By The Bookwise

The British trade magazine, The Bookseller, is waiting for your vote for the Diagram Prize that honors the world’s oddest book title. You can cast your vote at www.thebookseller.com for one of these six final entries, which were submitted by publishers, bookstore employees and librarians worldwide. The nominees are:  I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen by Jasper McCutcheon; How to Write a How to Write Book by Brian Paddock; Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A. MacKinnon; Cheese Problems Solved edited by P. L. H. McSweeney; If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs by Big Boom; and People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Doctor Feelgood by Dee Gordon. The winner will be announced on March 28. This contest has been held since 1978, when the winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

Do you have a title to suggest? Which of these do you believe should win and why? I’d love to hear your responses.

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In snowy, cold Vermont, if Northshire Bookstore does not have the book a reader wants to snuggle with in bed, then it’s possible to try out the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). This bookstore became the fifth location worldwide and the only commercial location to have this print-on-demand machine.  The bookstore is testing it out and will provide feedback regarding the interface. The bookstore owner said even the largest booksellers can only house about 100,000 titles in their stores. (But, we all know that you can get many more online!) The print-on- demand machine would make millions of titles accessible to the consumer. 

Who said books are dying out? They are just changing their form. At least for this generation and surely a couple to come, readers will have many different choices for books:  Go to the local library or bookstore, purchase a book online at a bookstore like BookWise, download a book online or at the bookstore, read an e-book online or with a viewer. Whatever the special way, books are here to stay. 

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Now’s the time to read over some of the news and trivia books about the Academy Awards. Test your trivia with  So You Think You Know Oscar: Test Your Academy Award IQ. If it is the movie scores you love, then get 20 Years of Original Oscar Winning Songs.

The crime book Oscar Season by Mary McNamara , which has had quite good reviews, is set in and around Los Angeles during the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards. Juliette Greyson, the director of public relations at the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, is preparing for another wild Oscar season (the month between the nominations announcement and the awards ceremony) when someone murders her ex-husband, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Josh Singer. With a reporter and a young starlet nominated for best actress already dead, Greyson and cancer-ridden megastar Michael O’Connor join forces to uncover the mastermind behind what the media is calling the Oscar curse. Featuring a plethora of self-absorbed actors, comedians, publicists and producers as possible suspects, McNamara’s self-assured, tabloid-fueled narrative—simultaneously sexy, scandalous and suspenseful—will appeal to fans of authors like Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins. McNamara insightfully portrays life on the other side of the velvet rope—and it’s far from glamorous.

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