Odd Contest

I confess to a clear weakness for tantalizing headlines, especially if there's just the slightest possibility that there might actually be some sense just beyond the click. Just now Yahoo's front page, possibly having learned from my previous linkings, presented me with an article about an annual contest conducted by a U.K. publisher for oddest book title. Now, that's an article I consider irresistible, especially since there's a good chance my fellow e-correspondents will soon be sending around a linear listing of the results. (I'd like, just once, to see the original context of such information, rather than just the listing of punchlines.)

This year's title comes from the U.S.: "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification." One might reasonably assume it's a book of photographs, possibly of the coffee table variety. There is an expectation of whimsy, not just because of the title, but also because it is the winner of a contest that identifies itself as a seeker of oddities. In this case, the author does not entirely fail.

Another title, however, "How Green Were the Nazis?", promises to be a significantly less scintillating page turner, having more to do with environmental issues than offering up any potentially Seuss-like entertainment. Seriously, these were people who polluted the air day and night with some serious smog - how green could they have been? Moving along...

I remain befuddled as to the results of the contest, but that may have more to do with my cultural orientation than anything else. I think the Yahoo-pilfered article says it best, so here in italics are the closing paragraphs:

Runner-up for the prize was "Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan," by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie (Bennett & Bloom).

The other finalists were "Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: Di Mascio of Coventry: an Ice Cream Company of Repute, With an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans," by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher and Alan Wilkinson (Past Masters); "Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium" (Kluwer); and "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence," by David Benatar (Clarendon Press).

Past winners of the 29-year-old prize include "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."

That last one, now, there's a title to titillate the imagination...