These short-listed odd book titles will have you in stitches
Advanced research into concrete and a guide on how to divorce a witch are among the books in the running for one of the world’s oddest literary prizes.
Readers will be asked to pick a winner in the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2014 from seven strange publications.
The first title on the short-list is Advanced Pavement Research: Selected, Peer Reviewed Papers From The 3rd International Conference On Concrete Pavements Design, Construction, And Rehabilitation.
It is up against Divorcing A Real Witch: For Pagans And The People That Used To Love Them; Strangers Have The Best Candy; The Madwoman In The Volvo: My Year Of Raging Hormones and Nature’s Nether Regions, which is described as a “fascinating history of the evolution of genitals”.
Also nominated are The Ugly Wife Is A Treasure At Home and Where Do Camels Belong?.
The winner of the prize, set up in 1978 by two publishers as a way to pass the time at the Frankfurt Book Fair, is announced next month.
Features editor of The Bookseller Tom Tivnan, who organises the award, said the seven books were “unparalleled in their oddity”.
He said: “The past year has been a bumper one for the peculiar, especially in the areas of relationships and science. Nature’s Nether Regions is a long-overdue look at the genitals of the birds and bees (and everything in between), while Where Do Camels Belong? is the existential question that has plagued philosophers for centuries.
“This is one of the strongest years I have seen in more than three decades of administering the prize, which highlights the creme de la creme of unintentionally nonsensical, absurd and downright head-scratching titles.”
The first Diagram Prize was awarded in 1978 to Proceedings Of The Second International Workshop On Nude Mice.
Other past winners include 1992’s How To Avoid Huge Ships, 1996’s Greek Rural Postmen And Their Cancellation Numbers, and 2012’s Cooking With Poo.
There is no real prize, but the person who nominates the eventual winner is traditionally given a “passable bottle of claret”.
