Nominations for 2013 Diagram Prize!

The Diagram Prize  surely ranks with the Razzies and the IgNobels as one of the most coveted awards availale in this world today A few days ago the nominations for the 2013 prize were announcedandquite a fine line up there is as ever!

How Tea Cosies Changed the World – the 160-page follow-up to Really Wild Tea Cosies – is up against How to Sharpen Pencils and God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis to win the little sought-after accolade of the oddest book title of the year.

Loani Prior's tea cosy extravaganza, containing "24 vibrant new designs that transform the conventional tea cosy into a knitted piece of art", is one of six books shortlisted for the Diagram prize, alongside David Rees's "manifesto and a fully illustrated walk-through of the many, many, many ways to sharpen a pencil" and Tom Hickman's look at man's relationship with his penis.
A niche guide to pigeon housing, Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts, fairy hunter Reginald Bakeley's Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop and Was Hitler Ill?, an examination from a historian and a professor of medicine of whether Adolf Hitler was fully responsible for his crimes, complete the lineup for this year's Diagram prize

The Bookseller's Philip Stone said he was "particularly fond" this year of How to Sharpen Pencils, "not only because of its oddity, but because I find something beautiful in the fact a publisher has been brave enough to publish a book concerning a centuries-old implement in hardback in the digital age. Upon my next trip to my local independent bookshop, I hope to see it alongside all the pornographic literature that appears to be keeping the entire book industry in rude health."

According to Stone, the prize "draws welcome attention to an undervalued art".

"Publishers and booksellers know only too well that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book," he continued. "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian has sold almost 1m copies to date, while books such as Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared perhaps all owe some of their success to their unusual monikers."

The winner will be chosen by a public vote at thebookseller.com and welovethisbook.com and announced on 22 March. The Bookseller's diarist and the prize's custodian Horace Bent said: "It remains a great honour of mine to represent a prize that draws attention to authors not called Hilary Mantel that may need a little help in gaining column inches and subsequently entering public consciousness and bookshop bestseller bays."

The shortlist

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley (Conari, £9.99)
God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis by Tom Hickman (Square Peg, £12.99)
How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior (Murdoch, £12.99)
How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees (Melville House, £12.99)
Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts by Jerry Gagne (Foy's Pet Supplies, £51.50)
Was Hitler Ill? by Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle (Polity Press, £20)

I cant wait to see who wins!

Fear the Amalgam Horde

The BBC reports that the winner of this year’s Diagram Prize for oddest book title is….

….Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way. Written by by former dentist Michael Young, the book offers a guide on how to build an empire in the dentistry field.

In his book, Young argues that despite the western world viewing the legendary warrior in negative terms, his warmongering tenacity is required to build a successful business.

Its closest rival was 8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings, which details the development and application of friction stir welding at a German symposium last May.

This year's other shortlisted titles were What Colour Is Your Dog?, The Italian's One-Night Love-Child, Myth of the Social Volcano and The Generosity of the Dead.

Well there you have it… if Genghis Khan had the Golden Horde what do you call dentists that use is tactics? The Amalgam Horde?

And the winner of the Diagram prize 2009 is...

As usual it needs to be something special to win the Diagram prize for the oddest book title, especially when you are up against Baboon Metaphysics and Curbside Consultation, but this year’s winner is Philip M Parker and “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais”.

Yesterday’s Guardian reported that the man who has described himself as "the most published author in the history of the planet", might just as easily have been nominated for his vast library of other books. If they had the necessary disposable income, who could resist the niche appeal of The 2007-2012 Outlook for Lemon-Flavoured Bottled Water in Japan, a snip at $495, or The 2007 Import and Export Market for Household Refrigerators in Czech Republic (just $112)?

Parker, achieves his prolific authorship thanks to his invention of a machine which writes books, creating them from internet and database searches. "It's an undoubtedly odd title," said Philip Stone, charts editor and awards administrator at the Bookseller (which runs the Diagram prize). "I think it's slightly controversial as it was written by a computer, but given the number of celebrity memoirs out there that are ghostwritten, I don't think it's too strange."

The book highlights, he said, "an area that perhaps we are all guilty of ignoring as we push our trolleys down supermarket aisles. What does the future hold for these items? Well, given that fromage frais normally comes in 60-gram containers, not 60-milligram, one would assume that the world outlook for 0.06-gram containers of fromage frais is pretty bleak. But I'm not willing to pay $795 to find out."

Fromage Frais... joins a selection of august winners including The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling, and The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today.

31st Diagram Prize shortlist announced

I know I’m a bit late in reporting this but The Bookseller Magazine has announced its shortlist for the 31st Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year of the strangest book titles published this year.

The shortlisted titles are:

* Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press)

* Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash (SLACK Incorporated)

* The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press)

* Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T)

* Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead)

* The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker (Icon Group International) click here for an earlier post on this literary titan

The winner will be chosen by an internet vote at the Bookseller website and will be announced on 27 March. The winner will join such august company as High Performance Stiffened Structures, Bombproof Your Horse, Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual and last year’s winner If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs

Horace Bent, from the magazine said: "In this, the 31st year of the prestigious award, never have I found it so problematic to pick a shortlist of just six. Given the economic gloom, I would not have blamed publishers if they'd decided to slash their lists. But it gives me great pleasure to report that diversity lives!"

Sales Analyst at The Bookseller, Philip Stone said: "We received a huge number of entries this year and the debate was furious as to which would be included on the shortlist. Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected. We also had to exclude a few titles because they were published before 2008including Monumental Beginnings: Archaeology of the N4 Sligo Inner Relief Road.

I await the outcome with bated breath.

Bookseller/Diagram Prize - A belated update

In March the shortlist for the Bookseller/Diagram prize was announced. The hot favourite to win the coveted accolade (which is awarded to the book with the oddest title) was "How green were the Nazis?".


The prize was in fact won in April by the The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Julian Montague). A worthy winner indeed. Mr Montague's website on shopping cart identification can be accessed here - perfect for a rainy day!