UPDATE: Since sending out the e-mail version of this post, I've added a poll to ask which way you peel a banana. Do click to show your preference, and I'll report back in a future post! 😊
I'm going to look up Otfried Preußler right now - thanks for the recommendation. 🥳
And... I'm sorry, I've got to ask: how DOES one recover from perfectionism? I didn't know it was a recoverable scenario - now I'm itching to know whether I can in fact be reprogrammed. 🤔
Love this Rebecca. 👏 Pleased to report mine are all *mostly* title down as is custom. But. There are a few that have the little perfection of titles printed on the spine like this:
One.
Word.
At.
A.
Time.
So you can read them perfectly without the head tilt. And then just to mix things up, Hamnet is printed one letter at a time down the spine. I really don’t know what to do with that. Anyway, I remain, your intrepid field researcher.
Jill, thanks so much for your lovely comment, and that's a great solution - I love it! It certainly works for 'on the shelf' accessibility! But does it work when the book's lying down? I think a variation, at least, of the book-on-table spine orientation dilemma remains, unless of course, the book is 'resting' upright. 🤔
Am I wrong to want the text the right way up in EVERY scenario? I know, I'm SO demanding....!! 🤣 Heck, I should get out more...!!!!
I despise bananas and still found this fascinating and hilarious, Rebecca! I am a strong proponent of the text on book spines being top down, to the point that I will put my French language books upside down on my bookshelf so they match the English ones. Top-down is best, I can live with bottom-up if they all go the same way, but I simply cannot abide mixing both on one shelf!!
Thank you so much, Sam! I LOVE that you engineer the shelf orientation of your books so that they all read the same way - that's brilliant! I'm off to turn 'Emil' upside down (???? Right way up???????) right now!!!!
Although I don't despise bananas , being a carb-dodger I don't actually eat them any more, and it felt really odd buying some for us to photograph for this post! I'm glad I'd bought spares, because there were several takes...! 🍌📸
So enjoyable. I think it is fascinating to ponder the "hmm...never thought about that before." I am a: Title up, stem-opening banana soul. The beautiful thing for me about your pondering here is that they take me out of my mind and into observing (which I guess one could argue is, in fact, "in the mind"). Observing is such a portal to questions, discovery, observation, and sometimes conclusions.
Mary, I love this comment - thank you very much. I'd never thought about my funny way of seeing the world sometimes as an exercise in observation - that's really interesting! You've made me interested in seeing all sorts of things in a different way too. 😊
Okay so I checked, and our books are top down BUT...now I’m aware of it I realise that’s uncomfortable for me and I very much want them to be t’other way up. And now it’s annoying me. So thanks 🤣.
Mind blown 🤯 but I don’t like “the feel” of the other end so I’ll have to do tree branch end for ever! My son used to just snap one in half - has to be just the right ripeness for this though!
I know what you mean, Claire! It does feel a little odd. But when I tried for the first time ever yesterday opening up the banana at the 'wrong' end, for the pictures, I couldn't believe how different - and, surprisingly, how very much easier - it felt!
Re your son, I was just looking back at my bananas text traffic with George, and in one of them he said this:
"I will also snap a banana in half if the tension is right, and I've definitely never known anyone to open it that way 😂 so I'm possibly just strange."
Well, thanks to your son, I'm going to tell him that he's not the only one! 😊
I immediately looked over to my bookshelf and notice all my books oriented the UK way - except the one book I bought in Quebec. This one has the text on the spine printed in the opposite direction, and I remember being in that bookstore wondering qu’est-ce que la ***k was going on 😂
Well that made me take a fresh look at my bookcases! A few books I found had the titles written across the spine starting at the top. One had the title written from the bottom up but on closer inspection was found to be UPSIDE DOWN! This worried me that the words might be falling out. I’ll just have to go and turn it the right way up but maybe I’ll eat a banana instead. (Did you ever do the trick of inserting a pin through the skin and rotating the banana? Do this several times along it’s length and then peel, from either end, a ready sliced banana)
I love this! I'm minded to nip upstairs to check that there isn't a sprinkling of fallen-out words on the shelf beneath 'Emil'....
I've never tried peeling a banana with the skin still on - wow, that sounds like great fun! I've still got one unpeeled banana left over from doing the pictures yesterday, so maybe I'll try that and give it to Jim for lunch! 🤣
I’ve never seen a spine that was upwards that I can remember . To me , that would just be weird. I have seen people eat bananas both ways! I think the more fascinating thing is the study of what we perceive to be odd because it’s not our norm
It's funny, isn't it, the books thing? And I'm so glad to know that you've people eat bananas the other way - I'd only ever come across two people, in fact from the same family, and I'd imagined that they were unique!
I think you've hit the nail on the head, Camille. I mean, IS there even such a thing as the 'wrong way up'? (Okay, I'm disregarding glasses of water, etc, here but you know, stuff in general.) I reckon that indeed it's our perceptions that are topsy-turvy, not the book, the banana or whatever object we're looking at.
LOL, Tom! Easier to open from the non-stalk end, I found yesterday, but that's based on my random sample of peeling just two bananas each way for the sake of research. How interesting that you choose to plump not for the way which you've said is better, but for the way you're in the habit of peeling!
I'm learning so much from all these comments! Thank you so much for yours! 😃
All I have to say is, I am over the moon to have found a community of people who think about things like this! Where have you been all my life??? Do you all have children? My teenage daughter needs friends who think about things like this, too! :)
Also (so, I suppose the above was not ALL I have to say, just the most important bit):
- I open bananas the wrong way for the same reason your nephew does - read about the monkey thing and then couldn't unsee it, so just went with it. I do find it a nice way to eat a banana, but that might just be because I've been heavily influenced by the monkey information. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey enjoy?
- I'm fine with my spines being negative if it means they face the correct way when lying on the table. I wouldn't be able to stand the upside down spine text when the book was just lying about. It would make me feel physically uncomfortable. 😵💫 But I'm kinda persnickety about things like that.
Thank you for giving me something other than my impossible project to think about this morning! I was stressing and now I'm laughing. Off to bring this conversation to my husband and daughter. xoxo
Kerri, this is such a great comment - thank you so much! I love that you're going to talk to your husband and daughter about these crazy issues. I don't have any children, but I agree that people of all ages need some bananas things to think about!
Until I started thinking about writing this post - and 'interviewing' George via text - I don't think it had ever occurred to me to think about how monkeys might eat bananas. I do remember being told - and then finding out, when I saw some growing - that bananas grow 'upside down' (of course they're not upside down as such, they grow the way they grow.... which is, well, upside down!) - but I didn't know until I'd first seen someone eat a banana from the bottom up that that was actually a thing that some people did!
I agree with you about the books. It annoys me that other-way-up publishers have made a conscious choice to have that text deliberately upside down when the book is lying down. The direction the text runs when the book is viewed on the shelf is irrelevant - EITHER way is always going to be sideways on, whether the text is read downwards or upwards. But to have it upside down on purpose? On perhaps the most stunning of 'coffee table' books which are rarely ever ON shelves? It's...... wait for it, wait for it....... BANANAS! 🍌
I'm so sorry you've been stressing, Kerri, but equally thrilled that my post has made you laugh! Thank you so much for your delightful response to it. Keep going with your fabulous project - I'm so glad to have found 'Three Small Smiles', and in particular your '90 Days to Broadway' posts!
Thank you for the encouragement and the laughs! I often think I'm BANANAS (I had to) for taking on such a project, so this post was perfect for me on many levels today! 🤣💖🍌
Hi Rebecca. It's been a crazy few weeks so it's really nice to sit down and read one of your posts at leisure. I'm about ready to start peeling bananas from the bottom because I often seem to turn the top tip into mush so maybe this way makes more sense.
As for books and spine text orientation, I agree with another reader, I think it's all about personal preference or perhaps how you were raised. Although at one point I thought the German method was to shelve books upside down, so it's good that I read all of the way through.
Side note: I know half of this post was about bananas, but orange you glad that February is half-over?
Mark, I was just going to type an 'I am taking this comment seriously' response to this, and then I read your last line... GROAN!!! 😉🤣
Thanks so much for your input - it's fabulous that you're going to try other-way-up banana peeling for yourself! Just before I started peeling that first banana when Jim was shooting the pictures yesterday I had said 'WHY would you not peel it this way? You can just flick that stalk sideways and it just opens!' And as I did it that top tip turned into mush exactly as you've described - I guess stalk-snapping only happens effectively with a banana that isn't too soft.
I found just squeezing the very bottom of the other end of the second banana opened it really easy, and it wasn't messy at all - nothing at all how I'd imagined it would be!
After reading some of the suggestions from previous commentators I have gone back to my bookcase and turned 'Emil' upside down. I'm still not entirely happy, though....
Who indeed knew, Jillian? I certainly didn't until I spotted that wallpaper. And then that got me thinking about George and bananas. I worry about my brain sometimes...!
I think the wallpaper's fun, but *coughs* I wouldn't paper my own walls with it - the spine text would make me too cross. Unless I were to hang it upside down... 🤔 Nah, that's not going to work either. Because then the SHELVES would be the wrong way up, and the cover text.... oh, never mind. 🤣
Thank you for addressing this issue. I still remember my friend’s older sister who peeled a banana from the wrong end. She was beautiful and insane. Case closed.
UPDATE: Since sending out the e-mail version of this post, I've added a poll to ask which way you peel a banana. Do click to show your preference, and I'll report back in a future post! 😊
Thanks so much, Luisa! Yes to individuality! 🙌
I'm going to look up Otfried Preußler right now - thanks for the recommendation. 🥳
And... I'm sorry, I've got to ask: how DOES one recover from perfectionism? I didn't know it was a recoverable scenario - now I'm itching to know whether I can in fact be reprogrammed. 🤔
LOL - and insight is part of the battle, absolutely! Yes to the small win!
Love this Rebecca. 👏 Pleased to report mine are all *mostly* title down as is custom. But. There are a few that have the little perfection of titles printed on the spine like this:
One.
Word.
At.
A.
Time.
So you can read them perfectly without the head tilt. And then just to mix things up, Hamnet is printed one letter at a time down the spine. I really don’t know what to do with that. Anyway, I remain, your intrepid field researcher.
Jill, thanks so much for your lovely comment, and that's a great solution - I love it! It certainly works for 'on the shelf' accessibility! But does it work when the book's lying down? I think a variation, at least, of the book-on-table spine orientation dilemma remains, unless of course, the book is 'resting' upright. 🤔
Am I wrong to want the text the right way up in EVERY scenario? I know, I'm SO demanding....!! 🤣 Heck, I should get out more...!!!!
I despise bananas and still found this fascinating and hilarious, Rebecca! I am a strong proponent of the text on book spines being top down, to the point that I will put my French language books upside down on my bookshelf so they match the English ones. Top-down is best, I can live with bottom-up if they all go the same way, but I simply cannot abide mixing both on one shelf!!
Thank you so much, Sam! I LOVE that you engineer the shelf orientation of your books so that they all read the same way - that's brilliant! I'm off to turn 'Emil' upside down (???? Right way up???????) right now!!!!
Although I don't despise bananas , being a carb-dodger I don't actually eat them any more, and it felt really odd buying some for us to photograph for this post! I'm glad I'd bought spares, because there were several takes...! 🍌📸
Ooooh turning the French books around!! How did I never think of this???
It's the way to go! You just have to avoid putting them at the end so no one can see they're upside down, ha!
🤣
I can't believe I'm spending Saturday morning commenting on a post about bananas. Still:
1 I admire your ability to eke an article out of ANY THing😂
2 if it's any consolation, I peel bananas the wrong way too. I know cos I read about monkeys a few years ago
Another delightful post, Rebecca!
Now, I CAN believe it, Terry, and it's clearly because you're just as bananas as I am...! 😉
I'm now regretting not adding a poll to this post - might hack back into the edit now to retro-fit one!
And thank you so much for the compliment. 😊
😂 poll: great idea
It's UP!!! Do have a click, Terry! 😊
Done
So enjoyable. I think it is fascinating to ponder the "hmm...never thought about that before." I am a: Title up, stem-opening banana soul. The beautiful thing for me about your pondering here is that they take me out of my mind and into observing (which I guess one could argue is, in fact, "in the mind"). Observing is such a portal to questions, discovery, observation, and sometimes conclusions.
Mary, I love this comment - thank you very much. I'd never thought about my funny way of seeing the world sometimes as an exercise in observation - that's really interesting! You've made me interested in seeing all sorts of things in a different way too. 😊
Love this Mutual Admiration Society we have going here. It is nice to find a kindred spirit.
😊
Okay so I checked, and our books are top down BUT...now I’m aware of it I realise that’s uncomfortable for me and I very much want them to be t’other way up. And now it’s annoying me. So thanks 🤣.
Oh no, Jo - I'm really sorry for what I've started...! 🤣
Mind blown 🤯 but I don’t like “the feel” of the other end so I’ll have to do tree branch end for ever! My son used to just snap one in half - has to be just the right ripeness for this though!
I know what you mean, Claire! It does feel a little odd. But when I tried for the first time ever yesterday opening up the banana at the 'wrong' end, for the pictures, I couldn't believe how different - and, surprisingly, how very much easier - it felt!
Re your son, I was just looking back at my bananas text traffic with George, and in one of them he said this:
"I will also snap a banana in half if the tension is right, and I've definitely never known anyone to open it that way 😂 so I'm possibly just strange."
Well, thanks to your son, I'm going to tell him that he's not the only one! 😊
I immediately looked over to my bookshelf and notice all my books oriented the UK way - except the one book I bought in Quebec. This one has the text on the spine printed in the opposite direction, and I remember being in that bookstore wondering qu’est-ce que la ***k was going on 😂
LOL Bryn! I hope you don't mind, but I'm immediately adopting the question 'qu'est-ce que la ***k?' for EVERYTHING that I'm ever surprised about! 😊
Please do! And picture a jaunty seal perched on a rock with a quizzical expression on its face, saying those words 😁
🤣
Well that made me take a fresh look at my bookcases! A few books I found had the titles written across the spine starting at the top. One had the title written from the bottom up but on closer inspection was found to be UPSIDE DOWN! This worried me that the words might be falling out. I’ll just have to go and turn it the right way up but maybe I’ll eat a banana instead. (Did you ever do the trick of inserting a pin through the skin and rotating the banana? Do this several times along it’s length and then peel, from either end, a ready sliced banana)
I love this! I'm minded to nip upstairs to check that there isn't a sprinkling of fallen-out words on the shelf beneath 'Emil'....
I've never tried peeling a banana with the skin still on - wow, that sounds like great fun! I've still got one unpeeled banana left over from doing the pictures yesterday, so maybe I'll try that and give it to Jim for lunch! 🤣
I’ve never seen a spine that was upwards that I can remember . To me , that would just be weird. I have seen people eat bananas both ways! I think the more fascinating thing is the study of what we perceive to be odd because it’s not our norm
It's funny, isn't it, the books thing? And I'm so glad to know that you've people eat bananas the other way - I'd only ever come across two people, in fact from the same family, and I'd imagined that they were unique!
I think you've hit the nail on the head, Camille. I mean, IS there even such a thing as the 'wrong way up'? (Okay, I'm disregarding glasses of water, etc, here but you know, stuff in general.) I reckon that indeed it's our perceptions that are topsy-turvy, not the book, the banana or whatever object we're looking at.
I have tried eating a banana from the bottom (non-stalk end) and it is better ... but I still start with the stalk. Habit.
LOL, Tom! Easier to open from the non-stalk end, I found yesterday, but that's based on my random sample of peeling just two bananas each way for the sake of research. How interesting that you choose to plump not for the way which you've said is better, but for the way you're in the habit of peeling!
I'm learning so much from all these comments! Thank you so much for yours! 😃
It did put me in a real quandary when answering your poll! Aren’t we humans weird?
Weird, Tom? Some of us are BANANAS....! 🤣
All I have to say is, I am over the moon to have found a community of people who think about things like this! Where have you been all my life??? Do you all have children? My teenage daughter needs friends who think about things like this, too! :)
Also (so, I suppose the above was not ALL I have to say, just the most important bit):
- I open bananas the wrong way for the same reason your nephew does - read about the monkey thing and then couldn't unsee it, so just went with it. I do find it a nice way to eat a banana, but that might just be because I've been heavily influenced by the monkey information. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey enjoy?
- I'm fine with my spines being negative if it means they face the correct way when lying on the table. I wouldn't be able to stand the upside down spine text when the book was just lying about. It would make me feel physically uncomfortable. 😵💫 But I'm kinda persnickety about things like that.
Thank you for giving me something other than my impossible project to think about this morning! I was stressing and now I'm laughing. Off to bring this conversation to my husband and daughter. xoxo
Kerri, this is such a great comment - thank you so much! I love that you're going to talk to your husband and daughter about these crazy issues. I don't have any children, but I agree that people of all ages need some bananas things to think about!
Until I started thinking about writing this post - and 'interviewing' George via text - I don't think it had ever occurred to me to think about how monkeys might eat bananas. I do remember being told - and then finding out, when I saw some growing - that bananas grow 'upside down' (of course they're not upside down as such, they grow the way they grow.... which is, well, upside down!) - but I didn't know until I'd first seen someone eat a banana from the bottom up that that was actually a thing that some people did!
I agree with you about the books. It annoys me that other-way-up publishers have made a conscious choice to have that text deliberately upside down when the book is lying down. The direction the text runs when the book is viewed on the shelf is irrelevant - EITHER way is always going to be sideways on, whether the text is read downwards or upwards. But to have it upside down on purpose? On perhaps the most stunning of 'coffee table' books which are rarely ever ON shelves? It's...... wait for it, wait for it....... BANANAS! 🍌
I'm so sorry you've been stressing, Kerri, but equally thrilled that my post has made you laugh! Thank you so much for your delightful response to it. Keep going with your fabulous project - I'm so glad to have found 'Three Small Smiles', and in particular your '90 Days to Broadway' posts!
Thank you for the encouragement and the laughs! I often think I'm BANANAS (I had to) for taking on such a project, so this post was perfect for me on many levels today! 🤣💖🍌
Hi Rebecca. It's been a crazy few weeks so it's really nice to sit down and read one of your posts at leisure. I'm about ready to start peeling bananas from the bottom because I often seem to turn the top tip into mush so maybe this way makes more sense.
As for books and spine text orientation, I agree with another reader, I think it's all about personal preference or perhaps how you were raised. Although at one point I thought the German method was to shelve books upside down, so it's good that I read all of the way through.
Side note: I know half of this post was about bananas, but orange you glad that February is half-over?
Mark, I was just going to type an 'I am taking this comment seriously' response to this, and then I read your last line... GROAN!!! 😉🤣
Thanks so much for your input - it's fabulous that you're going to try other-way-up banana peeling for yourself! Just before I started peeling that first banana when Jim was shooting the pictures yesterday I had said 'WHY would you not peel it this way? You can just flick that stalk sideways and it just opens!' And as I did it that top tip turned into mush exactly as you've described - I guess stalk-snapping only happens effectively with a banana that isn't too soft.
I found just squeezing the very bottom of the other end of the second banana opened it really easy, and it wasn't messy at all - nothing at all how I'd imagined it would be!
After reading some of the suggestions from previous commentators I have gone back to my bookcase and turned 'Emil' upside down. I'm still not entirely happy, though....
Who knew that bananas and books had anything in common?! There is absolutely a right way to orient books (lol)! I don't care as much about bananas.
Ps-that wallpaper is gorgeous! Even if the spines are incorrect.
Who indeed knew, Jillian? I certainly didn't until I spotted that wallpaper. And then that got me thinking about George and bananas. I worry about my brain sometimes...!
I think the wallpaper's fun, but *coughs* I wouldn't paper my own walls with it - the spine text would make me too cross. Unless I were to hang it upside down... 🤔 Nah, that's not going to work either. Because then the SHELVES would be the wrong way up, and the cover text.... oh, never mind. 🤣
Haha! Totally! There's also something about looking at books that I can't open that I find upsetting.
Gosh, yes - I hadn’t even thought of that aspect of booky wallpaper! 😲
Thank you for addressing this issue. I still remember my friend’s older sister who peeled a banana from the wrong end. She was beautiful and insane. Case closed.
Oh, Aoife! I'll put that point to George and see what he says! 🍌