“I don’t care what they do with my book so long as the flippin check clears”*…
What do Ray Bradbury, Madeleine L’Engle, Arthur Hailey, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Salvador Dali and Dick Cheney’s wife have in common? They all appear on the annual BookFinder.com list of the top 100 most searched for out-of-print books.
As usual, the list is topped by Madonna and her famous spiral-bound Sex photo-book, which is still in demand 22 years after its publication. Putting aside the pop star and her sexual antics with Naomi Campbell and Vanilla Ice, the list offers an interesting snapshot of American culture, including guns (four books), needlework (five), food (three) and art (six). The gun-related books include an example of pro-gun lobby fiction called Unintended Consequences by John Ross – a firearms enthusiast who, according to his website, “fires upwards of 20,000 rounds of ammunition per year.” Stephen King has four titles on the list, including Rage, which will never be brought back into print as it concerns school shootings…
See the full list, and read more background at “The top 100 most searched for out-of-print books in 2013.”
(Image above from The Afronauts, a photography book by Cristina de Middel that reimagines the bizarre true story of the 1964 Zambian space program.)
* Chuck Palahniuk
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As we adopt orphan books, we might send masterly birthday greetings to Lewis Allan “Lou” Reed; he was born on this date in 1942. A musician, singer, and songwriter, Reed had a successful solo career, landing two entries on Rolling Stone‘s list if “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” But his biggest impact may have come in his first gig, as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground. The band’s influence on rock, art rock and punk was memorably captured in Brian Eno’s observation that although the first Velvet Underground album may have sold only 30,000 copies in its first few years, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
