The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, originally known as the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the Frankfurt Book Fair, commonly known as the Diagram Prize for short, is a humorous literary award that is given annually to the book with the oddest title. The prize is named after the Diagram Group, an information and graphics company based in London, and The Bookseller, a British trade magazine for the publishing industry. Originally organised to provide entertainment during the 1978 Frankfurt Book Fair, the prize has since been awarded every year by The Bookseller and is now organised by the magazine's diarist Horace Bent. The winner was initially decided by a panel of judges, but since 2000 the winner has been decided by a public vote on The Bookseller's website.
Controversy arose since the creation of the awards; there have been two occasions when no award was given because no titles were judged to be odd enough, Bent has complained about some of the winners chosen by the public, and the 2008 winner, The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, proved controversial because rather than being written by its listed author, Philip M. Parker, it was instead written by a machine of Parker's invention. The most recent winner, in 2012, was Cooking with Poo by Saiyuud Diwong.
Read more about Bookseller/Diagram Prize For Oddest Title Of The Year: History
Famous quotes containing the words bookseller, diagram, prize, oddest, title and/or year:
“So it is with books, for the most part: they work no redemption on us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and after to reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did without surprise of a surly bank director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““God’s fire upon the wane,
A diagram hung there instead,
More women born than men.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Eternall God, O thou that onely art
The sacred Fountain of eternall light,
And blessed Loadstone of my better part;
O thou my heart’s desire, my soul’s delight,
Reflect upon my soul, and touch my heart,
And then my heart shall prize no good above thee;
And then my soul shall know thee; knowing, love thee;
And then my trembling thoughts shall never start
From thy commands, or swerve the least degree,
Or once presume to move, but as they move in thee.”
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Eternity is not ours by right; and, alone, unrequited sufferings here, form no title thereto.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“As the Arab proverb says, “The dog barks and the caravan passes”. After having dropped this quotation, Mr. Norpois stopped to judge the effect it had on us. It was great; the proverb was known to us: it had been replaced that year among men of high worth by this other: “Whoever sows the wind reaps the storm”, which had needed some rest since it was not as indefatigable and hardy as, “Working for the King of Prussia”.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)