A related term that has entered the popular lexicon is little black book (or simply black book). Such books are used as dating guides, listing people who the owner has dated in the past or hopes to in the future, and details of their various relationships. More explicit variations are guides for sexual partners. It is unclear how prevalent this is in practice or when it originated, though such books have been mentioned in many pieces of popular culture. For example, the 1953 film version of Kiss Me, Kate features a musical scene in which Howard Keel's character laments the loss of the social life he enjoyed before marriage, naming numerous female romantic encounters while perusing a miniature black book. More recently, the mid-2000s Guinness Brewmasters advertising campaign features the "little black book" as an invention of one of the brewmasters.
Read more about this topic: Address Book
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or book:
“A boy not beautiful, nor good, nor clever,
A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping,
A sword beneath his mother’s heart— yet never
Woman bewept her babe as this is weeping.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.”
—Joseph Epstein (b. 1937)