No soup for you PING
http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs//112817-the-diagram-prize-09-the-shortlist.html
THE BOOKSELLER TOWERS, London. 2009. A year when lists were slashed, advances were cut, employees were given the boot, book sales suffered a slight malaise (see: celebrity memoirs), and yet, and yet . . . oddity endured.
I received a record number of submissions for the 2009 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, almost treble the number I received for 2008. And I have Twitter largely to thank, for 50 submissions were Tweeted in my general direction. Sadly, however, almost half the submissions were ineligible as they were published well before 2009. They raised a smile nonethelessSketches of a Few Jellyfish, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers, and Seeing and Sensing Gnomes: Hey Looky Heahh, to name but three.
However, even after the initial cull, the list was still considerable in size, meaning my panel of esteemed literary minds and I were forced into ruthlessness, brutally cutting any submission we felt carried a deliberately odd title. As such, submissions including Bacon: A Love Story, The Origin of Faeces and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, fell at this second hurdle. But even after this second cull, choosing a shortlist still proved formidable, with equal measures of both controversial and emotional.
However, finally, and without further ado, I give you the final six:
- The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
by Ellen Scherl and Marla Dubinsky (Slack Inc)
- Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich
by James A Yannes (Trafford)
- Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
by Daina Taimina(A K Peters)
- Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
by Ronald C Arkin (CRC Press)
- What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?
by Tara Jansen-Meyer (Mirror)
- Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
by David Crompton (Glenstrae Press)
Also list of previous winners in the wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookseller/Diagram_Prize_for_Oddest_Title_of_the_Year
2005 winner:
People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It