Uni presses make clean sweep of Oddest Book Title shortlist
An unconventional parenting tome, a celebration of cinema’s “leather-daddy bounty hunters” and a guide to murdering a proselytiser of peace and enlightenment are among the half-dozen shortlistees for the 46th annual The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.
Perhaps apropos as we are on the cusp of the seven days in which the world turns its gaze to academic publishing for University Press Week (okay, a very slender portion of the world), this year’s Diagram is a resounding triumph for the egghead publishing community, with all six titles coming from university presses (UPs)—a first in prize history.
Keen Diagramistas know that UPs are no stranger to the award as they occupy a rarefied space of specialists writing on esoteric subjects for others in their field, with titles often ending up sounding peculiar to ordinary folk. Indeed, the very first winner of this prize in 1978—the legendary Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice—was published by the University of Tokyo Press.
And who can forget classics like 1993’s American Bottom Archaeology (University of Illinois Press)? Plus, two of the last five winners hail from the groves of academe: 2020’s A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society (McGill-Queen’s UP) and the reigning champ, Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History (University of Virginia Press).
And not only does the 2024 Diagram sextet derive from UPs, they are all US-based houses, marking just the second time that American publishers have swept the shortlist.
University of Georgia Press hits the shortlist for an impressive third time in the last six years and hunts for its elusive first Diagram winner with, Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail. John Turner’s book is not, in fact, a plan to assassinate the religious founder but a meditation on finding inner peace.
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Massachusetts-based Brandeis UP (BUP) marks its bow on the Diagram shortlist with not one but two titles. First, is Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them. I’m going to hazard a wild guess and say… Boston? This follows author Joseph M Bagley’s other recent outing: The Great Wall of China: You Won’t Believe This, But It’s in China. Also in the running from BUP is The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire, eco-journalist Rick Carey’s immersion in the world of the titular marine animal.
From the Great Plains comes the University of Iowa-published How to Dungeon Master Parenting. Shelly Mazzanoble’s somewhat novel guide teaches new parents to use lessons from “Dungeons & Dragons” to bring up their kids. We stay in corn country for the University of Nebraska release, Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western. Essays in this collection include the intriguing-sounding “‘Do I Bring My Own Leash, or Do I Pick One Up at the Door?’: Kink, Camp, and Queer Masculinity in CBS’s ‘The Wild Wild West’”.
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Last, but very much not least is Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement. Should history of science specialist Judith Houck’s book prevail, the University of Chicago Press will end its painful 36-year wait for a second Diagram crown, following 1988’s Versailles: The View from Sweden.
Over to you now, dear reader, as the shortlist goes to a public vote on The Bookseller website. The online poll is open until 2nd December with the winner revealed on 6th.
In contention: The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2024
Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them
In this updated edition of Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them, the city’s archaeologist takes you on a whirlwind tour of Beantown, including the delights of the Lemuel Clap House.
Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western
The mass media discussed in Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western includes “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, “BioShock Infinite” and A A Carr’s erotic vampire/monster slayer western Eye Killers.
How to Dungeon Master Parenting
Shelly Mazzanoble invites mums and dads to “level up” their child-rearing in How to Dungeon Master Parenting, arguing lessons learned from “Dungeons & Dragons” can help them “win at their most challenging role yet”.
Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail
John Turner wrestles with the elements, self-doubt and ageing while he hikes the nearly 2,200-mile path from Georgia to Maine in Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail.
Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement
Judith Houck’s Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement is an “eye-opening” examination of the struggles and successes of “bringing feminist dreams into clinical spaces”.
The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire
“A wild upstream adventure”, raved the New York Post about The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire—a “high-stakes cocktail of business, crime… and the dilemmas of conservation”.
