Strangely Specific Books

Sometimes I come across a book in the library while I’m browsing and wonder “How did the author think up the idea to write this book? It’s so specific!” Come on a journey with me as we find some of the most oddly specific topics covered in the library!

Get your headphones and grab your Walkman because Marc Masters will take you on ride exploring the ups and downs of the cassette tape in the book High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. From mixtapes to music history, learn about the musical format we all used to love! (Could anyone ever rewind the tape exactly to the beginning of their favorite song on the first try? I never could!)

And sticking with a nostalgic feel, Donovan Hohn went in search of bath toys lost at sea in his book Moby-Duck. Don’t be fooled, though. This book isn’t just about rubber duckies, but about beachcombers, global shipping, toy factories, and scientists. Sometimes, when an author researches oddly specific things, they don’t realize one simple question can turn into an entire book!

This list of strangely specific books would not be complete without a book by Simon Garfield. He finds interesting, niche topics and explains everything with aplomb, from time to maps to the color mauve. His book Just My Type is about fonts: why they are named what they are, their readability (a very important thing for a font to have), and their beauty. If you’ve never really noticed fonts before reading this book, you’ll definitely have a preference when you’re finished!

And now that you’re noticing all those interesting font types, have you thought aboutyour clothes lately? Or the fabric they’re made from? Victoria Finlay wrote Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World to tell us about the cloth we use and where it comes from. How do you make thread or weave that thread into cloth? How did different types of fabric get their names? The author travels around the world to find answers!

Bill Bryson, however, wanted to stay at home to write his book At Home. He explores his house in England and teaches us all about the little, specific things that surround us. Why do we have salt and pepper on the table instead of salt and cinnamon? How have we heated our homes in the past? What are the best measurements for stairs? Find answers to questions you never thought to ask about your house in this book.

But if you don’t want to stay at home, Ryan North has you covered in his book How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. Need to figure out how to get drinkable water? Or invent a written language? North will walk you through the basics of surviving and hopefully help you fix your time machine to get back to your correct timeline!

In the same vein of specificity, Randall Munroe wrote Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words. Munroe decided to write a book explaining how very complicated stuff works in the 1,000 most simple words in English. Do you want to learn about how microwaves work? Check out the pages on the food-heating radio boxes! Ever wonder about the Periodic Table? Look for the pages on the pieces that everything is made of!

Finally, as a librarian, I can’t forget to mention a book that is oddly specific about books! The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time by Keith Houston explains the history of books, where they came from and where they may be going in the future. We may have moved from scrolls to books, but you may be surprised at how books have evolved over the centuries!

These are my favorite strangely specific books! What are some oddly exact books I've missed?

Kimberley, Lawrence Branch