I tend not to bother with book prizes, mainly because I’m to busy reading and also I hate being told there are books I need to read when most turn out to be disappointing, so further to my (almost) amusing post of book titles that I did a while ago, Pure Art I have been mooching Wikipedia to find something I can blatantly copy and paste for you until I get some more book reviews finished.
Here are the winners of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year:
| 1978 | Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice | Various authors | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution | Barbara Sherman Heyl | ||
| 1980 | The Joy of Chickens | Dennis Nolan | ||
| 1981 | Last Chance at Love – Terminal Romances | Various authors | ||
| 1982 | Population and Other Problems: Family Planning, Housing 1,000 million, Labour Employment | Various authors | ||
| 1983 | Unsolved Problems of Modern Theory of Lengthwise Rolling | A. I. Tselikov, G. S. Nikitin and S. E. Rokotyan | ||
| 1984 | The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History, and Its Role in the World Today | Anne Wilson | ||
| 1985 | Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts | Donald L. Wilson | ||
| 1986 | Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality | Glenn C. Ellenbogen | ||
| 1987 | No Award | |||
| 1988 | Versailles: The View From Sweden | Elaine Dee and Guy Walton | ||
| 1989 | How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art | Kathleen Meyer | ||
| 1990 | Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual | Pat Califia | ||
| 1991 | No award | |||
| 1992 | How to Avoid Huge Ships | John W. Trimmer | ||
| 1993 | American Bottom Archaeology | Charles J. Bareis and James W. Porter | ||
| 1994 | Highlights in the History of Concrete | C. C. Stanley | ||
| 1995 | Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes | Douglas Davies and Alastair Shaw | ||
| 1996 | Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers | Derek Willan | ||
| 1997 | The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition | Alex Comfort | ||
| 1998 | Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding: New Opportunities to Widen the Use of Straw | Gareth Williams | ||
| 1999 | Weeds in a Changing World: British Crop Protection Council Symposium Proceedings No. 64 | Charles H. Stirton | ||
| 2000 | Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures | IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers) | ||
| 2001 | Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service | Gerard Forlin | ||
| 2002 | Living with Crazy Buttocks | Kaz Cooke | ||
| 2003 | The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories | Alisa Surkis and Monica Nolan | ||
| 2004 | Bombproof Your Horse | Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden | ||
| 2005 | People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It | Gary Leon Hill | ||
| 2006 | The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification | Julian Montague | ||
| 2007 | If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs | Big Boom | ||
| 2008 | The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais | Philip M. Parker | ||
| 2009 | Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes | Daina Taimina | ||
| 2010 | Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way | Michael R. Young | ||
| 2011 | Cooking with Poo | Saiyuud Diwong |
Book to the Future 
What a set of titles. Cracking stuff. Will do more research into some of these, they sound interesting!
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I never see them in book shops though, maybe I just don’t go to enough of them, I crave words….still.
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Fabulous! I pick books for their covers (shock! horror!) or titles so I think you’ve just added a hefty bunch to my copious TBR list!
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P.S. I’ve just bought ‘I’m a genius of unspeakable evil and I want to be your class president’ for that very reason.
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Ha! fantastic, I would love to hear all about that one when your done, it appears to my sense of despotism, that is why I always carry a cat that I call Chairman Meow.
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Living with Crazy Buttocks sounds fab!
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I wish I had some crazy buttocks, not my own of course just some random ones to poke. It would be a good conversation starter at parties.
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These are hilarious! Wasn’t the title for 1988 another one of Sarah Palin’s views on international politics??? 😉
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Haha, whatever happened to her, did she lose that lipstick that Obama was on about? I find the whole politics thing confusing when animals are brought in, it’s especially odd as its unproven scientific fact that animals can’t actually lie.
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I love it. This is true service to the world of literature….you should start a Reader’s Challenge based on the above. I wonder why there was no award in 1987 and 1991? And I wonder how many are deliberately meant to be silly? Kaz Cooke’s Living with Crazy Buttocks is certainly meant to be – she’s a comedian. I prefer the unintentionally hilarious myself…
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I’m with you on that, nothing beats a strangely worded title, that no one seems to have taken the time to notice was a bit mental. Your lesbian ‘osses got me on the road to this. Soit’s all your fault I got mired in the world of the strange…
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And your favourite is….
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Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes, most definitely. it is something I would be fascinated to read about. I’m not macabre…honest!
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I wonder if some of these folks used government funds to research on nude mice. lol !
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I think it’s worth getting a grant to find out, I would be up for looking at sleeping horses to see if they twitch, for a small fee of say £65,000.
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This made me laugh so much. Thanks for sharing.
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The joys of copy and paste!
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It must have taken you ages to copy and paste that lot. Thanks for the laughs. Laughing is the best form of medicine.
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Interesting and hilarious list. I wonder what the The Joy of Chickens is about. Do you notice chickens having fun? Last Chance at Love – Terminal Romances is something I am very afraid to read as it will surely give me a tremendous heartbreak after.
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it does seem sad, it’s quite dark really in the context of ‘comedy’ names. I will observe chickens more. I have never seen a chicken smile or use a slide,maybe they only do that when us humans don’t watch.
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You do that. I can imagine what they do when we are not watching. I have watched Chicken Run movie, you know. Along with other funny cartoon movies.
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How could I forget Chicken Run, fine film that.
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I didn’t expect you actually watched that. Aha. There’s one more interesting than Chicken Run. Chicken Little! I like that. The sky is falling!
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I haven’t seen Chicken Little, may have to check that out. I think a chicken themed film weekend would go down a treat.
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What fun! You must really watch Chicken Little. I so love it. I hope you like it, too.
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Oh lordy …SteJ. Sums up civilization to a scary degree. Also laughing myself silly here!
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There are some insane creations out there indeed. Sometimes I want to despair, before sniggering at some of the titles.
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