The Insult and Curse Book

I love books filled with useless bits of information, so I was ecstatic to find  Weird Wills and Eccentric Last Wishes from a bargain bin, and I set about to collecting the rest of Michelle Lovric’s trivia books. So far, I’ve gotten Deadlier than the Male,How to Insult, Abuse and Insinuate in Classical Latin and Eccentric Epitaphs.

The latest addition to my Michelle Lovric collection is The Insult and Curse Book, a compilation of colorful statements that will probably come in handy whenever I’m in a bad mood.

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Halloween Roundup!

Halloween’s coming up, so I’ve been pulling down the scary reads from my TBR shelves. I’ve been alternating novels and picture books since the month started (and Pillars of the Earth in between!), and I’m having a lot of fun scaring myself with these Superhero costumes.

Here’s a (mostly) picture book roundup, with the following books: Faust, The Dark Goodbye, The Diary of Victor Frankenstein, Les Fantomes a la Cave, The Book that Eats People, The Wolves in the Walls, Kate Culhane: A Ghost Story, Eccentric Epitaphs, and The Canterville Ghost, books #139-147 for 2010.

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Salem ac Leporem (Naughty but Nice)

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Here’s another book you’re sure to get a laugh out of: How to Insult, Abuse and Insinuate in Classical Latin by Michelle Lovric and Nikiforos Doxiadis Mardas.

I found this book while randomly browsing on BookMooch and thought it might come in handy for those situations that just call for the choicest words.

For instance, when your credit card company calls you to follow up on your latest payment, instead of muttering “Monkey-faced money-lender!” you could exclaim its Latin equivalent and sound so much better  “Cercopithece Faenerator!”

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Of weird wills and dangerously witty quotes

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The trivia freak in me  always finds it hard to resist novelty books, because I get my fix of perfectly useless information, and enjoy some eye candy at the same time.

Last year, as I was browsing through the bargain bins (as usual), I discovered Michelle Lovric, who’s created over a hundred illustrated novelty books! I actually recognized the author because I like novels set in Venice, and I have her novel, The Remedy, in my TBR. I bought her book, Weird Wills, for P45, and decided to search for more of her books on BookMooch, which has yielded another: Deadlier than the Male, which I mooched from abroad. Both are beautiful hardbound books that showcase Regency and Victorian etchings like the ones in the oracle I reviewed last April.

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