Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Bookseller/Diagram Prize 2009

‘The Diagram Prize’. Have you heard of it? Wikipedia says its full title’s ‘The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year’. Humorous, literary and annual, it’s named after the British trade magazine The Bookseller, and London-based information and graphics company the Diagram Group. Originally organised as light relief during the Frankfurt Book Fair, it’s been awarded each year since 1978 – except 1987 and 1991 when no title was thought odd enough. Initially the winner was decided by a panel of judges, but since 2000 it’s been via a public vote on The Bookseller’s website. Allegedly legendary Bookseller diarist Horace Bent creates the shortlist. The winner receives the publicity but nothing tangible. Here’s the 6-item 2009 shortlist. And the winner, with 42% of the 4,500+ public votes, and announced by Bent last Friday, is Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes. A Bookseller spokesman saidI think what won it for Crocheting Adventure is that, very simply, the title is completely bonkers. On the one hand you have the typically feminine, gentle and woolly world of needlework and on the other, the exciting but incredibly un-woolly world of hyperbolic geometry and negative curvature’. Me? As a medico, I couldn’t go past The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. All 30 winners are listed here. If you want a chuckle, this’ll give you one. Or more.

P.S. I’m 100% sure Sweetheart Vivienne’s book Alzheimer's: A Love Story will never win the Diagram Prize. Ho hum.

1 comment:

Chris Burrows said...

Poor Sel, he wondered what on earth I was reading, when I replied Book titles, I think he really thought I had lost it; those dead people who won't really believe they are dead must be a pain, enough to give you "crazy buttocks" I should think!