Books and Beyond: Surprising literary prizes

The 2018 winner of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title is being chosen this week by public vote! Karen and Louisa tell you all about it while recalling some other offbeat literary awards, such as the Weird-Ass Picture Book prize and the Three Tokes Anti-award.

Listen to this episode on the Auckland Libraries SoundCloud.

Diagram Prize historic winners and shortlisted candidates:

• Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on nude mice
• The 2009-2014 world outlook for 60 milligram containers of fromage
• How to avoid huge ships
• Greek rural postmen and their cancellation numbers
• Cooking with Poo 
• The mushroom in Christian art 
• Mr Ando’s Pennine diary: memoirs of a Japanese chicken sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge 
• The Great Singapore Penis Panic and the future of American mass hysteria 
• Estonian sock patterns all around the world 
• Advanced pavement research
• Divorcing a real witch: for pagans and people that used to love them 

Diagram Prize 2018 short list: 

• Are gay men more accurate in detecting deceits?
• Call of nature:  the secret life of dung 
• Equine dry needling
• Jesus on gardening
• The joy of waterboiling
• Why sell tacos in Africa?

Odd titled children’s books: 

• Veggies with wedgies by Todd H Doodler
• Ants in your pants by Julia Jarman
• Ants in your pants, worms in your plants by Diane de Groat
• Do not open this book and Do not open this book again by Andy Lee
• Do not open this math book! by Danica McKellar
• The boring book by Vasanti Unka
• The book with no pictures by B.J. Novak
• Shut the duck up! by Mandy Foot
• Captain Underpants by Dave Pilkey
• Zombie bums from Uranus by Andy Griffiths

Winners of the Weird-Ass Picture Books Awards: 

• The boy with two belly buttons by Stephen Dubner 
• Cowboy and Octopus by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith

Oddly named characters and their books:

• Uriah Heep in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephrain’s Daughter in Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
• Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Fudge in Superfudge and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
• Willy Wonka in Charlie and the chocolate factory by Roald Dahl
• Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
• Hannibal Lecter in The silence of the lambs by Thomas Harris 
• Major Major Major Major in Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• Mrs Malaprop in School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Winners of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction:

• A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka  
• Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith
• Bridget Jones’s baby by Helen Fielding
• Snuff by Terry Pratchett
• The rotter’s club by Jonathan Coe
• Solar by Ian McEwan

Candidates for the ABSATZ anti-prize:

• Hemingway’s boat: everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson
• A dance with dragons by George RR Martin
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Auckland Libraries' radio show Books and Beyond explores the world of books with guest authors, recommended reads, gems from the Central City Library basement and… beyond. 

Catch us on Planet FM104.6, Sundays at 9.35pm. Listen to recent shows via the Auckland Libraries podcast.