The Grim Reader

Now, I've heard a few strange and odd things in my time, but the news article a friend forwarded to me tops them all.

Apparently a number of this country's finest institutions - Brown University and Harvard among them - have in their possession books. Books, that are bound in human skin.

Hu. Man. Skinnnnnnn.

Ya'll think I'm shitting you, don't you? I know you do. This is classic "get the fuck out of here" response moment. Go ahead, have yours. I had mine.

Get this. Centuries past (which sounds oddly like "Once upon a time"), the best libraries belonged to private collectors. Some were doctors who had access to skin from amputated parts and patients whose bodies had gone unclaimed. In other cases, wealthy bibliophiles acquired skin from executed criminals, medical school cadavers and people who died in the poor house.

I need to explain something first, because I KNOW you're thinking: sick occult would-be witch mofo's! Evil! Evvillllll!

Wrong. These weren't copies of the Necronomicron, or the Satanic Bible, or the Republican Charter and Bylaws. No, these were medical books. Dr. Frankenstein, eat your heart out! (just, you know, not literally!)

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has some books bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, who diagnosed the city's first case of trichinosis. He used that patient's skin to bind three of the volumes.

...why...?!?!

Brown's John Hay Library has three books bound in human skin — the 1568 anatomy text by the Belgian surgeon Andreas Vesalius, and two 19th-century editions of "The Dance of Death," a medieval morality tale.

One copy of "The Dance of Death" was rebound in 1893 by Joseph Zaehnsdorf, a master binder in London. A note to his client reports that he did not have enough skin and had to split it. The front cover, bound in the outer layer of skin, has a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper. The spine and back cover, made from the inner layer, feel like suede.

"The Dance of Death" is about how death prevails over all, rich or poor. As with many other skin-bound volumes, "there was some tie-in with the content of the book," said Sam Streit, director of the John Hay Library.

This is some serious Michael Jackson level of sick shit, ain't it? But I gotta tell ya...it gives me some ideas!

No hear me out - what better way to have my remains, umm, interred, than in a book? Get this: before I die, I write up my own memoirs. Who cares, I'll make shit up and make myself sound good. It'll be a fictional autobiography; I mean, who wants people reading about boring crap I did when I'm dead? I mean to entertain folks!

So I write up my own memoirs, and have copies of the book BOUND IN MY OWN SKIN!!! How fuckingly awesome is that?

Wait, there's more!

Then, at my funeral, I'll have copies of my autobiography given out to all my special friends! That would be so cool! I mean, there you are, curled up in bed at night, reading a book about myself that I wrote...and every time you touch the book cover, it'll be as if I'm there in the room with you! What stronger declaration of friendship is there, then to be there with you even after I'm dead?

And...this is so great, there's precedent for this! hahah! The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman — a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers — and left the volume to one of his victims.

So the next time you're in an old bookstore and start admiring the soft, supple feel of the leather-bound volume in your hands...think about this.

It might just be touching you back.