Customer Reviews

A disappointment - By: Pavel Chekov, 25 Sep 2008
I readin the news about the recent Bookseller magazine's Oddest Book Title prize & its entries & found them hilarious, but failed to get the list of past nominations & winners on their website,in spite of it being the 30 years anniversary of the prize (getting pages for recent nominations only & sometimes being redirected to nothing actually relevant). But there was a reference to this book, so I thought: "OK, if you want to see the prize historical entries you have to pay for it." I didn't mind, so I got it.
It's a tiny little book. There are JUST 50 ENTRIES, with no proper rhyme or reason why they were selected. Some are actually not that funny & some of the funniest ARE MISSING. There is no information on when a particular entry was nominated, whether it won or was a runner-up. The entry's description is just a few words (often just TWO WORDS)in a single sentence, even though on the website I saw nominations accompanied by proper summaries, which are usually found on the back of any book.
This total lack of information on the entries is compensated by a long & tedious foreword by the Deputy Editor of the Bookseller with some questionable statements ("What makes a book title truly odd? ... Scientists have toiled for years researching that question."), which again fails to mention why only a fraction of the titles was selected.
The book is printedin China. Clearly, whether the paper comes from sustainably sourced wood or through destruction of forestsin Russia or Indonesia is not an issue for the Bookseller.
On the only positive side: colour book cover reproductions are nice, but can't compensate for the lack of information (just the title, author, publisher & single sentence "summary" on the opposite page with huge blank spaces as there is so little of it).
I had a few laughs, but generally: thumbs down.