The Open Syllabus Project lists all the college textbooks students are dutifully ignoring.

Reading! I meant reading. Excuse me. Silly mistake. The Open Syllabus Project is trying to document all the college textbooks students are reading and studying with a fervent passion, no doubt.

Specifically, the Open Syllabus Project (OSP) hopes to comb over the world's college syllabi and document which books students are assigned most, regardless of subject area. The list is ever-changing, as the OSP gathers more syllabi, texts gain and lose favor.

For example, the top ten most-assigned books covering all syllabi (so far) and subject areas in parts of the western hemisphere are:

1.  The Elements of Style,
     by Strunk, William, 1869-1946
2.  Republic,
     by Plato
3.  The Communist Manifesto,
     by Marx, Karl, 1818-1883
4.  Biology,
     by Campbell, Neil A., 1946
5.  Frankenstein,
     by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851
6.  Ethics,
     by Aristotle
7.  Leviathan,
     by Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679
8.  The Prince,
     by Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527
9.  Oedipus,
     by Sophocles
10.  Hamlet,
     by Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616

The Elements of Style is hopelessly assigned by every desperate English professor in hopes that someone, anyone--you maybe--might be able to write a coherent sentence in a paper. It's fruitless, as every student leaves Elements in a desk drawer or closet, where it'll only be rediscovered when they graduate, clear out those closets, and donate a stack of books to the Goodwill.

The rest of the top ten is fairly explanatory. A basic biology book, some philosophical musings you won't remember, a dash of Shakespeare...and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? The same desperate English professor who cries to sleep each night over your writing inability also hopes you'll read a little, and assigned a relatively short book with a famous name, dreaming you'll give it a shot. You won't though. That's why God made Wikipedia.

Curiosities really don't appear until you break down the syllabi by county, state, school, or subject area. Take Canada, for instance. Our neighbors to the north's top ten includes the usual--your Leviathans and Ethics--but has Frankenstein number one. Further raising eyebrows is Michel Foucault's Power at number two, while Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness shows up at number ten. Is the collective subconscious of Canada suggesting they want to control and dominate the world? Damn right. I, for one, welcome our new Canadian overlords, and bid them well.

Another mystery is the state of Alabama--and not just because it's the state of Alabama. A look at that state's top ten textbooks starts with the first seven being related to physics, with an eighth book related to astronomy. Did Alabama just discover the existence of science and the cosmos? No. That's silly. Because Alabama realized science existed all the way back in 2012, and there's been rumors of a moon in the sky being reported in Mobile all the way since the 1960s. It's just that Alabama is buying the books now to burn them.

I'm not sure if that's better than ignoring them though.

When I was a teenager, I influenced a lot of cupcakes to go into my mouth.

Influence is such a vague term.

Is influence how large a net you cast to the greatest number of people, or the depth of impact you leave on an individual?

Time Magazine released their list of The 30 Most Influential Teenagers. Time's belief seems to be of the casted-net variety.

The list includes a half dozen budding fashion designers, a few Youtube and Vine celebrities, two Kardashians that go by Jenner, a couple political-ish kids who'll probably change their philosophy by the time they're 20, a chef just past puberty who charges $160 for a meal, a few athletes who probably have overbearing parents, a handful of actors, a smattering of singers who are more overdubbed than capable of singing and...one teen who sort of/kind of writes (...on a website about video games mainly).

One.

Out of thirty teenagers in this world, the influence of writing is overshadowed by two Kardashians, fashion designers, and Youtube chuckly-ha-has. Just one kid who writes about video games--but more kids who have appeared on the Disney Channel.

Take Mary Shelley. Take Percy Bysshe Shelley. Take Arthur Rimbaud, Stephen Crane, and William Cullen Bryant.

You know what they had in common? What they had in common with dozens others throughout the years? They all wrote poems or novels before the age of 20.

Although, admittedly, only one--Arthur Rimbaud--would've appeared on the Disney Channel if he was alive today. So fresh-faced and a teen heartthrob!

Mary Shelley had a reason for all the geographical locations she used throughout 'Frankenstein.'

Odds are you've seen a Frankenstein movie at some point in your life. Lots of  flat heads and staggering monsters that mumble "Braaaains..." while finding some human utterly delicious looking.

Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (yeah, that was the full title), was actually quite a world traveler of a text though, with a highly verbose monster who jaunted around Europe while occasionally causing murderous mayhem.

This wannabe jet-set lifestyle of Frankenstein has led The Smithsonian Magazine to detail the variety of real-life geographical locations that likely inspired Shelley. These locations include Castle Frankenstein in Germany (for obvious reasons) and Bolgna, Italy (where physician Luigi Galvani once used electricity to charge dead frogs in 1781), to Chamonix, France (where Shelley vacationed) and the Orkney Islands, Scotland (near where a teenage Mary spent two years of her life).

The real fun fact to be learned? The novel includes Spezia, Italy, as a location the monster visits. Spezia is nearby a location where Shelley's husband, famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, would later die by drowning when his sailboat capsized during a storm four years after Frankenstein's publication.

So the monster was STILL alive after all.

Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein looked more like Gothic beefcake than horror creature.

A new exhibition at the British Library is revealing the earliest known illustration of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and he wasn't half bad looking

The exhibition entitled 'Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination,' showcases an illustration from the 1831 edition of Shelley's classic novel, with Frankenstein sans bolts, flat-top head, and brick house physique.

Instead, Shelley's semi-nude monster looks like he belongs on the cover of a Harlequin romance, minus his face of sheer terror.

As Greg Buzwell, the British Library curator, tells The Telegraph, "In the book, the Creature is almost sympathetic. In the film, although we do get the sense he is misunderstood, the intention was to have a character who was quite frightening - hence the beefed-up physique, the clumpy boots, the macabre stitches and the bolts through the neck. He became a menacing figure. The Creature in the 1831 illustration is fairly close to what Shelley had in mind."

What Shelley had in mind was a creature with "lustrous" black hair, not the buzzcut shellac look popularized at Halloween we see today.

In essence, Frankenstein was really the Fabio of his time.

The exhibition opens October 3, 2014.

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