Other people's weirdness

Now that we have a tag mirror to see what other people have tagged your books, what's the weirdest tag/book combination you've come across.

I don't own any computing books at all, but have eight works tagged "operating systems" They've only been given that tag once, presumably by the same person - but to me its a weird selection to tag that. It includes 4 (out of many) maps and three novels.

My tag mirror looks just like my tag cloud. Oh well.

5 people tagged The Hobbit with chinese.

Do you actually see "operating systems"? I just get "os" in your mirror, so probably Ordnance Survey for the maps, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean for the others.

I'm quite curious why someone tagged Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 'civil war'.

Mine looks similar to my tag cloud, but there are some interesting differences. I'm surprised at the size of 'german' in my mirror, for one, though I'm sure it's because a lot of the books have been translated into German.

the Dilbert Principle was tagged 39 times with management, and all the rest of my dilberts had Management as well. The question is, does it mean 'These are good management books' or 'These remind me of my managers'?

I wonder if os had been combined with operating systems and someone separated them between your two posts.

#6 is right. I was exploring the tags and saw OS combined into the operating systems tag and seperated it.

Curiously, Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio have both been tagged "romance", but the Paradiso has not.

My tag mirror shows a fairly large tag for Ireland but, when I look at it, I see that all of my Jane Austen's have been tagged Ireland. That makes me curious. Did they read them in Ireland or keep them at a house in Ireland? Similarly, Australia showed up larger than I expected and when I looked at that I see that 3 people have tagged Bill Bryson's Lost Continent as Australia.
It's interesting to see how people have tagged things but I want to know why!

I was intrigued to see the alternate history tag in my tag mirror and I was surprised to see that other people have used that tag on the Deryni books. Doesn't alternate history as a genre need to intersect with real history at some point? And if Footfall can be tagged that way then nearly any science fiction book can as well.

And two people tagged The Temple and the Lodge as alternate history, which to them I guess means history that isn't mainstream.

The adult tag is kind of a strange mish-mash. In my tag mirror it includes such works as The Hobbit, The Princess Bride, and Watership Down by which I presume some people are trying to counteract the presumption that these are children's books. On the other hand other books with this tag are The Prince of Tides, Anna Karenina and Inorganic Chemistry which no one would think are books for children. But there are hundreds of other books in my library that aren't children's books, why aren't they tagged adult?

I've found a bunch of novels (mostly fantasy) tagged bce I'm sure its an abrevitation for something, just not sure what. And then a presumably personal tag b5 has slipped into the mix, the tag page is all babylon 5 books, but none of mine are. It doesn't seem to be combined with anything either. They are all only 1 tag, so maybe the sums needs tweaking a bit as to what displays on the mirror.

>12 reading_fox:
Yesterday the tags b5 and Babylon5 were combined. They're not anymore.

I have books tagged "os" - what is that?

Operating System? Ordnance Survey?

BCE is common book talk for Book Club Edition.

I also have the os tag for a bunch of related-looking books--maybe someone's initials? a location? O s*** I can't believe I bought this books?

I also have books tagged "ideas". Anyone ever seen a book without ideas?

#16 - that'll be it, thanks

#15 OS was combined with Operating system, it isn't as of yesterday and has dropped out of my mirror, which should say something about how the calculations are done. But I'm not sure what.

Tag "Made into a movie" applied to Salmon of doubt - really I don't think so, I'm only aware of one of Adams' works having a movie
Also applied into A brief history of time Just how dull would that be, And Stephen doens't have any movies to his credit surely?

BCE is also "Before the Christian Era," used for dates.

Actually it means "Before the Common Era", and the whole point was to make our calendar religion-neutral :) I don't think it worked.

And CE instead of AD (i.e., Common Era, instead of Anno Domini -- in the year of "our" lord -- not everybody's lord).

It seems one person thinks that History of art: A survey of the major visual arts from the dawn of history to the present day is an autobiography.

Today I was looking up a book in LT to lend to a friend, and was so startled to spot the tag tigers that for a moment I thought that someone had hacked my catalogue. I had completely forgotten that I had applied the tags small boys and tigers to Calvin and Hobbes. I guess the logic was, you know, if you're looking for books about small boys and/or tigers, you'll definitely want this one. That'll teach me to tag while sipping sake...

Someone had tagged my Human Anatomy textbook 'anasthesia'. I looked at in bemusement for a bit before remembering that it was a very, very boring text. I'll probably forever wonder if that's what they were actually getting at.

#23 They may be referring to the sheer size of it and the results of its impact on the cranium.

Nah.

In my mirror most everything looks fairly normal except a couple of people thinking that the Wild Card series of books edited by George R. R. Martin are comics.

#24, another good interpretation!

#23, IIRC, there was a short-lived Wild Cards comic series or graphic novel... I wonder if that was it...?

#17, A brief history of time has indeed been made in to a movie. I think I have even seen it and it wasn't boring at all. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103882/

I listed some of my favorite findings in this thread http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=18817 , message #136, but I think I'll copy it over here as it seems to fit better to this discussion thread.

This is simply fascinating! The first one on my list of “adult” is – The Hobbit. War and Peace 4 is about agriculture. Animal farm, Little Prince, The Calvin and Hobbes tenth anniversary book, War and peace, Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) by Walter Bosing, Origin of Species, Heart of Darkness and Slapstick or Lonesome no more are autobiographies. The Annotated Alice, Name of the Rose, Dracula and Frankenstein are biographies, as well as 1984 and The Screwtape letters. Breakfast of champions is a biology book. Decamerone is about christianity. The Prince by Macchiavelli and Cryptonomicon are comedies. I must be deeply indoctrinated, as I haven't noticed that the classical Swedish crime story series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is all about communism. I’m happy to know people have noticed that The Idiot and Bhagavad-gita are fantasy. However, I wasn’t aware that Animal farm is folklore. I was never any good in geography, but now I know that Lolita and The Magician’s Nephew and The Hobbit are happening in Ireland. It’s nice to know that The Lord of the rings and Secret garden are memoirs. Of course, The Stranger by Camus and Silmarillion are about music. The Da Vinci Code seems to be situated in New York, as well as Brothers Karamazov. Oh, and I’m happy to know that Les Misérables is a satire. And finally, Canterbury stories by Chaucer, The DaVinci Code, Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse five and The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G Wells present nicely the “young adult” genre.

I think the juvenile tag is funny. The Bell Jar, anyone?

(qu1d: I love the Sjöwall/Wahlöö communism tagging!)

Also, Sense and Sensibility has been tagged 'angst' by someone. I wonder what he/she thought of Persuasion!

Plato's Republic is 'queer'.

I think my favourite might be the 'trivia' tag someone slapped on Dracula. Most classics should be reduced to mere trivia, after all!

The hilarity of geographic placement is marred by the fact that people might tag their books for location - this could explain the Brothers Karamazov's stint in New York.

This is fun. Puzzling things in my tag mirror:

- someone has tagged No Logo by Naomi Klein with "dogs";
- three of my Terry Pratchett books have the tag "hardboiled", as does Crime and Punishment;
- Life of Pi is apparently a "how-to" book;
- The Red and the Black is "russian literature";
- I haven't read The Historian yet, but nothing in the cover blurb leads me to believe that it features Buffy;
- I must re-read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to see if I can find the zombies!

Some of the tags have shown me some interesting facts about my library. I would never have guessed that I have 22 books which feature talking animals. And I didn't realise I had several books featuring oulipo.

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is apparently "self-help" :-)

#29, I've noticed the 'hardboiled' tags on Discworld. I think they see Vimes that way... guess I can understand it though it makes me chuckle too. As for The Historian, maybe they thought that the protagonist should have hired Buffy instead ;-)

My newest addition to the list:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is tagged 'piano'. Maybe they've composed a suite in honor of the book.

Maybe they have the book on the shelf atop the piano?

#3, what's odd about that? They probably own the Chinese translation (and speak English as well, or they wouldn't have tagged it as such).

lorax: I agree, I've tagged quite a few Harry Potters German/Italian/Spanish, &c, as I seem to own them in every bizarre translation known to man.

Chamekke: from reading his introduction, Robert Burton certainly considered the writing of it 'self=help'! :)

Wuthering heights is a vampire book!

I guess my personal weirdness is that I have a few books tagged 'gender' and 'feminism' because I've used them for research purposes. One of them is the Sex and the City : kiss and tell book; perhaps not a traditional 'feminism' choice!

Some of the weirdnesses from my tag mirror:

Someone tagged The Diary of Anne Frank as "sex."
Moby Dick is tagged as "bible." So is The Koran; sacred text confusion?
Who knew Night by Elie Wiesel, the Ender books by Orson Scott Card, and The 9/11 Report were about Chicago? (I'm guessing someone must have read them in Chicago, or be keeping them in Chicago.)
All my Animorphs books are tagged as "Virginia."
Little Women is tagged "dogs."
All seven Harry Potter books are tagged "satire" and "vampires."
Anguished English by Richard Lederer, a collection of funny mistakes people have made with the English language, is apparently a dictionary!
Romeo and Juliet is tagged "special education."

#32> Maybe they have the book on the shelf atop the piano?

That's not nearly as fun :)

#39, now I'm wondering what a religion with Moby Dick as its holy text would be like...

LOL You all have way more interesting and funny ones then I do!!

I think the weirdest one I've come across is "smiley", and for the life of me I cannot figure out what it means (unless it actually means that the books made the person smile??).

Heather

Heather19: What book? =)

(Tag used 599 times by 31 users. Maybe it's a novel by John le Carré, or one in his style? Espionage? Random guesses!)

Robert Burton did write the Anatomy to alleviate his own melancholy inclinations

Anna Karenina is "Chick Lit", and so is The Family Markowitz. Anna Karenina is (un?)fortunetely also "Culture". Elements of Style also has this double nature, some chick lit that make us look somehow cultivated. When will French fries that make us lose weight be invented?

Atonement is "9/11". Is this tage does not refer to the date the book was read, I am at loss offering an explanation.

Someone's tagged several of Jasper Fforde's books with "art history" (I hope a single person was responsible for all instances). Also so tagged are Bulfinch's Mythology and The Chicago Manual of Style.

Someone's tagged The Mayor of Casterbridge with "12th century"!

I'll keep looking.

A pair of books tagged "travel guide": Dava Sobel's Longitude (which certainly isn't a guide to anything) and Bernard Meehan's The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin (which is about something one might have to travel to see, but can't by any strech be called a travel guide).

And a trio tagged "color": the DVD of Amelie, Ann Budd's Getting Started Knitting Socks, and Dickens's Nicholas Nickelby (the last of which I admit I haven't read, but it's been given this odball only once).

I have to confess that I am currently guilty of weird tagging. The Diary of Anne Frank is currently labeled in my library "New England,""Renard," (Fox) "Finland,"and "Recipes." "Recipes" could work, as Anne Frank describes the making of strawberry jam in the last pages of her journal, but tagging her diary as a recipe book is not only weird, but sinister.

Why these bizarro tags? I have just discovered the "power edit" feature for tagging (I am a late bloomer...), but I forgot to uncheck the Anne Frank Diary before tagging another book, ah! I offer this explanation for some of the weird tags mentioned on this thread.

I will leave my bizarre tags for a while, hoping that at least some people can have fun discovering my crazy tagging, and wondering what kind of dufus I am...

>48 veryveryip:
Your bizarre tags wouldn't happen to include "biology" on Coming of Age in the Milky Way, would they? Or "austen" on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? or "how-to" on The Metamorphoses of Ovid?

Not mine, unfortunately, because they are quite funny. "How To" for The Metamorphosis of Ovid is downright poetic...

This didn't come up in my tag cloud but I did come across someone's tag the other day of "non-fiction fiction". wth???

OK, so it's probably a typo... surely! But it made me chuckle.

It could mean fiction written in the style of non-fiction, like newspaper reports for example.

ETA: After looking at the two books marked this way it seems to mean fiction written about a real event.

Ah, ok. So it's.... fiction.

I still think it's weird, but hey, each to their own tags. Mine certainly aren't perfect! :)

Christian fiction - has been applied to Lord of the Rings ? and Die Trying by Lee Child, and Well of lost plots by Jasper fforde.

And in a simialr vein Snow Crash, the cult cyberpunk, internet counterculture novel, has been tagged "christianity".

?! people are strange.

This may shed some light on the Snow Crash / Christianity angle. The book has quite a bit to say about religion, though not so much about Christianity specifically.

I randomly came across the book, An Englishman Abroad while tidying up Philip Ball's author page. I love that someone has tagged it: "something to do with men kicking balls around". Ha!

On a talk page a while back there was also some talk of someone who tagged a book "acquired in strange circumstances" - or something to that effect. Wish I could find it again!

Granted, this is not quite a tag mirror result because I don't have it in my library. But this came up in my recommendations as filtered by everyone's tags. Under "art history" I found Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom a book on tarot reading that someone has indeed tagged "art history".

>47 AnnaClaire:

"Color" for "Amélie" makes sense, at least, if you wanted to tag movies with unusual or very conscious color choices.

>56 mountebank:

Try "aquired in weird circumstances" (with the typo and everything)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is tagged "Austen" once -- which is as many times as has First Among Sequels. For the latter book, the tag makes sense (as it involves one of Jane's more famous works). But how this tag got associated with a Harry Potter book, I have no idea.

Wasn't Austen's Emma a major influence, inspiration, model, or whatsit, for the Harry Potter books?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_influences_and_analogues#Emma

I think calling Emma a "major" influence is, shall we say, an overstatement. I really don't see anything Emma-ish in any of the books*, or I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place.




* The movies are a different story, but only because of a few casting choices.

Perhaps it was a typo and the person meant Austin (i.e. it's located at their Austin residence).

I won't rule that out (as far as I'm concerned, it's indeed a lot more plausible). But I'd place that kind of thing in the broader category of "spelling mistake", rather than in "typo" -- the I and E keys aren't even typed by the same hand.

No, I don't see anything Emma-ish or austenesque about HBP either. But someone might conceivably be interested in the less direct, less visible sort of literary influences, and find them important enough to tag certain books that way.

I more often see Austen misspelled as Austin than vice versa, but then I don't read about Austin a lot.

64>

Indeed, "Jane Austin" is a common enough error that people have constructed an entire fictional author by that name, as a parody. (Note: the two linked words go to different places.)

This wouldn't happen to be the same lady who ghostwrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

All right, that made no sense at all. I must be tired.

Some poetic soul found Wittgenstein's Tractatus "funny".

Chesterton's Orthodoxy is about "self improvement", or perhaps reading it was meant to have that result.

Dracula has been tagged with "violin". I'm stumped.

Treasure Island is an "encyclopedia". So is the Bible.

Oh, and Matilda is, or contains, "advice". Should I listen?

(stopped editing previous post, too many touchstones)

I also don't understand the "unicorns" tags (two of them) on Dracula.

However.

How about "there's a nude in this book that looks just like me"? http://www.librarything.com/tag/there%27s+a+nude+in+this+book+that+looks+just+li... . Not my tag, fortunately.

I'm trying to figure out slurrealism; did someone just misspell surrealism (and the books I recognize so tagged fit as surrealism) and apply it to several books at once? Most likely, but I like to believe that it was chosen portmanteau of slur and surrealism.

71: I'd say that's on purpose. They don't have another tag for surrealism. Though I wonder if they mean it as slur. They read a lot of it if they don't like it. I wonder if the sl is an indicator of slipstream??

This may sound like a really silly question, but where do we actually find the tag mirror? I can't find it!

>73 InfectiousOptimist:

The tag mirror feature was disabled a while ago because it monopolized too much of the system's resources. I think even the link to it is gone, now, so it's not a silly question at all!

It is very easy to mass-change tags using the tag view of the library, so they could have easily made the typo just once.

I miss the tag mirror. It was totally awesome.

I was looking at the tag page for "14th century" and was struck by one of the Related Tags to show up in the box on the right, the tag "Henry VIII"!

Of the 21 books that show up in the tagmash, about half are definitely Tudor or Renaissance, which leads me to wonder how they got tagged for two centuries too soon!

I mean, I can see the half-dozen or so books that cover both periods having both tags, or Shakespeare's complete works having them (he did, after all, write some history plays). But books about stuff that happened in the 16th century, and written well after the fact?

#74 - its been turned back on again for sometime now. Profile/Clouds/Tag mirror is where to find it.

For some reason the worst case survival handbook has been tagged Holywood. ??

77> Msg #74 was posted Jan. 5 so tag mirror was probably disabled then.

>78 jjwilson61:
And indeed I had to do a fair amount of searching for this thread, since it hadn't been posted to in seven months.

More weirdness, this time discovered on the work page. Somebody tagged Lapsing into a Comma with (wait for it....) Dental Hygiene!