Here are the contenders for the Diagram Prize for the year's oddest book title. My personal favorite is The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais. I don't think they've looked deeply enough. Some of the titles, like Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring, make perfect sense to me, and don't belong in this list, IMHO.

Here is a claim for "the world's first chain novel," AirBorne, inspired by thriller writer James Patterson." Patterson will write the first and last chapter. Other selected writers will serially write the middle chapters.

However, I hereby call them on the carpet for their claim. A group of well-known Florida writers did this in 1996 in Naked Came the Manatee. The authors of this novel include Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Les Standiford, Paul Levine, Edna Buchanan, James W. Hall, Carolina Hospital, Evelyn Mayerson, Tananarive Due, Brian Antoni, Vicki Hendricks and John Dufresne. This serial novel is a mystery parody, giving a nod to a delicious literary hoax, Naked Came the Stranger. (I happen to have a copy of Naked Came the Manatee, signed by all authors.)

AP via Google: Various historians and authors have signed an open letter asking The Washington Post not to shut down their Sunday Book World, one of the few remaining stand-alone book sections. The Post wants to incorporate the book section into another section of the newspaper as a cost-savings measure.

John Scalzi over at his Whatever blog has an open thread for recommending books for the holidays.

Given his status as a science fiction writer, I'd guess that many of the people contributing to the thread will lean towards genre fiction, but I can see already that there are young adult, literary, and other categories there as well. Worth checking out. I know I'm looking for myself and for people I'll buy gifts for.

Although this is targeted to youngish urban women, it's pretty funny for word-lovers of all sorts. The Daily Candy Lexicon -- words that don't exist, but should -- is now a book (order it here). You can get a flavor by reading a sample or the press release:

Are you a cereal monogamist? Annoyed your party was crashed by a nontourage? Proud to be a whor d'ouevre? Whether it's a group of surfers, bankers, or co-workers, every clique has its own dialect -- and now young urban women have one, too....

Dany Levy, founder and editor-in-chief of DailyCandy [says,] "Upon hearing the words, most will know exactly what the definitions are. After all, there's only one way to describe annoyingly loud cell phone conversations (yellular) or that older woman dressing way too flashy for her age (teenile)."

... Some examples include: drimming, a verb, meaning drunk instant-messaging; fabric-ation, a noun, is the involuntary impulse to lie when the salesgirl asks what size you are; lady business casual, an adverb, is when your hoo-ha is past due for a wax; post-modem, a noun, is the freak-out you experience when your Internet goes dead; gabbin pressure, a noun, is the sense of obligation to chat to the person next to you during a flight; snoopid, an adjective, means leaving an obvious trail when snooping through your mate's belongings; and SCUM, an acronym, is a Self-Centered Urban Male.

Remember Rich Hall's "Sniglets"? Different generation, same idea, still pretty funny.