True Oddities

Being once again struck down by disease (seems to happen without fail roughly one week after climbing onto an airplane, given the inability of fellow passengers to cover their fucking mouths when coughing and hacking....), I'm mostly keeping close to the bed, but I happened to come across one glimmer of sunshine courtesy of the world wide web, and thought I'd share the news. It's once again the time of year in which The Bookseller magazine announces the winner of their annual Bookseller / Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

This tradition goes back to 1978, when publisher Bruce Robertson devised the contest as a diversion during the Frankfurt Book Fair, and Horace Bent of the British magazine The Bookseller created the award. It's a typically British type of competition, displaying an unabashed love of language and a healthy sense of the absurd. There are few rules to the contest, the major one being that publishers cannot nominate their own books (thus keeping the field free from purposefully odd book titles). Rather, the shortlist must be compiled from actually published volumes submitted by critics, librarians, booksellers and other publishers. The book with the oddest title wins.

I love this year's winner - The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, a statistical report selling for £795 - but find one of the runners-up to be equally wonderful, Dr. Brooks Cash's Curbside Consultation of the Colon. A glance through past winners and nominees suggests the plethora of abominations and oddities out there, such as:

Reusing Old Graves
Cheese Problems Solved
Highlights in the History of Concrete
Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
Versailles: The View From Sweden
Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
Squid Recruitment Dynamics
A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coatings
Living with Crazy Buttocks
How to Avoid Huge Ships