Turning People On

Turning People On
How to be an Ecouraging Person
Losoncy
1977

Note the clever title? Think about this.  Do you really want to go around and “turn people on”?  Marketed as an alternative to turning on with drugs or alcohol or sex, this book suggests using encouragement.  I wasn’t quite clear what we are supposed to encourage though.  Chapter after chapter is filled with time honored 70’s speak.  Based on Freud devotee Alfred Adler, this book can make you an encouraging person in just a few chapters.  So I think I will go and read a few chapters to Holly and encourage her to …. oh I don’t know … maybe give me money?  Quit bugging me about work stuff?  Count me in!

Mary

Hog Tie Your Friends and Family

Fun with String
Leeming
1940

Anonymous Submitter: ”Dover republished this in the seventies.  We were horrified by the illustrations. Thankfully the neck and knee rope tie is not illustrated.  These are intended to be magic tricks for children.  I immediately envisioned a big brother taking his little sister to play.
“Joey, where are you taking Amy?”
“To play, Mother. I just learned some new games FROM A BOOK.”
“Well, okay then.”

I really do have an overactive imagination.

Holly: Ooh, the decapitation rope trick!  If I’d only known of this when I was a child.  My sister would have shown me more respect, I can tell you!

Loving your teenager

How to Really Love Your Teenager
Campbell
1982

Thanks to anonymous submitter for this title.  This title creeped me out when I first read it.  Emphasis on “really” made me do a double take.  Maybe I watch too much television and assume the worst.   

Okay, so the cover is dated, but the message isn’t too bad.  Be honest, if they had stuck a goth-looking kid sneering at his parents instead of  a ”Leave it to Beaver” kid on the front, I might think that this book had something to say.  This kid looks like the only rebelling he has done is to say he wanted to go to the Saturday Mass instead of get up early on Sunday morning.

Geared to parents, this book talks about trouble in the home and the effects on teens.  Decent message but dated in the examples.  Not truly “awful,” but so much better stuff is available.  Again, parenting teens is a topic that I consider “unattainable knowledge.” You can read all the books you want , but at the end of the day, if your kid is still alive, you did a good job.

Reader Advisory BONUS:

One of my particular favorites in our parenting collection is the following title:

Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall:  A Parent’s Guide to the New Teenager
by Anthony Wolf.

Every parent I have ever handed this book has always laughed and immediately felt better.

Looking forward to empty-nest syndrome,

Mary

Things We Do for Beauty

Coping with Beauty, Fitness, and Fashion: A Girl’s Guide
Zeldis
1987

Anonymous Submitter: “Though this is a mere twenty plus years old, I suspect it was very lightly updated from a much older text.  It mourns the lack of women wearing hats, suggests that “just for show gloves are making a real fashion comeback”, a la Madonna I assume. Cosmetic surgery is kind of considered with lots of warnings. Hard core diamond selection is covered.

I copied the underwear pages for you because we liked those the best.”

Holly: What?  No thong?  Useless.    Those bloomer-looking poofy things are frightening.  This is outdated, folks.

Clowns in the New Year?

Holidays and Festivals: New Year
Blackwood
1987

Anonymous Submitter: “Every single picture in this book is better than the cover picture. Worse yet, there is no mention of clown skiing anywhere in the text.  Everyone at work let out a little sound of terror when viewing the clowns. I had to turn the cover upside down to write this email.”

Holly: Mary, avert your eyes.  (She has a bit of a clown phobia.  Her new co-worker left a severed clown head on her desk recently, which I LOVE!)  What do these clowns have to do with New Year?  What if someone new to the U.S. picked up this book to find out how Americans celebrate the New Year, and then showed up to a party decked out like a clown?

ALB on Jimmy Kimmel Live

In case you missed it, here’s the link to Mary and I on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show last Wednesday.  We had such a great time being on the show!  We give a huge thank you to Jimmy Kimmel and his staff for a great experience.

Bring on the oblivion

The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs
Quaaludes: The Quest for Oblivion
Snyder
1985

I snagged this from a teen section.  Don’t you just love the creepy cover?  I am not even sure what to say.  I wonder if today’s teens are still seduced by this quest for oblivion.  The content of this book is heavy on charts, graphs and icky black and white photos of  people doing a variety of drugs.  Interestingly, none of the pictures feature quaalude abuse.  I get the feeling that they slapped quaaludes on the front of a generic “drugs are bad”  book.  Of course drug information is probably suspect after 5 years, so I am going to go out on limb and suggest that perhaps this book’s time has come and gone.   Weed it, please!

Mary

Getting things done

Tested Secretarial Techniques for Getting Things Done
Simpson
1973

Chapters 4 and 7 look promising, but once again, this is just old.   Chapter 5 is all about getting a memo of appreciation from the boss which I guess is better than a raise or bonus.  I wonder if the boss will make you type up your own memo of appreciation.

Holly

Dictate this!

Applied Secretarial Practice
Gregg
1968

Typewriters?  Dictation?  “The Scrubbed and Shining Look”?  I can see certain university libraries hanging on to a copy of this for historical purposes.  Gregg is, after all, the guru of all things secretarial.  I can see in WorldCat that several public libraries also own this book.  Why on earth would your basic, community library need this book?  I guess it does have some pretty groovy pictures, so there is that…

(Sorry the table of contents is hard to read – this is the best I could do with the image submitted.)

Holly

Twirl this!

Baton Twirling
The Fundamentals of  an Art and a Skill
Atwater
1969

Thanks to an anonymous submitter.  Love the boots!  Do people still twirl the baton?  I can’t remember the last time I saw someone do this.   Maybe we should be saving this one.  Any baton people out there want to give us the inside track on the art of the twirl?

Mary