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OK, tonight I am interested in The Voynich Manuscript. It's a one-of-a-kind book worth over $100K and located in a rare books library at Yale University. Nobody knows how old it is, and nobody knows what it says. The manuscript is written in a cipher script (or two) that occurs nowhere else. It's been attributed to Roger Bacon, a thirteenth century astronomer and mystic, but that origin is suspect.
Here's another suspect origin, with an attempt at deciphering the manuscript.
Here is a gallery of pages from the manuscript.
When I was younger I loved mysteries; I read everything I could. Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew (but not Hardy Boys), Kay Tracey, Happy Hollisters, Dana Girls, Trixie Belden - you name it, I probably liked and read it. I read every volume of most series... every Holmes story, every Trixie Belden novel, all 56 original Nancy Drew hardcovers plus a decent number of the earlier versions (many of the stories were completely rewritten several times, under the same title, so a version from the early 1930s will be an entirely different story when compared to a version from the 1960s - there were several Trixie novels which had also been entirely rewritten). I was also a little fiend for "learn to be a detective!" books and kits, and books on ciphers and codes.
When I got a little older, I read most of Anne Perry's books up through around the time she started her William Monk series. I occasionally read books by Barbara Michaels / Elizabeth Peters, and by Mary Stewart, but I think by that time I preferred historical fiction (not romance) and some fantasy. I retained my interest in codes and ciphers, but since I've never felt much pull towards math, they quickly became too closely aligned.
So things like the Voynich MS, while seeming a bit spooky to me, also really draw me in and turn my brain up a few notches, insinuating possibilities and connections and intricacies and arcana. I'm not impressed by or interested in new-age esoterica, but alchemy, ciphers, strangeness, unknowability... that's my bag.
Here's another suspect origin, with an attempt at deciphering the manuscript.
Here is a gallery of pages from the manuscript.
When I was younger I loved mysteries; I read everything I could. Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew (but not Hardy Boys), Kay Tracey, Happy Hollisters, Dana Girls, Trixie Belden - you name it, I probably liked and read it. I read every volume of most series... every Holmes story, every Trixie Belden novel, all 56 original Nancy Drew hardcovers plus a decent number of the earlier versions (many of the stories were completely rewritten several times, under the same title, so a version from the early 1930s will be an entirely different story when compared to a version from the 1960s - there were several Trixie novels which had also been entirely rewritten). I was also a little fiend for "learn to be a detective!" books and kits, and books on ciphers and codes.
When I got a little older, I read most of Anne Perry's books up through around the time she started her William Monk series. I occasionally read books by Barbara Michaels / Elizabeth Peters, and by Mary Stewart, but I think by that time I preferred historical fiction (not romance) and some fantasy. I retained my interest in codes and ciphers, but since I've never felt much pull towards math, they quickly became too closely aligned.
So things like the Voynich MS, while seeming a bit spooky to me, also really draw me in and turn my brain up a few notches, insinuating possibilities and connections and intricacies and arcana. I'm not impressed by or interested in new-age esoterica, but alchemy, ciphers, strangeness, unknowability... that's my bag.
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I wish I had a head for cryptography, though... that math interested me beyond my ability to do problems put in front of me (or in some cases, lack thereof). Math has never been a personal fascination, only a social/educational obligation. =/