good year for odd book titles

2011 seems to have been a good year for strange book titles, as the diagram shortlist is looking very strong. So good in fact that my suggestion, for which I had very high hopes, didn't make it into the final 7. In fact I had made several suggestions, but the most promising one was:



Karsai Nei Tsang: Therapeutic Massage for the Sexual Organs

Never mind, I love the 7 titles that were selected, haven't even made up my mind yet who to vote for.

The shortlist (complete with explanations from the Booksellers magazine website) includes:

A Century of Sand Dredging in the Bristol Channel: Volume Two by Peter Gosson (Amberley). A book that documents the sand trade from its inception in 1912 to the present day, focusing on the Welsh coast.


Cooking with Poo by Saiyuud Diwong (Urban Neighbours of Hope). Thai cookbook. “Poo” is Thai for “crab” and is Diwong’s nickname.


Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World by Aino Praakli (Kirjastus Elmatar). Covers styles of socks and stockings found in Estonian knitting.


The Great Singapore Penis Panic: And the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott D Mendelson (Createspace). An analysis of the “Koro” psychiatric epidemic that hit the island of Singapore in 1967.

Mr Andoh's Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge by Stephen Curry and Takayoshi Andoh (Royd Press). The story of Koichi Andoh, who travelled from Japan to Yorkshire in the 1930s to train workers at a hatchery business the art of determining the sex of one-day-old chicks.


A Taxonomy of Office Chairs by Jonathan Olivares (Phaidon). Exhaustive overview of the evolution of the modern office chair.


The Mushroom in Christian Art by John A Rush (North Atlantic Books). In which the author reveals that Jesus is a personification of the Holy Mushroom, Amanita Muscaria.

in fact, I've just seen A Taxonomy of Office Chairs at an Oxfam bookshop, but was just about able to resist the temptation. Don't think it will win either.

The Guardian has a picture gallery with the covers of all seven books, in case it helps with the voting.

oddbins run dry

the Guardian reports it's the end of the road for mildly eccentric wine merchants chain OddBins, which happens to be my age. I loved their crazy catalogue graphics and used to buy my Havana Club (Cuban rum) from there, but I have to say that at least in the last three years, when I did some exploratory wine shopping, they never had any Cotes du Rhone bottles that might have tempted me. I mostly ended up importing them from the continent or buying them at M&S.

Just recently, I picked up brochure called "Oddyssey" from one of the branches (we have three within easy cycling distance), which relates the intriguing history of the chain, now looking certain to be coming to an end.

Here is a photo of the branch on Oxford's High Street,taken just a few days ago:



PS Possibly one of the last bottles they sold before going into administration arrived at my house just yesterday, it was the prize for spotting the odd book title that won the Diagram Prize.

Genghis Khan's winning ways

I’m so excited – just found out I’m in the shortlist for a literary prize. Well, errr, a book title that I suggested for the Diagram Prize (oddest book title of the year) is on the shortlist: Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way. And last time I checked the online votes, it was leading by a large margin. [Update 28.3.: turns out Genghis Khan and I actually won the award! Woo hooooo!]

Still haven’t checked with my dentist whether she’s following this approach. We should be told.

The six titles on the shortlist are:

8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings
Various authors (TWI)
The Generosity of the Dead
Graciela Nowenstein (Ashgate)
The Italian's One-night Love Child
Cathy Williams (Mills & Boon)
Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way
Michael R Young (Radcliffe)
Myth of the Social Volcano
Martin King Whyte (Stanford University Press)
What Color Is Your Dog?
Joel Silverman (Kennel Club)

I love the last one, actually, as it shows how you can achieve absurdity with very simple means, without using a single unusual word.

A collection of 50 book covers from the shortlists of the first 30 years of the prize was published in 2008: How to Avoid Huge Ships: And Other Implausibly Titled Books. Sadly my personal favourite "Procrastination and task avoidance, a practical guide" (shortlisted some time in the late 90s) isn't included.

Recently, oddity lovers in Germany have also set up a prize: Kuriosester Buchtitel. With my most recent title “9 Millionen Fahrräder am Rande des Universums,” I might be at risk of getting nominated. Which would be ironic and nicely circular, as the original Diagram Prize is covered in one of the chapters, greek rural postmen and all.


PS I don't think I own a single book from the Diagram shortlists. Maybe I should get this one, it got glowing reviews at amazon:




amazon.co.uk

... and the winner is ...

seeing I posted on the shortlist for the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of 2009, I have to report the final result as well.

So the winner, revealed in Horace Bent's blog this week is:

Daina Taimina: Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (A K Peters)



I actually voted for this one, if only on the grounds that it represents an interesting way to popularise mathematics. Although I was also tempted by Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, which didn't reach the medal ranks.

PS: if you do want to take your needlework into non-euclidian realms, amazon.co.uk has the book, but you'll need some patience: Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 weeks. Looks like they're not monitoring this prize.

the oddest vote

At last, the shortlist for the most important of all literary prizes has been reveiled. In the running for the Diagram Prize, which honours the oddest book title of the past year, are:

The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich

Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes

Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots

What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?

Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter

More details about these titles are here, and you can vote for your favourite at http://www.thebookseller.com/. Once you've voted, you'll be shown the current percentages of votes. I was very surprised to see that my favourite title was in the lead, though my second favourite was only in 5th place.

Sadly, I had no luck with the titles I proposed this time round, but will keep trying ...

A book collecting timeless jewels from the first 30 years of the prize has been published in 2008, it's called "How to avoid huge ships".

oddest title ever

... and the Diagram of Diagrams, i.e. the award for the oddest title ever (or at least in the last 30 years) goes to:

Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers.

published by the Greek Hellenic Philatelic Society of Great Britain, which "exists to encourage the collection of Greek stamps and to promote their study".

source

In celebration, the Guardian has put up a gallery of 30 odd titles.

Glad to see none of my weird books was picked. It's always a question of perspective, I guess. Most of the authors concerned probably considered their title perfectly reasonable.

what an odd title

I've been a fan of the "oddest book title of the year award" (now known as the Diagram prize) for years, so I'm chuffed to see a feature in the Guardian about this most entertaining of competitions in the literary world. Sadly my personal favourite "Procrastination and task avoidance, a practical guide" (shortlisted some time in the late 90s) isn't among the covers shown, but I trust it will feature in the book due out September 5th: How to avoid huge ships, and other implausibly titled books.

This book, like any other titles you may now be pondering, doesn't qualify for the award, though. The key condition is that the title must be unintentionally funny, so the prize committee will weed out anybody under suspicion of creating a weird title on purpose.