Luna’s Prose Ramblings

It’s not everyday one gets to ponder the importance of The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais. And it’s certainly not everyday that a person decides to spend 795 British Pounds to find out more about it. But at least the book, written by Philip M. Parker, a professor of marketing at the French campus of Insead international business school, has attained the dubious laud of The Bookseller magazine’s Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

Philip Stone, the magazine’s charts editor and awards administrator wrote in the congratulatory statement;

“What does the future hold for these items? Well, given that fromage frais normally comes in 60-gram containers, one would assume that the world outlook for 0.06-gram containers of fromage frais is pretty bleak. But I’m not willing to pay £795 to find out.”

Runners-up for the award were Curbside Consultation of the Colon, The Large Sieve and Its Applications, Strip and Knit With Style and Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring.

Running Press and author/game developer Jordan Weisman, of the popular series Cathy’s book, have come to an agreement for two new interactive young adult series. Where Cathy’s book already got readers off the page and to designated telephone recordings and websites, the two new series will be even more elaborate.

The first book in the Nanovor series, Hacked, which is set to be released December 2009, will tie-in its story of students finding a virulent life form in their computers, with a specially designed exclusive hand-held computer and game designed by Weisman’s company Smith & Tinker.

The second series Lost Souls will feature three books of which the first, Burning Sky, is set to be released in the Spring of 2010. The game is described as a multimedia adventure and will have readers visiting websites and playing along with an included physical board game.

There are many wonderful literary initiatives out there in the world. This time I would like to draw your attention to Fifty-Two Stories, an outlet created by Harper Perennial to give established and new talent a chance to spread their wings and short stories. Fifty-Two Stories will publish a story every week for one year.