The Diagram Prize seeks out bizarre book titles
We expected some oddities when reading over the winners of a contest that rewards bizarre book titles. But it鈥檚 a sign of the complete success of the Diagram Prize that this year鈥檚 list of honorees made us wonder if it was the real thing or if we were being punk鈥檇. As it happens, the prize is legit (if somewhat tongue-in-cheek), and so is this year鈥檚 winner, 鈥溾�� Equally real are the runner-ups, 鈥溾�� and 鈥�.鈥�
The contest is sponsored by the British trade magazine The Bookseller, receiving 4,500 votes on this year鈥檚 nominees, and says the award was 鈥渙riginally conceived as a way to avoid boredom at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, and was first awarded to 'Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice' in 1978.鈥�
Winning author , an adjunct associate professor of mathematics at Cornell University, told the Telegraph newspaper that the title wasn鈥檛 her original plan. 鈥淲hen I was writing the book, my husband was doing the layout and had to save a file, so he asked me for a title. Since I was expecting the publisher to come up with a great title for marketing purposes I told him to put whatever he wanted and this seemed very appropriate.鈥�
And, in the end, seems it served a marketing purpose of its own.
Rebekah Denn blogs at .
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