Odd doesn’t begin to cover these titles

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

The shortlist has been unveiled for the 2024 Bookseller‘s Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The annual prize was conceived in 1978 by Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of publishing solutions firm the Diagram Group, as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The winning title is chosen by members of the public via an online vote, and a winner announced December 6.

This year’s shortlisted titles are:

Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail by John Turner
Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them by Joseph M. Bagley
The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire by Rick Carey
How to Dungeon Master Parenting by Shelly Mazzanoble
Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western, edited by Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, & Sara L. Spurgeon
Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement by Judith Houck

There is no prize for the winning author or publisher, but traditionally a “passable bottle of claret” is given to the nominator of the winning entry.

In contention: The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2024

Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them
In this updated edition of Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them, the city’s archaeologist takes you on a whirlwind tour of Beantown, including the delights of the Lemuel Clap House. 

Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western
The mass media discussed in Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western includes “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, “BioShock Infinite” and A A Carr’s erotic vampire/monster slayer western Eye Killers.

How to Dungeon Master Parenting
Shelly Mazzanoble invites mums and dads to “level up” their child-rearing in How to Dungeon Master Parenting, arguing lessons learned from “Dungeons & Dragons” can help them “win at their most challenging role yet”.

Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail
John Turner wrestles with the elements, self-doubt and ageing while he hikes the nearly 2,200-mile path from Georgia to Maine in Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail.

Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement
Judith Houck’s Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement is an “eye-opening” examination of the struggles and successes of “bringing feminist dreams into clinical spaces”.

The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire
“A wild upstream adventure”, raved the New York Post about The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire—a “high-stakes cocktail of business, crime… and the dilemmas of conservation”. 

 

Posted in Books, USA, Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Meanwhile, back in soulless America

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT

John Ashbery

Meanwhile, back in
soulless America, people are having fun
as usual.

A bird visits a birdbath.
A young girl takes a refresher course
in polyhistory. My mega-units are straining
at the leash of spring.
The annual race is on –

white flowers in someone’s hair.
He comes in waltzing on empty airs,

mulling the blue notes of your case.
The leash is elastic and receptive
but I fear I am too wrapped up in cloudlets
of my own making this time.

In the other time is was rain dripping
from a tree to a house to the ground –
each thing helping itself and another thing
along a little. That would be inconceivable
these days of receptive answers and aggressive querying.

The routine is all too familiar,

the stone path wearying

 

Posted in Books, USA, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

It’s Not Even Close

Posted on November 21, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

Posted in Books, USA | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Europe on 5 Dollars a Day

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

US travel writer Arthur Frommer, known for the guidebook Europe on 5 Dollars a Day and other titles on budget travel, has died aged 95. Frommer began his journalism career while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army during the 1950s.

“Throughout his remarkable life, Arthur Frommer democratized travel, showing average Americans how anyone can afford to travel widely and better understand the world,” his daughter and co-author Pauline wrote in her statement on the Frommer’s website.

Frommer was the founder of Frommer’s guidebooks – a series of travel books that included planning and travel tips to destinations around the globe. The series began with Europe on 5 Dollars a Day – one of his first publications, which came out in 1957 and sold millions of copies.

The book described how average Americans could afford to take trips that many thought were only accessible to the wealthy.

“This is a book for American tourists who a) own no oil wells in Texas, b) are unrelated to the Aga Khan, c) have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation,” he wrote in the original guidebook.

Frommer was drafted during the Korean War. He was sent to Europe and served in Germany because of his language skills. While deployed, he wrote what would be his first travel guidebook for his fellow service members, The GI’s Guide to Travelling in Europe.

As well as a writer, Frommer was a TV and radio host whose work helped shape others’ approach to travel.

In one essay, Frommer wrote that travel “broadens our lives”.

“Travel has taught me that despite all the exotic differences in dress and language, of political and religious beliefs, that all the world’s people are essentially alike,” he wrote. “We all have the same urges and concerns, we all yearn for the same goals.”

Posted in Air Travel, Books | Tagged | Leave a comment

Autumn

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Posted in Art, Books | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Bookstore Tourism: Portlandia

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

It’s always good news to discover that a new indie bookshop has opened in the U.S.. But it’s great news when it turns out to be a travel bookstore. Even if you can’t get to Portland, Oregon IRL, you can still peruse the new Postcard Bookshop and order online.

The bookstore dedicated to travel and tourism, opened recently in the Cargo Inc. marketplace at 81 S.E. Yamhill St., Portland, Ore. Owner Patrick Leonard told the Portland Business Journal he wanted to create an educational space for people to access travel guides, international literature, cookbooks and more when learning about a new region and planning trips.

“As a kid, I never did any international traveling so the way I traveled a lot was through reading about other places,” he said. “But when I do travel, I love to pick up a book from that place to hear more first-hand experiences and I feel like I have a newfound interest in this destination.”

Leonard, who had worked for a cookbook publisher in New York City, moved back to Portland in 2016 with the goal of starting a bookstore. His bookstore’s selection of guides, phrase books, cookbooks and other materials is organized by geographical region.

“People are really hungry for those experiences to get back out in the world,” he noted. “People are now wanting to go on food tours, see heritage sites and have the once-in-a-lifetime experiences where they can feel like a local.”

Posted in Books, Bookstore Tourism, Tourism, Travel Writing, USA | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bookstore Tourism

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

The Abecadlo Antiquarian Bookshop is located in a former 19th pharmacy, at 18 Kościuszki Street in Krakow, Poland. Its beautiful interior is made up of antique pharmacy furniture dating back to the 1890s, which the owners managed to save and restore.

After the pharmacy closed in 2016, it was converted into an antiquarian and secondhand bookstore. Medicines and other pharmaceutical preparations have been replaced by a wide range of books, fairy tales, comics, magazines, graphics, posters, postcards, photographs, maps, prints and documents, and even vinyl records and CDs.

 

 

Posted in Books, Bookstore Tourism, Europe, History, Tourism | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Once upon a time, suddenly

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

“A Sudden Story” by Robert Coover

Once upon a time, suddenly, while it still could, the story began. For the hero, setting forth, there was of course nothing sudden about it, neither about the setting forth, which he’d spent his entire lifetime anticipating, nor about any conceivable endings, which seemed, like the horizon, to be always somewhere else. For the dragon, however, who was stupid, everything was sudden. He was suddenly hungry and then he was suddenly eating something. Always, it was like the first time. Then, all of a sudden, he’d remember having eaten something like that before: a certain familiar sourness… And, just as suddenly, he’d forger. The hero, coming suddenly upon the dragon (he’d been trekking for years through enchanted forests, endless deserts, cities carbonized by dragonbreath, for him “suddenly” was not exactly the word), found himself envying, as he drew his sword (a possible ending had just loomed up before him, as though the horizon had, with the desperate illusion of suddenness, tipped), the dragon’s tenseless freedom. Freedom? the dragon might have asked, had he not been so stupid, chewing over meanwhile the sudden familiar sourness (a memory… ?) on his breath. From what? (Forgotten.)

 

Posted in Books, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Train Songs

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

What would Pachebel’s Canon sound like if played by a series of cacophonous train horns?

To find out, watch this video by Pavel Jirásek, who edited short bits from ACETrainsUK’s horn 7m50s compilation of trains in the United Kingdom with other clips of train horns to create the melody of the famous composition by Johann Pachelbel.

 

Posted in Europe, Music, Public Transport, Tourism | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Bookstore Lover on the Road

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Bob Manson is a retired teacher from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He’s also a superfan of independent bookstores. So much so that he has now visited over 600 of them across the country.

At each one, he talks with the owners and some regulars and then writes about what makes that particular bookstore special in his ongoing blog, The Indie Bob Spot.

 Bob’s story is about  a small-town regular guy who took a passion and made it his own, is now inspiring book lovers and readers all over America.

 

Posted in Books, Bookstore Tourism, Tourism, USA | Tagged , , | 2 Comments