Friday, February 18, 2011

All You Can Do Is Laugh


The picture above is the cover of a current Harvard University Press catalog and has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than the fact that my husband brought it home from the store last night. He gets a lot of publisher’s catalogs, as he sells new books as well as used. Mostly I never lay eyes on any of these  publications, so I was surprised when he handed it to me.

“What does this remind you of?” he asked, pointing to the half-dead damsel on the front.

For a few seconds I stared at it, then burst out laughing. “Me! After a book sale.”

He flashed me his very best Sister Martha Mary smile and stuck his head in the refrigerator. “I thought of you the second I saw it.”

I could see where he might.

No, no -- don't panic. I am not set to embark on another meltdown about book sales even though I went to a so-called good one last Friday and endured a loud argu .....We all know that I hate them with a passion as purple as my new antique office chair, so the last thing I want to do on this bright, sunny Friday morning is revisit THAT topic.I bring up my husband’s little joke only because it reminded me of something else that’s funny -- or not -- depending on your frame of mind. Sometimes bookseller descriptions make me want to stick my head in the oven (and the oven's electric) and other times the very same ones send me into hysterics. For awhile now I have been collecting the best of the worst, so I thought I’d share some of them with you. Grab a cup of coffee and check out these winners.

“Last ten pages missing, but it’s still a pretty good book.”


“Book is really ugly but at least you can still read it”


“Pages are kind of yellow, but you have to expect it. It’s thirty years old!”


“It used to be better, but I dripped a little coffee on the cover.”


“Shows definite wear and may show some markings inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers!”


“I don’t know anything about this kind of stuff, but there are cool pictures of furnaces in it and they sure are fancy!“ (I bought this one and sold it for four times the asking price.)


“There’s no date, but I know it’s old. I got it from my grandmother.”


“Book is very good, so little more is needed to describe it. It’s also worth much more than this.”


“Book has been in my mom’s basement for a lot of years, so it has an old book smell to it."

"Book smells musty, but will be shipped from a pet-free, non-smoking home."


“Binding is a little broken, but for the collector it’s a REALLY GREAT antique book from 1958."


“The front cover is yellow in color. All pages are in tact.”


“I would call this new if it weren’t for the slight writing on the cover – only three letters though.”


“Pages are an antique off-white. Not really on the pages of yellowing pages. This quality and color of paper are in average, near above average, very near pristine condition. All is in a very superb, beautiful condition.”

“I don’t know why this has highlighting on it cause its just a story, but it does. It’s pink, but not as pink some pink markers.”


“The spine’s sorta flat at the top like it got run over.”


But the grand prize winner, both for honesty and economy of words, goes to this entry:

“Pictures don’t lie! It’s crappy looking.”

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