The Bookseller.com

18th May 2008

Joel Rickett is deputy editor of The Bookseller, and also writes columns for the Guardian and Screen International.

A prize oddity

26.02.08

The circus has started again. Yup, we've announced the shortlist for The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, to the customary global media frenzy. As the official media representative of the prize's custodian Horace Bent, I have been doing the rounds of the radio stations - from Radio 4's Today (a stalwart supporter of the prize), to Ireland's Newstalk, to the Michael Smerconish Program on Philadelphia's The Big Talker, which is apparently a "1210AM WPHT, CBS affiliate, 50,000 Watt station".

This is always a fascinating experience, laying bare cultural divides. The Irish seem to love the way the Diagram shines a light on the tiniest niche obsessions. The Americans think it's all "wacky" in a kind of "woh" way. The BBC World Service usually ask very sincerely about the different national cultures represented by the books - and last year they just couldn't understand why Tattoed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan was a strange or funny title. All of them want to know how publishers and authors come up with the titles. Nobody can answer that: ideally the oddity is unknowing.

All these airwaves - plus articles as far and wide as the New York Times, the Macau Daily Times and iAfrica.com - have helped generate a typhoon of visits to thebookseller.com, with over 3,500 votes by Monday morning. So far the frontrunner is If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs. It's certainly a funny title, but is it really odd enough? I'm drawn to the quieter charms of Cheese Problems Solved, which would make a nice companion to the 1988 winner Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw.

The global fascination with the prize also brings some more leftfield enquiries. Today I was thrilled to be contacted by the son of Derek Willan, the author of 1996 Diagram winner Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (published by the Helenic Philatelic Society). He tells me that his dad will be 91 this year, is in excellent health and remains "the leading authority on this subject".

Mr Willan and many others will be delighted to hear that we're working on a book to celebrate 30 years of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize. To be published this autumn - watch this space - it will feature all the triumphant titles as well as those forgotten gems (Big and Very Big Hole Drilling, for example). An essential gift for anyone who likes the world to be an odder place.





 

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