I just spent the last few minutes searching for an article from the Journal of Pediatric Surgery. When I finally found it, I burst out laughing at the title: “Minimally invasive management of bile leaks after blunt liver trauma in children.” I don’t wish pain or suffering on most children. Really, I don’t. It’s just that for some reason that title really tickled me. In an Edward Gorey kind of way, I guess.
I’m really hoping to preserve the original covers for this book about World War I combat aviation. 
My copy of Simone de Beavoir’s classic feminist text was desperately in need of a new binding. (The old one was purple, so… you know.) I’ve removed the old binding and cleaned the spine, but now I have to choose paper and cloth and design a new binding. That part is really difficult for me, so it may be a while before I post pictures of the finished product.
A smattering of blank journals:
Coptic binding
Marc Chagall cover
cloth corners
made endpapers
hand-sewn headbands
The New Milton Cross’ Complete Stories of the Great Operas. This book belonged to my Great Aunt Adelle, and it was in pretty good shape until a dog gnawed on it. I decided to rebind it.
I brought home this stack of books from a library sale a couple of months ago with the intention of practicing some book repair. I’ve started on a couple of them, and I’ll try to upload the finished results later in the weekend. My favorite part of the whole process is taking the old and damaged books apart and cleaning the spine. It’s super messy which, for a mess-aphobe like myself, is incredibly liberating. Controlled mess = crazy good time. 
Journal of Poetry Therapy, published since 1987 by Human Sciences Press in New York.
A sampling of the article titles to be found in Journal of Poetry Therapy:
“Let mother earth wrap her arms around you: The use of poetry and nature for emotional healing.”
“Sister Stroke: The story, the poem, the dance.”
“SOULSPEAK: The use of ancient oral poetry forms in therapy.”
And, of course, a poetry journal wouldn’t be complete without some therapeutic poetry:
“and I a white Darth Vader
shorn of my blackened shellacked soul,
years of torment slivered away.”
Can you feel the healing? Can you heal the feeling?
Indian Coconut Journal. seriously? An entire journal about coconuts…? Published monthly by the Coconut Development Board of India since 1977… Seriously. Even more serious: there’s actually a subject heading in the catalog for Coconut Periodicals. In addition to the Indian Coconut Journal there is the supplemental Coconut Bulletin issued by the Directorate of Coconut Development in India. wow.
The medieval leper and his northern heirs, by Peter Richards.
Apparently meant to be taken seriously as a medical history book, but come on! That sounds like some kind of graphic novel chronicling the many generations of lepers and knights and warlocks.
There are a lot of languages in this world (easy for us Americans to forget, I know) and a good number of the print materials in the library are completely, um, foreign to me for this reason. I do okay with French, Italian and Spanish… German, not so much. (At least I recognize the alphabet.) Then there is a massive collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials at the library. Also a lot of materials in Slavic languages, and then there’s the stuff in Arabic and Hebrew. The bibliographic records for these non-Roman materials look like a crazy person wrote them, because they’re basically transcribed phonetically and when there’s sounds or accents that can’t be translated, they just throw in some question marks… like this:
Petr Eben ; sedm zamys?leni´ nad z?ivotem a di´lem
When I get a request for one of these crazy quizzical titles, I like to guess what it might be about: Russian basketball players? Recipes for cabbage and pork? Gardening tips? I’m always wrong. I know that I’m wrong because once I pull up the bibliographic record in the catalog, I can look at the subject headings and see what the book is really about. Take this one for instance:
Anatomie der Schagsleber im babylonischen Leberorakel: eine makroskopisch-analytische Studie by Rosmarie Leiderer.
I recognized a few words so I was thinking it was probably a hum-drum anatomy book… Imagine my delight when I saw the subject headings:
Oracles, Babylonian
Liver– Miscellanea
Sheep– Miscellanea
HOly miscellaneous sheep and liver oracle!!! Is this book about animal sacrifice? Ancient Babylonian fortunetelling? This is the greatest book I’ve ever seen!
I wish that I could end this entry by saying how my exposure to the many splendid languages of the world inspires me to sit down and commit a few to memory… but it’s just not true! Not knowing is too much fun!
