Friday 7 March 2008

Diagram Time Again!

Time for some fun. Yes, it's Diagram prize time again: a couple of weeks ago The Bookseller announced the shortlist for this year's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. If you go to my post of 15 April last year, you can see last year's list and my comments on it. (It was won by Stray Shopping Carts of America, a Field Guide - but should I think have gone to How Green Were the Nazis).

Anyway, here's the list: see what you think, and if you want to vote, go to www.thebookseller.com

I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen

How to Write a How to Write Book

Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues

Cheese Problems Solved

People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs

It's a tough choice, though my favourite is the last one, which I noticed in the early stages of the nominations. However, I do wish one of the ones that missed the shortlist had made it: Drawing and Painting the Undead ... One starts imagining chapter titles and topics covered: Mixing Cadaver Tints with special recommendations for Rotting Flesh Tones? Make your Ectoplasm come to Life? What to do when the Sitter is just too Still? Conveying Propped Postures and Shambling Gaits: a Checklist. Guidelines in the Event your Sitter turns on you. The Artist as Seancer: creating a Model Dialogue with the Dead. Morbid Fascination: A Survey of Art's Fascination with the Corpse.

All right, all right, I'll stop now. It's not as though I have nothing better to do. I have a book to write, you know.

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