The annual contest for the Diagram Prize is under way. The competition seeks the book with the oddest title of the year. Past winners include:
- Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
- Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
- Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes
- People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
- Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way
The Telegraph reports that some of the finalists in this year’s competition are:
- Cooking with Poo, a Thai cooking book by Saiyuud Diwong. ‘Poo’ is Thai for ‘crab’ and is also the chef’s nickname.
- The Great Singapore Penis Panic And the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott D Mendelson … an analysis of the ‘Koro’ psychiatric epidemic that hit the island of Singapore in 1967.
- Mr Andoh’s Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge by Stephen Curry and Takayoshi Andoh … is the story of Koichi Andoh, who travelled from Japan to Yorkshire in the 1930s to train workers at a hatchery business the art of determining the sex of one-day-old chicks.
There’s more at the link. Great fun!
Peter