Philosopher Fish claims The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year
Pop the champagne and tuck into the “black gold” fit for tsars (and charlied-up City boys at the tail end of 15-hour benders), for voters have narrowly plumped for an eco-tome on caviar consumption and the increasingly endangered sturgeon as the winner of 2024’s The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire earned 27% of the public vote, just ahead of How to Dungeon Master Parenting, which itself was a hair in front of Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement. With just five percentage points separating the top three, it is the closest Diagram race since the selection of the winner for the 46-year-old prize went to an online public vote 25 years ago. To forestall the inevitable legal challenges and conspiracy theorists bemoaning the outcome, I will say we have employed the most rigorous and impeccable election tabulating system available… within our budget. So, no Dominion Voting Systems, but your ol’ pal Horace poring through some spreadsheets after his customary liquid lunch (I work better and more accurately after a few Courvoisiers).
At any rate, this is also the first time that the champion failed to garner more than a 30% share, and reverses the recent trend of runaway champs such as Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History (2023), Is Superman Circumcised? (2021) and A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society (2020), all of which garnered a full majority.
Although there will no doubt be some controversy this year: Richard Adams Carey first released The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire in 2005, but the new 2024 edition has enough fresh material that judges (well, your ol’ pal Horace after those Courvoisiers) deemed it suitable for inclusion. The book looks at the history of the sturgeon (Glasgow Southside MSP and First Minister until her resignation in 2023, if I’m not mistaken) and caviar and how the fish has risen to number four on the World Wildlife Fund’s most-endangered species list.
The Philosopher Fish’s triumph also represents the first gong for Massachusetts-based Brandeis University Press (BUP), in its Diagram début. It was a scintillating year overall for the press’ odd title-prowess as BUP had two shortlistees; alas, Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them was only able to muster an 8% share.
There is no award for the winning author or publisher, barring a Taylor Swift level of fame and an Osman-like spike in book sales.
The shock result was that bookies’ favourite, Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western, finished last, only collaring 5%. It has long been a Diagram tradition that any vaguely naughty titles shortlisted do extremely well—take past winners like 2019’s The Dirt Hole and Its Variations and 2000’s Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures.
Lastly, there is no award for the winning author or publisher, barring a Taylor Swift level of fame and a Richard Osman-like spike in book sales. Traditionally, a passable bottle is bestowed on the nominator of the winning title. But for the second year in a row, the champ was put forward by a Bookseller staff member. So the claret goes back into the cellar and next year we shall give three bottles. A reason (three reasons) to keep those nominations coming for 2025.
To send nominations for next year’s prize email Horace Bent (bent@thebookseller.com).
The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2024: The results in full
27%—The narrowest winning margin in Diagram history for The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire, a “high-stakes cocktail of business, crime, diplomacy… and the dilemmas of conservation”
24%—Just pipped to Diagram glory was How to Dungeon Master Parenting, lauded as a “rollicking playbook to gamify parenting” and the “ultimate manual for RPG-loving parents”
22%—The best-ever Diagram third place finisher, Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement, is a history of “the struggles and successes of bringing feminist dreams into clinical spaces”
14%—No, Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail, is not a true crime title, but a University of Georgia-published meditation on the natural world’s relationship with inner peace
8%—The “Athens of America’s” city architect Joseph M Bagley’s Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them does what it says on the tin; “ideal for tourists and residents alike”, coos Brandeis University Press
5%—Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western—a deep dive into the myriad ways sex and sexuality are imagined in cowboy films, TV and literature—proved a bit too strange for even Diagram voters
