and go on with the story. The game may be made more difficult by having the players sit.

***********

For a list of the other latest purchases, visit me over at LibraryThing (tag=newest).

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

New Book on Emily Post

Over the last few years I've been in contact off and on with author Laura Claridge, who just published a book about Emily Post titled Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners. I haven't gotten my copy yet but did spot this write up in Slate this week. If you are an etiquette fan, this book should be on your shelf!

These are questions I'd like to understand

Did you know that...

"Many boys and girls have real difficulty in understanding one another's actions and attitudes when it comes to the subject of sex. Below are some comments that illustrate this point:

Alvin ~ Why do girls where such scanty clothing? They wear only halters, or they go swimming with practically nothing on. Then they are sore - or pretend to be - when boys make passes at them.

Bertha ~ Why do boys so often want to tell girls a sex joke? Is it because their minds are on the subject all the time, or is it that they are trying to see how far the girl will go?

Charlene ~ What does a boy get out of petting? I can't see anything in it.

Jerry ~ How far to go is a real problem. Does a girl want you to kiss on the first date? How far beyond that should one go? Should the boy respond right away if the girl leads him on? These are questions I'd like to understand. "

Don't worry Jerry, these answers and more are available in one of the latest books to hit Miss Abigail's bookshelf, called Understanding the Other Sex. It was written in 1956 by William C. Menninger, M.D. and I found it at the Book Thing in Baltimore. My latest trip earlier this month scored me a few other good books for the collection, found here.

It's not pornography -- it's etiquette!

This article is great! And they are digitizing them! Can't wait.

Thanks for the tip, Jurretta!

Newest Old Books

I've got a few new additions to the collection this month, thanks to the Library of Congress used booksale (oh, don't worry, they're not selling off the collections, staff donate books and the sales go to charities), and a visit to the DC Big Flea at Dulles Expo Center (lots of browsing yielded only two pamphlets and a tablecloth -- most things were too expensive for my taste!

The Big Flea yielded two books on play and exercise:
*The Modern Drill and Exercise Book
*Play Safe with the Games We Love

I got some great things at the LC sale, including, dig this -- the far-out Sex, Sex, Sex, which is from 1969, written by Christian husband and wife team Marcena and Trevor Wyatt Moore, who according to the back of the book, had been "practicing matrimony" for 25 years before writing this masterpiece. They "acquired, mysteriously enough, a clutch of nine children..." One rave review of the book from Father Robert F. Capon, author of Bed and Board, states: "Delightful. Whimsical. Hip. But solid. Square with round corners." That pretty much sums it up. Typography and graphics are used to engage the reader into thinking the book is hipper than it is. I was going to scan some pages in, but I've just discovered that my Adobe Photoshop Elements isn't working with the latest Mac OS (at least on my machine), so I need to figure that out before I can get some images posted for you. Sorry!

In the meantime, you can peruse all of the new books here.

1966: Country Life

I'm in Vermont for a few days of R&R and found a few books at a used bookshop in Brattleboro:

Lao Russell's Love; a scientific and living philosophy of love and sex;

A 1980 reprint of the 1768 The delights of wisdom concerning conjugial love: after which follow, the pleasures of insanity concerning scortatory love by Emanuel Swedenborg;

and

Sex after Forty, which could come in handy now that I'm of that age.

To give you a taste, and to follow up on the nature theme, and since I'm in Vermont enjoying it's beauty, here's an excerpt from Russell's book. It's from a little section called "Country Life."

~~
One who loves country life always feels sorry for those who have not discovered the exciting and beautiful world of Nature. No one can ever be lonely as he walks in the woods and discovers the pulsing, singing, courageous, growing trees, and the bright, glowing beauty of wild flowers--an endless array of them. Each month you discover another species. Did you know that there are actually about twenty-five kinds of chickweeds? Their little white flowers contain tiny capsules of small seeds that songbirds love.

Nature is far more exciting than odor-filled cities whose streets are filled with raucous noises, instead of the sound of the songs of birds, the rustle of leaves, falling twigs, and the "chatter" of wildlife both far and near. . . .

No life is as exciting as forest life, and yet man crowds into cities where there is tension created by man who all too often desires to build transitory wealth for his body, instead of permanent wealth for his Soul.
~~

Ah, with that, I'll head back out into the woods. I've been on the computer way too long!

Free Books!

No, not free books for you, sorry. Unless you head over to where I was yesterday afternoon -- The Book Thing in Baltimore, Maryland, where you can take as many free books as you can carry (really!). It's a fabulous place, particularly for an addict like me. I hadn't been in a few years, so went with my new friend D. yesterday and we found 22 titles for the Miss Abigail collection. Favorites include:

~~Complete Book for the Intelligent Woman Traveler (should help me on my trip to Paris next month)

~~one from the author of another favorite -- Live Alone and Like It. The newly found book is titled Keep Going and Like It for the over 60s crowd

~~a 1930 medical book with slightly disturbing (yet humorous) photographs titled Mental Aspects of Stammering

~~and, complete with instructions for paneling your refrigerator, How to Apply Paneling

See the full list of new additions freshly cataloged on Library Thing.