I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I read that an old toilet from a house that belonged to author J.D. Salinger was up for auction on Ebay. I laughed even louder when I read that the asking price was 1 million US Dollars. The thought that anyone would actually buy something like this strikes me as very funny, but in today's celebrity culture it wouldn't surprise me if someone actually bought it. I also couldn't help thinking that "Salinger's Toilet" would make a fine title for a surrealistic short story or a novel.
This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
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I wouldn´t even spend large sums of money on valuable first editions. I would always think about how many ordinary books I could get for the same sum.