Light Reading

Selected winners of the Bookseller/Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year:

  • Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978)
  • The Joy of Chickens (1980)
  • The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (1983)
  • Versailles: The View From Sweden (1988)
  • How to Avoid Huge Ships (1992)
  • Highlights in the History of Concrete (1994)
  • Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996)
  • The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (2003)
  • Bombproof Your Horse (2004)
  • People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (2005)
  • The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (2006)

Last year’s winner, The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, is the subject of some controversy, as it was written by an automatic authoring machine rather than a human being. But, said awards administrator Philip Stone, “Given the number of celebrity memoirs out there that are ghostwritten, I don’t think it’s too strange.”