Are Women Human? and Cheese Problems Solved

The Bookseller oddest title of the year short-list has been announced with some very strange titles capturing the eye of the judges. Unfortunately my book, Up Yours You One Eyed Bastard didnt make the list, and the sequel, Screw You And The Horse You Rode In On is outside the publishing date.

Heres the titles that made the cut :

I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
How to Write a How to Write Book
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Cheese Problems Solved
If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

Although these titles are weird, they werent the only ones. Horace Bent, diarist and custodian of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book title said "I must pay homage to those books that narrowly missed out on a shortlist place. These were, in no particular order: Drawing and Painting the Undead; Stafford Pageant: The Exciting Innovative Years 1901–1952; and Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground.

All sound like they are positively thrilling reads, and I do hope that the authors will try again next year. Honourable mention should also go to two titles that were ruled out because they were published too long ago: an unlikely-sounding HR manual called Squid Recruitment Dynamics, and the fascinating anthropological tome Glory Remembered: Wooden Headgear of Alaska Sea Hunters."

It astounds me that someone has the time to sit down and write a book about this stuff. My tinfoil hat is off to them for spending the time to put finger to keyboard.

Via theBookseller and Stuff

Australia good place for the apocalypse

Apart from all the doom sayers and "Repent all ye sinners - the end is nigh" type people, most people live their lives without the fear that the world will end tomorrow in some cataclysmic event of global proportions. But that doesn't mean we can't write books or make movies about it.

IO9 did a nice post recently on why Australia is the best place for the End of the World, and even tagged New Zealand in the process. The Quiet Earth starring Bruno Lawrence was filmed here and is rated as one of the best PA (post apocalyptic) movies of all time.

Its an amusing piece, so get amongst it. Also see the Quiet Earth website, dedicated to all things PA.

Iain M. Banks has new book, and there was much rejoicing

The powerhouse of science-fiction that is Iain M. Banks has pumped out another Culture based novel called Matter. If you enjoy a good Science fiction novel or 30, then I fully recommend Iain M. Banks. His series of novels based around the decadent civilisation called The Culture is one of the best glimpses into and AI influenced future that I have ever read. He has also released several other Sci-fi non-Culture novels (Against a Dark Background, Feersum Endjun, The Algebraist) which are also excellent.

I recently finished reading The Algebraist and it was well written and thought provoking. I connected with the main characters, and found the alien races living in the gas giants a fascinating concept. He has an amazing way to describe an alien race that sounds unfathomable, and you are able to understand the human based races inability to deal with an alien culture.

Along with his Sci-Fi stuff he also releases standard Fiction novels under the name Iain Banks, all of which are interesting and thought provoking novels.

I will definitely be hooking into this one, but as a teaser see here for an extract and see below for the blurb.


In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.