November 18, 2024, 2:09pm

The Bookseller has selected six books for their 46th annual Diagram Prize shortlist for The Oddest Book Title of the Year, a prize they’ve been awarding since 1978. (According to Sarah Lyall, the prize began “as a way for Bruce Robertson, co-founder of the Diagram Group, an information and graphics company based in London, to combat his ennui at the Frankfurt Book Fair.”) This year’s odd crop includes a book on Dungeons & Dragons parenting, urban archaeology, and sexuality in weird westerns.

The award winner will be announced on December 6th, and is decided by the public—you can vote online at The Bookseller until December 2nd.

Wikipedia’s got a full list of the past winners, which is well worth a read. I particularly enjoyed 2003 and 2004’s back-to-back horse wins with The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories followed by Bombproof Your Horse. But this year’s nominees mark a historic triumph for the nerds: for the first time ever, the entire shortlist was published by university presses, shattering once and for all the falsehood that the academy produces nothing of value.

University presses are typically well-represented in the Diagrams—in fact, the very first prize winner in 1978 was Tokyo Press’ Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, which looks to be around 600 pages. That’s a lot of nude mice.

This year’s nominees are:

Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them, Joseph M. Bagley

Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western, Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, Sara L. Spurgeon 

How to Dungeon Master Parenting, Shelly Mazzanoble

Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail, John Turner

Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement, Judith Houck

The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire, Richard Adams Carey

Who will win? Is there a betting market for these titles? Will I bankrupt myself right betting it all on the fish desire book?

Tune in on December 6th to find out.