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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year

The shortlist for this year's Bookseller/Diagram prize has been announced. This prize, for the oddest book title of the year, has been running since 1978.
This year's shortlist can be seen at the Bookseller website, dated 22 February. Then, with appetite for more silliness whetted, the list of past winners can be seen in Wikipedia. Sadly we are too late to be able to vote for the winner. We'll have to make a diary note and try to be on time in 2009!
What's your favourite title? I think The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification would be hard to go past in the library, ditto Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground.
I got a heads up on this prize this year (I've seen it before) from the excellent Seattle Public Library blog. The article there also refers to a book, Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities by Russell Ash & Brian Lake. Titles contained in this hilarious sounding read (I will be ordering a copy for BMCC Library if we don't already have it) include: The Resistance of Piles to Penetration, Games You Can Play with Your Pussy, The Boy Fancier, Noddy Loses His Clothes (from Enid Blyton's Gay Story Book - of course) and the unforgettable A Glowing and Graphic Description of the Great Hole.
The SPL blog, as you will have seen, also contains the above picture of a book called Knitting with Dog Hair :better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you'll never meet, a subject which I remember Sharon and I having a discussion about . . . Sharon spins her own wool you see, I wonder if I should order that one too?

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