Camera Lucida is a distinctly odd volume to have attained, in the 30 years since its publication, such a canonical place in the study of photography.
Kurt Vonnegut's new book is an odd little volume that gathers 21 koanlike pieces he composed while serving, briefly, as a "reporter on the afterlife" for WNYC, a public radio station in New York.
"There is hardly a pioneer hut," he wrote, "in which the odd volume of Shakespeare cannot be found".
Taking their name from a handsome vintage bookplate Koch discovered a few years ago – alternative monikers including The Odd Volume and The Magpie's Bagpipe were also considered – the pair aims to create a booklovers' hub with a lively roster of readings and events.
He was a member of the Tavern Club and the Club of Odd Volumes, amongst others.
Today a few kiosks in Paris, which all peddle the same glossy posters of semi-naked models advertising magazine articles about human sexuality, proffer odd volumes by Sartre or Habermas to court American tourists.
For something in the $90 to $125 range, you can't do better than the 19th-century plates and illustrations that dealers cut out of odd volumes of Harper's Weekly and similar titles.
Sojourning in a log cabin somewhere on the frontier, Tocqueville later admitted he had whiled away a few hours reading Shakespeare's Henry V. "There is scarcely a pioneer's hut," he casually remarked in the book he compiled from the journey, Democracy in America, "where one does not encounter some odd volumes of Shakespeare".
While the idea of cutting thinning hair may seem like an odd way to add volume, the fact is that the right cut will make the hair look thicker.
Talk: The world's most exhaustive collection of books relating to tobacco, 5 thousand-odd volumes, gathered by a local tobacco magnate named George Arents and now valued at more than $200,000, is now housed in the N.Y.
