A Collection of Literary Trivia

* 'A Boke of Fishing with hooke and Line, A Boke of Engines and Traps to take Polecats, Buzzards, Rats, Mice and all other Kinds of Vermine and Beasts whatsoever' - (1600)
* 'A Quip for an upstart Courtier, or, a quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches, &c. (1592)
* 'A Check, or Reproof of Mr Howlet's untimely screeching in her Majesty's Ear' - (1581)
* 'The Unconscious Significance of Hair' - George Berg 1951
* 'Truncheons: Their Romance and Reality' - Erland Clark 1935
* 'The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rims' - Reginald Gates & P.N Bhaduri (n.d)
* 'Why People Move' - Jorge Balan (Ed.) 1981
* 'A Toddler's Guide to the Rubber Industry' - D.Lowe 1947
* 'Violence as Communication' - Alex Schmid & Janny De Graaf 1982
* ' The Pleasures of the Torture Chamber' - John Swain 1931
* 'I Knew 3000 Lunatics' - Victor Small 1935
* 'How to Boil Water in a Paper Bag' - Anon. 1891
* 'Let's Make Some Undies' - Marion Hall 1954
* 'Teach Yourself Alcoholism' - Meier Glatt 1975
* 'Build Your Own Hindenburg' - Alan Rose 1983
* 'Tosser, Gunman' - Frank Carr 1939
* 'Grow Your Own Hair' - Ron MacLaren 1947
* 'The Magic of Telephone Evangelism' - Harold Metcalf 1967
* 'The Bright Side Of Prison Life' - Captain S.A. Swiggert 1897
* 'Old Age: Its Cause And Prevention' - Sanford Bennett 1912
* 'Would Christ Belong to a Labor Union' - Rev. Cortland Myers 1900
* 'The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Terrier' - Sewell Collins 1926

Readers may be divided into 4 classes:

1)    Sponges, who absorb all they read and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied.

2)    Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.

3)    Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.

4)    Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

      Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

* Gotobed on Darts - Jabez Gottobed 

[Darts:Fifty Ways To Play The Game, Cambridge: Oleander, 1980]

* Watts on the Mind - Isaac Wattts [The Improvement Of The Mind, J. Brackstone, 1741]

* Withering's Botany - William WWithering [A Botanical Arrangement of British Plants, M.Swinney, 1776]

* Ball on the Rectum - Sir Charlles Bent Ball [The Rectum, Hodder & Stoughton, 1908]

* Hogg on Sheep - James Hogg [The Shepherd's Guide, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1807]

Remember to never split an infinitive. 
The passive voice should never be used. 
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects. 
Proofread carefully to see if you words out. 
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. 
A writer must not shift your point of view. 
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! 
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. 
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. 
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. 
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. 
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. 
Always pick on the correct idiom. 
The adverb always follows the verb. 
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

- William Safire's rules for writers

(Found on the back of A Catalogue of Americana, published by the Arthur H. Clark Company in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912.)

"Never allow your husband to go in for biblio - philandering," said the wife of a confirmed bibliophile to a group of sympathetic women who were having tea with her.
"If a man drinks or gambles you may be able to reform him, but you can't do anything with a bibliomaniac, and a collection of rare books can make more trouble in a family than half a dozen children."
She was joking, and everybody laughed, but she was telling the truth, says the New York Sun. The wives of bibliomaniacs haven't received half the consideration and sympathy they deserve. The wife of an artist has some compensations. She has a rival in art, but her husband does try to sell his precious pictures and she shares profits. The wife of a bibliomaniac has no such consolation. Her husband never sells. He only buys; and if she economizes in clothes and opera tickets, she only makes it possible for her husband to come home some evening hugging a long-coveted volume and looking sheepish but triumphant.
The apologetic manner of the man who comes home at four in the morning, after a night at the club, isn't a circumstance to the cringing guilt of the bibliomaniac who faces his wife with a consciousness that in his overcoat pocket is a copy of Keats which was a bargain, but which makes impossible that sable collar she has been talking about." 

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read- Groucho Marx

"I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?"- Ronnie Shakes

"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation." - George Benard Shaw

"Someone's boring me. I think it's me." - Dylan Thomas

Umberto Ecoon why he wrote the novel "The Name of the Rose."- "I felt like poisoning a monk."
"Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?" - Karl Kraus

"The man who does not read good books is at no advantage over the man that can`t read them." - Mark Twain

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector." - Ernest Hemingway<

"I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars."
- Fred Allen

"Your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry, and creators of odd volumes."- Charles Lamb

"Books are hindrances to persisting stupidity"- Spanish Proverb

"A book is a mirror, if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to peer out." - Georg Lichtenberg>

"Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written." - Henry Thoreau<

"The reading of all good book is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries." - Rene Descarte

It was Balzac's belief that in order to write a great book it was necessary for him to be chaste. So whenever he bedded a woman, he whispered to himself, 'There goes another masterpiece.'

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous" - Robert Benchley

"I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind" - James Boswell.

"I conceived at least one great love in my life, of which I was always the object" - Albert Camus

"I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius" - Truman Capote

"I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers" - Frank Harris

"Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco" - Emile Zola.