A problem you might not want to solve

Lonely Planet is offering free copies of its Frankfurt Condensed guide to my readers who can come up with the best excuses for escaping from their stands at the Frankfurt Book Fair. E-mail your entries to me; the prizes will be at the LP stand at the fair.

Here's my suggestion: "I'm off to research my submission for the book trade's premier literary prize." The Diagram Prize, that is: the prestigious accolade given since 1978 to the oddest title of the year. Frankfurt has traditionally been the happiest hunting ground for oddity spotters, throwing up such classics as Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (University of Tokyo Press).

However, just as rights sellers, in the era of fax and e-mail, no longer rely so heavily on book fairs for trading, so oddity spotters are able to pursue their calling all year round. The year 2000 has already seen some strong Diagram entries, as readers of my columns of 14th July and 18th August will know. More have come in since then.

Transport is often a pleasingly odd theme, as Darryl Reach, who publishes in this area at Haynes, recognises. He sends in the collectable Classic American Funeral Vehicles (Iconografix). Sue Barnard offers the less glamorous An Illustrated History of Dustcarts (Ian Allan). Mark Campbell sends in the Institute of Petroleum's practical and doubtless definitive guide, Access to the Top of Road Tankers.

A&C Black was a contender last year with Derek Hutchinson's Guide to Eskimo Rolling. Neil Hornick suggests another of the company's titles that makes sense to aficionados but may be misinterpreted by lay people: Throwing Pots.

I am afraid that sex has reared its ugly head, featuring in two entries: from Elsbeth Lindner, Sex, Lies and the Truth About Uterine Fibroids (Putnam); and, from Helmut Schwarzer, The Sexual Male: Problems and Solutions (Norton). The solution? How welcome is that?

Mr Schwarzer also suggests Stink Bugs of Economic Importance in America North of Mexico (CRC Press). On a similar theme, Lynette Owen submits Inert Gases in the Control of Museum Insect Pests (Getty Trust).



Readers of The Organ's Encounter column may have seen June Formby's recollections of her life in bookselling (29th September).

One such reader was Christopher Foyle, named and shamed by Ms Formby in the piece as the seemingly heartless individual who sacked her from her first job at Foyles—he was then Foyles' HR manager—for returning from a day off sick without a doctor's letter. Ms Formby recalled her devastation at being sacked; she thought, she said, that she would never work again.

On reading her account, the chivalrous Mr Foyle, although he did not remember the incident, immediately phoned Ms Formby to arrange lunch. "It was one of the most enjoyable lunches I've ever had and we left as firm friends," a placated Ms Formby tells me. "That's another person I'm no longer putting pins into."



Like Ms Formby, I have enjoyed Mr Foyle's hospitality recently. Over a glass of Scotch, he told me of the clearing out and fumigation of the small, musty and chaotic back office on the fourth floor of the bookshop. In the light of the alleged fraud at the shop, had there been any missing millions under the abandoned clothing and piles of books? No, Mr Foyle told me; "But we did find some share certificates." How much were they worth? "Oh," he said dismissively, "just a few thousand."



Virago launched Joan Schenkar's Truly Wilde with tea at the Savoy last week; an apt setting in which to celebrate a biography of Oscar Wilde's niece, the fabulously beautiful Dolly Wilde, who spent much of her life swanning round stylish Parisian salons despite having scarcely a penny to her name. Like Oscar, Dolly was noted for her witty epigrams; she was gay too, and there is a delightful photograph of her cross-dressed as her notorious uncle.

Another nice touch, for those who enjoyed Kate Summerscale's The Queen of Whale Cay (Fourth Estate): Dolly and the dashing heiress Joe Carstairs, the subject of Ms Summerscale's biography, were teenage sweethearts, driving ambulances together during the Great War.



Some inside info from the launch at Claridges of Jackie Collins' new novel, Lethal Seduction (Simon & Schuster): Ian Chapman told the guests that 90,000 copies of the novel had been sold into the UK book trade. Whereas her previous publisher, Macmillan, had sold at publication only 80,000 copies, UK and overseas. One may assume that Mr Chapman, who was outed by Ms Collins as the wearer of "the worst jogging trousers I ever saw", was reporting these figures authoritatively: he was of course m.d. of Macmillan at the time.



Jeffrey Archer has some humble words to offer all those who have bought his books over the years: he is most grateful. At a press launch with theatre journalists to promote his play "The Accused", Lord Archer offered this resumé of his philosophy: "One's always looking to be more entertaining, and that's what I am: a simple entertainer. My books are simple entertainments; I don't think they're anything else. That 120 million people have bought them is very kind of them."



Stephen Mesquita of the AA sends me a cutting from French book trade organ Livres Hebdo. Almost all of Hachette's 63-strong sales force have stopped work, the paper reports, in opposition to plans to split the company's literature division into two groups. Only in France, one might think; but some people said that about the striking truck drivers.



Booker reactions: India Knight (Sunday Times) does not like the Booker shortlist. Apart from Ishiguro's novel, the titles "sound coma-inducingly boring". Do we take it that she has not read them?

David Robson (Sunday Telegraph) lamented the choice of six novels all set in the past. Robert McCrum (Observer) was much more positive: "challenging, fresh, unusual and fairly wide-ranging", he said.

Harriet Spicer, former head of Virago, has been getting some stick following her appointment as temporary head of the Lottery Commission. The Daily Mail portrait of her was in the classic tradition of that paper.

horace bent

bent@bookseller.co.uk