Nazi spoons, robots vie for oddest title

Books about Nazi spoons, ethical considerations for lethal robots and how-to crochet geometric models are in the running for this year's Diagram Prize, the quirky annual literary honour celebrating odd book titles.

U.K. trade magazine The Bookseller has announced a shortlist of six peculiar titles from the past year. The nominees are:

• Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton.
• Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes.
• Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina.
• Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C. Arkin.
• The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky.
• What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua? by Tara Jansen-Meyer.

Organizers whittled down the list from a record 90 entries for 2009, more than half suggested via Twitter. It was a giant leap from the 32 submitted for 2008. However, organizers discovered that nearly half had to be disqualified because they were published prior to last year.

Still, "selecting a short list proved a Herculean task, as many books carried titles that furrowed the brow not least How YOU Are Like Shampoo and Map-based Comparative Genomics in Legumes," Horace Bent, who administers the prize for The Bookseller, said in an interview.

"However, the vast sum of submissions has, in my humble opinion, created one of the most competitive short lists in the 32 years of the prize. And I look forward with incalculable anticipation to the result of the public vote."

The magazine invites readers to cast a vote on its website, with the winner to be announced March 26.

Founded in 1978 as a tongue-in-cheek entertainment for that year's Frankfurt Book Fair, the Bookseller's Diagram Prize has since become an annual tradition. Past winners have included Bombproof Your Horse, Reusing Old Graves, Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, Living With Crazy Buttocks and, most recently, The 20092014 World Outlook for 60mg Containers of Fromage Frais.