This year's prize as the UK's oddest book title was If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs. I like to say that when you write for the web, you should give away the story in the heading. The publisher of this book seems to have taken this advice to heart. It's a self help book for women by a male American author using the pseudonym Big Boom. Second and third came I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen and Cheese Problems Solved. Joel Rickett from The Bookseller, a UK booksellers' magazine, blogs about the prize too.

Aurum Press are going to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year by publishing a small-format hardback gift book with the original jackets of the best winners and runners-up since the prize was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978. The title will be How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books. Sounds like perfect bathroom literature to me.

According to an article at SFgate, the subject of this post was the 2006 winner. I wonder if they published a Western edition.

Tags: books, linkage
Current Location: east bay hotel
mood: amüsiert

A fortuitous find at Murder One was The Winter Garden Mystery by Carola Dunn.

It's the second book in the Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries series. Currently the series numbers 15 books. These are cosy mysteries set in 1920's England. Daisy is an aristocrats daughter who has chosen to make a living by writing for Town and Country Magazine. She is pursued by a friend of her late brother but her love belongs to the Scotland Yard detective she met in the first instalment in the series.

In The Winter Garden Mystery, she is visiting a manor house in Cheshire so that she can write a feature about it and take photos. A body is discovered in the Winter Garden while she is taking photos there on her first day at the property.

If you like historical mysteries set here, this is highly recommended. Just watch so you don't start talking like Daisy and her friends. Telling somebody who's waiting for you "Good egg, I'll be down in half a mo." will raise eye brows.

If you want a taste, there are two short stories available from Belgrave House:
Storm in a Tea Shoppe
Unhappy Medium

Tags: books
Current Location: home
mood: amüsiert
Current Music: Golden Bowls of Compassion

I just checked my Amazon account. My order for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (adult edition, hardback) is listed as having been dispatched on 14 July and delivery by Royal Mail will occur tomorrow. Ah, the thrill!

The spoiler policy for this LJ will be that I may post spoilers but they will definitely be under LJ cuts. So if you trust yourself not to click on the cuts, you can read here.

As for making sure I don't get spoiled, I just changed the comment settings for this journal to "friends only".

I was hoping I'd have re-read all the books in the series before HP7 but I'm only on HP5. Not even sure if I'll be able to finish that before I get HP7. Oh well.

Tags: books, harry potter
Current Location: gt
mood: crazy

I wrote this as a response to a post in gardening but thought I'd share the goodness here too.

My favourite book all categories is probably Nigel Colborn's Great Plants for Small Gardens. The photography is sumptous and very inspirational. Colborn also knows what he's talking about.

For hard facts, you can't go wrong with the Royal Horticultural Society. Their Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers is guaranteed to help you find plants that work for our garden and that won't make your garden look like everybody else's in your neighbourhood.

I also like Beth Chatto's books but they're only for people who really enjoy plants.

Having lived on both sides of the Pond, I've found UK books to be a lot more thorough than American books. They start with the absolute basics but then go much further than American books. Having said that, a book about your local conditions, no matter where on Earth you live, is always going to be helpful.

Tags: books, garden
Current Location: gt
mood: working

The origin of the Bechdel-Wallace rule for movies. Can also be applied to books, of course.

Alison Bechdel's blog about her life on the frozen tundra of Vermont and drawing Dykes to Watch Out For.

Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog, the FAQ and jargon file

Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo Card and its explanations.

Many of the arguments explained in links from the card can of course just as well be applied to other pop culture genres. Although I'd really like to see something similar done for popular music. Gangsta rap is probably too easy but how about RNB lyrics? Anyone, anyone? Bueller? (Telling me why Bueller couldn't have been a female character is too easy and scores no points. Not understanding why, means you need to read and understand the FAQ for Finally, a Feminism 101 blog before I will consider taking you seriously.)

This post was inspired by vito_excalibur's post Laundrygate.

Tags: books, feminism, films, music, tv
Current Location: on my way to Cheltenham, slowly
mood: schläfrig

A person dressed in a squirrel costume rapping I wandered lonely as a cloud in the Lakes. Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s speculation about how the advertising agency arrived at this result. Some of the comments taking umbrage at the “improvements” are rather funny too.

Google logo looks like an iceberg for Earth Day. Strangely enough this is the google.co.uk logo. A St. George theme would have been more fitting today.

Art made from/with books Books were destroyed in the process. Bibliophiles have been warned.

Tags: books, humour, linkage, travel
mood: going home soon

Great article on recovery by Caille Millner, using Gavin Newsom's recent foray into "rehab" as a starting point.

Suzette Haden-Elgin shares her method for writing both fiction and non-fiction in fifteen-minute snippets

The City of San Francisco and the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy are proposing to protect trees vital for the survival of the wild parrots on Telegraph Hill.

The famousest ferret in all the land now has his own set on Flickr. His ferret friend, Kilo, who is less famous but almost as cute, also has one.

The landlord in UK's best known medical district, Harley Street in London, is banning abortion clinics and plastic surgery.

On a lighter note, a Japanese snowplow robot is yellow and looks suspiciously like an anime character.

Tags: books, cute, flickr, linkage, links, london, nastiness, recovery

So I'm nearly through all the Jennifer Crusie books on Amazon.co.uk. Now what do I read?

What I liked about Crusie is that her books are fluffy without the cringe-inducing Mary-Sue factor. She also mostly doesn't rely on her characters being dumb or comletely unbelievable coincidences to move the plot ahead. So fluffy without insulting my intelligence, I'd say.

I also like that her female characters are mostly professionals because I have a hard time identifying with hair dressers and home makers.

Any recommendations for me?

Tags: amazon, books, feminism, relationships

Short story set in India, to read later

Tags: books
mood: interested