"Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers" defeated "Living with Crazy Buttocks" and more than a score of other curiously named books to win the Diagram of Diagrams award, designed to honor the oddest title in the past 30 years.
Niche books routed risque titles including "The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition" to take the top three spots in this contest of contests, which marks the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title by pitting previous winners against each other, the Bookseller trade magazine said in a news release.
"Greek Rural Postmen," a record of postal routes edited by Derek Willan and published by the Hellenic Philatelic Society of Great Britain, captured 13 percent of almost 1,000 votes cast online since the contest opened Aug. 8.
The runner-up, with 11 percent, was "People Who Don't Know They're Dead" by Gary Leon Hill, about dead spirits who inhabit the bodies of the living. Third place went to John Trimmer's "How to Avoid Huge Ships," a serious nautical book, with 10 percent.
Originally conceived as a way to pass time at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the annual Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title celebrates "the glorious diversity of publishing and, by extension, of the world itself," as the Bookseller's former deputy editor, Joel Rickett, once put it.
Titles are nominated by publishers, booksellers, authors, agents and librarians. The person who spotted the winning title will receive "a magnum of (fairly passable) claret," according to Philip Stone, the Bookseller's charts editor.
The inaugural winner in 1978 was "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice." The latest annual victor was "If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs."
Over the years, mortality has been a recurring motif in the contest, as can be seen from previous annual winners such as "Reusing Old Graves." Equestrian themes have carried the day with "Bombproof Your Horse" and "The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories."
Double-entendres have been popular: Witness winners "American Bottom Archaeology" and "High Performance Stiffened Structures," an engineering book.
Niche books often have triumphed, too. Consider winner "The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today." Or "Versailles: The View From Sweden."
In conjunction with the Diagram of Diagrams prize, Aurum Press is publishing "How to Avoid Huge Ships: And Other Implausibly Titled Books," a collection that features the original jackets of 50 of the more curious winners and nominees over the years.
