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Day 13: A fictional book
Dec. 15th, 2009 05:04 pmI skipped the past three days of this meme because I don't like posting pictures of me on the internet.
My favorite fictional book is probably The Book of Sand from Jorge Luis Borges's short story of the same name.
It can be basically seen as the infinite version of The Voynich Manuscript, which I think is awesome, or as a even more cruel version of The Codex Seraphinianus.
The Codex (Not gonna lie, I bought a copy) is like an encyclopedia of an alien world, written in a legible but incomprehensible script but unlike the Voynich manuscript it has an actual living author who made that book intentionally to vex people forever. With the Voynich manuscript - which looks a bit like a book about herbology and astronomy (maybe, because it also makes little sense and is written in an incomprehensible script) - no one knows who to blame and what their reasoning was.
The Book of Sand is a book that has no beginning and no ending. (It's impossible to get to the first or last page.) And every time you open it, you find a new page. You'll never find one you've seen before again. The script is undecipherable, the language incomprehensible and ever so often you'll see a new illustration. So basically the internet in a nutshell.
My second favorite fictional book is probably Douglas Adams' Encyclopedia Galactica just for the mere idea of it. My third is probably everything from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, proving that most jokes are really older than dirt. (I really wish Folk Dances for Heretics was real though.)
My favorite fictional book is probably The Book of Sand from Jorge Luis Borges's short story of the same name.
It can be basically seen as the infinite version of The Voynich Manuscript, which I think is awesome, or as a even more cruel version of The Codex Seraphinianus.
The Codex (Not gonna lie, I bought a copy) is like an encyclopedia of an alien world, written in a legible but incomprehensible script but unlike the Voynich manuscript it has an actual living author who made that book intentionally to vex people forever. With the Voynich manuscript - which looks a bit like a book about herbology and astronomy (maybe, because it also makes little sense and is written in an incomprehensible script) - no one knows who to blame and what their reasoning was.
The Book of Sand is a book that has no beginning and no ending. (It's impossible to get to the first or last page.) And every time you open it, you find a new page. You'll never find one you've seen before again. The script is undecipherable, the language incomprehensible and ever so often you'll see a new illustration. So basically the internet in a nutshell.
My second favorite fictional book is probably Douglas Adams' Encyclopedia Galactica just for the mere idea of it. My third is probably everything from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, proving that most jokes are really older than dirt. (I really wish Folk Dances for Heretics was real though.)