Today I noticed on Iain (M) Banks’ site that The Player of Games has made the final list of twenty-five titles for World Book Night. This event will be held on April 23rd and the organisers are looking for 20,000 givers to give away twenty-four copies each as a way to share their enthusiasm for The Player of Games.

Since The Player of Games is far and away my favourite of the Culture novels (and since The Culture is possibly my favourite fictional setting), I can think of lots of people onto who I would very happily inflict this novel. So I clicked through to the World Book Night website.

This is a definition of World that I found more than a little annoying:

World Book Night 2012 will be held on April 23 – in the US and the UK

So not World Book Night at all. Not even English Speaking Part of the World Book Night. In fact, it would be better described as US, UK and Ireland Book Night, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

I don’t object to the fact that the event is geographically limited, but I do find it annoying that the organisers have chosen such a misleading title to describe their geographically limited event. If they had called it US, UK and Ireland Book Night, I wouldn’t have bothered clicking through and you wouldn’t be reading this slightly ranty post.