u/Fabulous-Confusion43

Yes it's true! The 1957 first edition is dedicated to two men: her husband Frank O'Connor and Nathaniel Branden, her protégé (and, from 1954, her lover, with Frank's reluctant blessing).

A few other things that make this even crazier:

- Branden's wife knew about the affair too

- Frank designed the book's original dust jacket

- The affair lasted 14 years

What happened to Branden's name? >!In 1968 Rand found out Branden was secretly seeing a younger woman, publicly cut him off, and had his name removed from the dedication in later printings.!<

Anyone got an old copy on their shelf? Would love to know which version you have 📚

🚗 Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road" but couldn't legally drive one until he was 34.

He never held a formal driver's license at all, despite writing one of the most iconic road trip novels ever. A few more Kerouac oddities:

He wrote the first draft of On the Road in three weeks, on a single continuous scroll of taped-together paper

The "road trips" in the book were real, based on actual cross-country trips he took with Neal Cassady

He lived with his mother for most of his adult life, including while writing his most famous work

Anyone else find it funnier that the guy behind the ultimate road novel wasn't even the one behind the wheel?

I just started this, it's my first Neil gaiman. Picked it up at my local thrift store for $4

I'm giving this one a crack

Check out the full story on what happened here https://youtube.com/shorts/CzB4V7T0TFk?si=pWo\_AJdrPoqNcqRn

I'm reading this, bought it ages ago and it's been collecting dust in the bookcase, let's see how we go.

I'm building a book trivia app and I've developed the prototype for it here: https://bambookzle.lovable.app/

I'd be so appreciative 🙏🏼 if you could test it for me and answer these qs:

*Which game was your favourite and least favourite, and why?

*Was there anything you didn’t understand or found confusing?

*Did anything feel too easy, too hard or unfair?

*Did you encounter any bugs or anything that didn’t work as expected?

*Most importantly: would you come back tomorrow to play again? Why/why not?

It's true! there's a real plant species named after Mark Watney, the botanist-astronaut from The Martian and the reasoning is actually pretty clever.

Botanists in the US identified a new species of Australian bush tomato and named it Solanum watneyi.

Why Watney? Two reasons: it grows in reddish, Mars-like soil, and it's a close cousin of the potato, the exact crop Watney famously grows to survive on Mars.

Did you know this? Are there any other famous things you know were named after famous authors or books? Tell me in the comments 👇🏼

I'm reading #7 in the DCC universe 🥰

Did you know the US hardback has real hidden codes on the dust jacket? One of them points to Kryptos — an actual unsolved CIA sculpture at Langley that nobody has cracked in decades.

In this episode we get into:

🗝️ The three hidden codes on the US cover — including GPS coordinates tied to that real, still-unsolved CIA cipher

😈Why the villain Sir Leigh Teabing's name is a straight anagram of the two authors who later sued Dan Brown for plagiarism

⚖️ The judge who buried his own Fibonacci-coded message inside the 71-page court ruling on that case

The real, sealed vaults under Rosslyn Chapel — untouched since 1690

🎶 Dan Brown's pre-fame life as a failed pop star, including a self-produced kids' cassette and a soft rock CD journalists still bring up

✝️ The Catholic Church's actual response — they appointed an archbishop specifically to debunk the book

Give it a listen here: https://www.booktriviapodcast.com/episodes/s2-e7-the-da-vinci-code

I'm reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Yes it's true! George R.R. Martin has said Stan Lee is "the greatest literary influence on me, even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien."

Yes, THAT Stan Lee. The guy behind Spider-Man and the Avengers, ranked above the guy who wrote Hamlet and the guy who basically invented modern fantasy.

Some versions of the quote include a "maybe" in front of it, so he's hedging slightly... but still. Bold ranking from a man who added an extra "R" to his name as a Tolkien tribute.

I'm reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies after getting several recommendations from my fellow Redditors 🥰

Did you know Kristy's Great Idea wasn't even Ann M. Martin's idea? A Scholastic editor noticed an obscure book quietly outselling everything else in the catalogue and handed Martin nothing but a title and "a glimmer of an idea" for a four-book miniseries. She built the rest — the characters, Stoneybrook, all of it — and it turned into 213 books and 176 million copies sold 📚

In this episode we got into where Martin actually found her characters — Kristy is based on her real childhood best friend, Mary Anne is her own self-insert, and Stacey's diabetes storyline came from two of Martin's own childhood friends. We also cover the single Scholastic staffer responsible for faking all four girls' handwriting across the entire series, Kirsten Dunst's first-ever modelling job hiding on the cover of book #2, and the road from VHS specials to HBO to Netflix's 100%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes reboot that still got cancelled 🎙️

Give it a listen here: https://www.booktriviapodcast.com/episodes/s1-bonus-e11-kristys-great-idea