News You Can Bruise for 2008 April 5

Permalink [Comments] (3) Sat Apr 05 2008 22:40:

The back of this old Ace paperback has an order form for other Ace paperbacks, but in the ad copy the title is very slightly bolded (in a way that hasn't aged well with the paper) and put right in front of the author's surname. So you see intriguing titles like this: The last one being especially evocative. "In a city ruled by crime, I was Darkness LeGuin's left hand... and the one man she could never trust."

This is a simple enough trick that I'll probably hack up a script to generate them automatically and find some more. Sumana and I had a similar game where we looked at books in the bargain bin at the bookstore and tried to find adjacent books whose titles would fit together.

Update: Once again I save Brendan the trouble of coming up with his own character names.

Comments:

Posted by Andy H. at Sun Apr 06 2008 01:54

The Nielsen Haydens have a page full of a very similar thing, in case you haven't seen it. They call it The Man Who Melted Jack Dann.

Posted by Nathaniel at Sun Apr 06 2008 05:27

The traditional way to play this game is to wander around the bookshelves in one's apartment getting a crooked neck and giggling. Is the world ready for Jack Dann 2.0?

(Also fair warning, it's entirely possible for a group of friends to lose a whole afternoon to this and be unable-to-stopppp.)

Posted by Leonard at Sun Apr 06 2008 09:35

I knew this game sounded familiar. Both variants should be applied to all books, and the best one chosen. You'd never get "The Right Hand of Darkness LeGuin" with stock Jack Dann.

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