The Bookseller/Diagram Prize: the one that really matters

It may not have the prestige of the Booker Prize and its winners are not as celebrated as Nobel (or perhaps even IgNobel) prize winners but the Bookseller/Diagram Prize, which is awarded for the oddest book title, truly deserves to rank among the greats.

Bookseller magazine has released its shortlist for the 2007 prize. Among the hopefuls are:

• How Green Were the Nazis?( edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller),
  

• D. Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans (Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson), and
  

• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Julian Montague)

The winning author will receive a bottle of champagne for their efforts and a sense of honour that comes from victory. Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said: "While rival literary awards have sold out, The Bookseller/Diagram Prize has refused all offers of corporate sponsorship for 29 years. It continues to celebrate the bizarre, the strange, and the simply odd. This year's shortlist shows that despite publishers cutting back their lists, literary diversity continues to flourish."

Roll of honour: selected past winners

The Joy of Chickens (1980)
The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today (1984)
Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (1986)
How to Avoid Huge Ships (1992)
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996)
The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (2003)