Celebration!

My book has an ISBN!

This goes some way towards consoling me for jaw pain...

Swimwear, 1996

At the Guardian, a very lovely piece by Robert Macfarlane about serving as his friend Roger Deakin's literary executor (I blogged about Deakin's Waterlog here). The archive has found a home at the University of East Anglia, in "23 linear metres of files and a 54-page catalogue":

I read the catalogue with trepidation, anxious at the thought of seeing Roger's life reduced to a data-set. But it turned out to be a wonderful document: an accidental epic prose-poem of his life, or a dendrological cross-section of his mind. File RD/TW/5/1/7, for instance, contains entries for: "Calvados; bristlecone pines; dachas; diving; jungle boys and land girls; pixies; protestors; skylarks; timber frame houses" – along with about 70 others: a zany haberdashery of Roger's interests. Cryptic entries abound: "The Oriental Rat Flea" or "Nudged by Languid Mullet". File RD/WLOG/1/1/2 contains "Complete MS of Waterlog with corrections. (With a strong fishy smell)".

Stunt nematodes

Strange Library of Congress subject headings (via Awful Library Books).

Herter’s Famous No. 153 Saskatchewan Goose Call

Paul Collins on oddball George Leonard Herter:

His enchantingly bombastic catalogs included listings for more than a dozen of his self-published works, bound in metallic silver and gold covers, and bearing titles like “How to Get Out of the Rat Race and Live on $10 a Month” — which apparently involves moving to Alaska and zapping up fresh fish by running two car batteries into a stream’s shallows. (If you don’t have batteries, “drop 10 pounds of quicklime” upstream.)

Bonus link: the patent for Herter's Fish Calling Device.