highly sensitive power

My goal with this Christmas Day article is simply to make you laugh. I thought I’d tell a few jokes (What’s brown and sticky? … A stick.) and provide a few links to humorous articles.

Maybe later.

I’m too busy wiping tears of laughter from my eyes after researching Bookseller Magazine‘s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title.

• How Green Were the Nazis?, edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, 2006 Diagram Prize shortlist
• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs, by Big Boom, 2007 Diagram Prize shortlist
• How to Avoid Huge Ships, by John Trimmer, 30th Anniversary Diagram Prize, 3rd Place
• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, by Julian Montague, 2006 Diagram Prize winner

Started in 1978 as a way to combat boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair (the book fair of all book fairs, its beginnings rooted in the 12th century), the Diagram Prize honours books hovering on the edges of the publishing industry. Titles suggested by publishers, booksellers, librarians, and Bookseller readers are culled to a shortlist, which is voted on by the public via online poll.

2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize, prompting Bookseller Magazine to determine the oddest book title of the past 30 years. The winner, Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, by Derek Willan, beat out Gary Leon Hill’s second-place winner People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead.

• Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues, by Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2007 Diagram Prize shortlist
• Cheese Problems Solved, edited by P. L. H. McSweeny, 2007 Diagram Prize shortlist

See Wikipedia’s entry about the Diagram Prize for a list of past winners. And now there’s a book to mark the prize’s 30th anniversary: How to Avoid Huge Ships And Other Implausibly Titled Books, by Joel Rickett.

Merry Christmas – and I mean that literally.

Vancouver Public Library atrium photo by Michael Mundhenk.