Friday, February 24, 2012

It's time for the Diagram Prize once more!


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

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