The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Sunday, April 5, 2009

More rubbish about remaindered books

Apologies for yet another compendium of remaindered books, but somehow this stuff strikes me as both funny and significant. This time, the vendor is Edward R. Hamilton bookselling company, offering a large tabloid catalog packed with books that for one reason or another are being dumped. As I think you'll see, many of them have a single, compelling reason.

To begin with, there appears to be a huge sell-off in the self-help and autodidact biz:

  • Business Math Demystified
  • The Internet for Dummies
  • Free Software for Dummies
  • Controlling Cholesterol for Dummies
  • Stretching for Dummies
  • Chihuahuas for Dummies
  • The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shakespeare
  • Puppy Parenting
  • Hedge Funds Demystified
  • The Complete Idiot's Guide to NASCAR
  • Macroeconomics Demystified
  • The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Homemade Dogfood
  • The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Vegetarian
  • 30 Minutes a Day to a Better Horse
  • 101 Things to Do With Tofu
  • High Blood Pressure for Dummies
  • Pagan Every Day


A few books whose market may have become limited by recent events:

  • Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
  • The Case For Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office
  • Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
  • Ron Paul Speaks
  • How to Talk to a Liberal (if you must): The World According to Ann Coulter
  • The Bush Family Cookbook
  • The Magic of Peanut Butter


And then there are those that are just plain hard to categorize:

  • Seduced by Bacon
  • Pat Boone's America
  • The Best of Windows Vista
  • American Farm Tractor and Implement Dealerships
  • The Hooters Cookbook

By the way, these are all absolutely real, at least to the extent that they appeared in a catalog. I couldn't make this stuff up.