Ask HN: What is the most obscure book you own?

Just had an interesting conversation about book collecting this weekend: we asked each other which of their books is so obscure or rare that it's unlikely anybody else you know owns a copy.

For me, it's a printed copy of von Neumans "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC", the groundwork for modern computer architecture. Bought it from Kronecker Wallis, a tiny Spanish publisher.

7 points | by Kovah 23 hours ago

12 comments

  • mysterypie 1 hour ago
    I used to have a copy of "Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse", by Hans Freudenthal, 1960[1].

    The book is literally a series of messages you can transmit by radio to an alien intelligence somewhere else in the universe so you can establish a language in common with them. It starts off by teaching numbers: ., .., ..., i.e., sending 1 pulse, 2 pulses, 3 pulses, and so on, teaches numbers to an extraterrestrial being. From this it creates arithmetic (".. pause ... longer-pause .....", means 2+3=5), and then creates abbreviations for symbols, and goes on the build up a lot of mathematics, and then the concept of time, and basic physics, and even very abstract ideas like "good" and "bad", though I've forgotten how it managed to encode that (but I recall it seemed plausible at the time I read the book).

    The book is impossible to find now. I'd love to find a copy of it.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincos_language

  • gradschool 5 hours ago
    The Five Gospels, by Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, the original 1993 hardbound print edition [1]. It has the full annotated texts of the four canonical gospels and the gospel of Thomas in the best available modern English translations, with each passage color coded based on a vote by the reviewers about how close to the original sources they think it is.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

  • davidsojevic 9 hours ago
    It'll either be my copy of "The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest" or my copy of "Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?"
  • keiferski 7 hours ago
    These probably aren't super obscure outside of central/Eastern Europe, but: I have a bunch of Soviet-era guides to different countries in the former Eastern Bloc, written in local languages. So for example, a travel guide to Yugoslavia written in Polish.

    My favorite one is an East German guide to useful trade-oriented words in eight different languages. Basically it's a bunch of columns with words like "consumer goods" or "deck cargo" in German, English, Czech, Russian, etc. The introduction especially has some interesting lines like:

    "This book is mainly intended for business with capitalist countries."

  • sejje 18 hours ago
    I own a book by Joseph Altsheler, The Forest Runners. I believe it was published in the 1930s. It's written for boys.

    My dad owns a rare Buddy Hall biography called Rags to Rifleman. Buddy Hall is one of the greatest pool players ever to live.

  • k310 20 hours ago
    I have a bunch of first edition magazines. Too many to list here. Collecting was easy. I was in bookstores, and figured that any first edition was worth the nominal price.

    If anyone's interested,

    https://rentry.co/23pbcaef

  • thorin 12 hours ago
    Not really obscure, but I have a copy of a couple of Indian printed (pirate!) copies of books I bought in a bookshop in Kathmandu:

    The Tibetan Book of the Dead

    The Ascent of Rum Doodle

    My Dad has a lot of old late 1800s early 1900 books including a huge 2 volume dictionary, which is actually more of an encyclopaedia. It has topic sections like "How to defend yourself from savages" or "How to dig your own coal mine" etc.

  • demygale 17 hours ago
    Miss Marjoribanks volume 2
  • abstractspoon 13 hours ago
    Some Persian fairy tales dated about 1850
  • spottedmarley 23 hours ago
    The Kybalion by Three Initiates

    Almost nobody has it but that's kinda part of how it's supposed to be.