Diagram Prize Time Again

There's only one award in the book world that I love with all my heart, and that's the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. So it's great to see that it's that time once again: the indefatigable Horace Bent, "diarist" for The Bookseller (which is too stuffy and British to have a "blogger") and his colleagues have assembled their usual bizarre selection of topics that no one suspected needed to be written about:

• Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley 
• God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis by Tom Hickman
• How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior
• How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees
• Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts by Jerry Gagne
• Was Hitler ILL? by Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle

My rooting inclinations are horribly torn this year -- my employer distributes Polity, so I like their Was Hitler Ill?, but David Rees comes out the webcomics world, which I also want to support. Goblinproofing sounds like a fantasy book, which is wonderful. But I think I have to come down on the side of How Tea Cosies Changed the World, simply because it is the oddest title of the bunch.

You can go through your own torments, if you like: voting is open to the public, and the results will be announced on March 22nd.

(And, on a personal note, I'm glad to see the odd titles coming back after what I thought was a disappointing outing last year.)