Bombproof Your Horse

I'm a fan of the rum, the odd, the strange and the uncanny. So, I was pleased to discover, courtesy of BBC News, that there is an annual award for books which have the oddest title. Entitled The Diagram Prize and run by publishing industry magazine The Bookseller (overseen by the charmingly named Horace Bent), it asks for submissions from the public and whittles those into a shortlist which is then thrown open to the public vote.

It really does give you a lovely feeling of absurdity when you skim through the titles of some of the previous winners which include Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, The Joy of Chickens, How to Avoid Huge Ships, American Bottom Archaeology, Living with Crazy Buttocks and, of course,The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories. Naturally, this is definitely one of those occasions where the amusing nature of the title is inversely proportional to the actual readability of the books - you know for a fact that they're all likely to be masterworks in tedium.

Still, it's the title that counts and, with entrants this year that include Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich, it's still my kind of awards ceremony.