The Diagram Prize
The Bookseller magazine has just announced the 2006 winner of the Diagram Prize, awarded annually since 1978 for the Oddest Book Title.
The winner: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
The runner-up: Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan.
Other contenders this year were How Green were the Nazis? and Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.
More on the prize here, but here's a list of all the previous winners (of which my favourite is The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories):
1978: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
1979: The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
1980: The Joy of Chickens
1981: Last Chance at Love - Terminal Romances
1982: Population and Other Problems
1983: The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
1984: The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
1985: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts
1986: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
1988: Versailles: The View from Sweden
1989: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
1990: Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
1992: How to Avoid Huge Ships
1993: American Bottom Archaeology
1994: Highlights in the History of Concrete
1995: Reusing Old Graves
1996: Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
1997: The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
1998: Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
1999: Weeds in a Changing World
2000: Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures
2001: Butterworth's Corporate Manslaughter Service
2002: Living with Crazy Buttocks
2003: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
2004: Bombproof Your Horse
2005: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
The winner: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
The runner-up: Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan.
Other contenders this year were How Green were the Nazis? and Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.
More on the prize here, but here's a list of all the previous winners (of which my favourite is The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories):
1978: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
1979: The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
1980: The Joy of Chickens
1981: Last Chance at Love - Terminal Romances
1982: Population and Other Problems
1983: The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
1984: The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
1985: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts
1986: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
1988: Versailles: The View from Sweden
1989: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
1990: Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
1992: How to Avoid Huge Ships
1993: American Bottom Archaeology
1994: Highlights in the History of Concrete
1995: Reusing Old Graves
1996: Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
1997: The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
1998: Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
1999: Weeds in a Changing World
2000: Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures
2001: Butterworth's Corporate Manslaughter Service
2002: Living with Crazy Buttocks
2003: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
2004: Bombproof Your Horse
2005: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It