It’s All in the Name (or Hanging Upside Down)

The annual Diagram Prize for the Oddest New Book Title has been awarded this year to the US publishers Red Wheel for People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Innocent Bystanders and What To Do About It by Gary Leon Hill. The title is so curious that the book has already achieved global sales of over 15,000 copies. Bit of a shame really as I had high hopes for a recent computer book published by Syngress Media and entitled Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal Power Tools which is a fine dissertation on aspects of Open Source security and obtainable (sometimes) through my illustrious organization. Fortunately however I didn’t have a bet on the Diagram Prize this year.

Talking about names it isn’t just the book title that can arouse curiosity. Sometimes the name of the author is enough to catch the eye of the casual browser. In recent weeks a book called The Traveller has been steadily climbing the mass market paperback charts. The hype is there – “International Bestseller – the new Da Vinci Code” – the publishers have given the book its own website www.traveler-book.com and so far it has reached number 17 in the mass market fiction charts. The author is John Twelve Hawks. Isn’t that brilliant? Why weren’t my children given memorable middle names like “Twenty-Eight” or “Sixty-Two”?

And talking about the Da Vinci Code I am getting great pleasure from reports of the plagiarism court case which is taking place in the High Court. My Mum has got around to reading Dan Brown’s bestseller and finds the plot badly constructed and the actual writing rather poor. She does come from a hard school of publishing however (Jonathan Cape in the company’s formative years). What fascinates me about the court case is the insight it gives into a best-selling author’s torment while writing.

Dan Brown started writing when he read a Sidney Sheldon thriller and thought “I can do better than that”. He claims that, like a musician, writing is something that must be practiced continuously and thus he writes seven-days-a-week. Physical fitness and stamina play a part (writing starts at 4.00am each day, and after each hour he does some press-ups and other exercises). On occasion he hangs upside-down using “suspension boots” to clear his brain or something. Maybe by hanging upside-down myself I’ll become a better blogger, but I’ll have to clear it with the wife first, otherwise I might experience difficulties reverting to the normal vertical standing position