It’s almost your last chance to vote in this year’s Diagram Prize. Never heard of it? Well, it’s the literary world’s most unusual accolade, now in its 31st year, and is awarded to the book with the most bizarre title.
Currently leading the way, with 31% of the vote, is The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais. But also still very much in the running are Baboon Metaphysics – one for Richard Dawkins, perhaps? – and the invaluable Curbside Consultation of the Colon. Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring was the early leader, but now languishes in last place, clearly appealing to far too specialist a readership.
The field is made up by the eminently practical The Large Sieve and its Applications and the strangely alluring but also slightly alarming Strip and Knit with Style.
Titles are nominated by readers of book trade magazine, The Bookseller, who run the prize. The winner is awarded a magnum of champagne or a bottle of finest claret. Voting closes on 27th March and you can take part here.
The first ever winner, in 1978, was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. Other winners have included The Joy of Chickens, The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America and Bombproof Your Horse.
Last year’s competition managed widespread media coverage on two counts: the winner – If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs – seemed to breach the usual condition of entry that books with deliberately silly titles not be considered; it was also noted that more people placed a vote on the Diagram Prize than had participated on the public vote on the Man Booker Prize for Fiction (although the Man Booker vote was just a poll rather than being how the winner was decided).
In 2008, there was also a poll to decide the Diagram of Diagrams, with Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers triumphing as the best winner in the Prize’s thirty year history, much to the bafflement of its author, Derek Willan.
A new collection of winners, shortlisted titles and other memorably daft book titles was published last year, called How To Avoid Huge Ships, and Other Implausibly Titled Books, and it makes the perfect gift for both the book lover and people who don’t think books have any real value at all.
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