Cheesus

Cheesy book takes prize for year's oddest title

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

I don't care if
the whole world freezes,
as long as I've got my
Cheddar Cheesus

LONDON – A heavyweight study of the future of soft cheese won Britain's annual competition to find the year's oddest book title on Friday.

"The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais," by Philip M. Parker won the Diagram Prize, awarded by trade magazine The Bookseller.

The runner-up was primate study "Baboon Metaphysics," by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth.

Horace Bent, who runs the award, said Parker's volume was a surprise winner given the competition from racier-sounding finalists like "Curbside Consultation of the Colon" — a medical manual — and hobby handbook "Strip and Knit With Style."

Bent said "Fromage Frais" was a worthy winner that had "turned the supermarket chiller into the petri dish of literary innovation."

Bent was courting controversy in awarding the prize to Parker, who is not a conventional author.

He is an American economist who has developed a computerized book-generator that gathers information on a topic and compiles it into a volume that can be printed on demand if a customer orders a copy.

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