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: 

Odd titled children’s books: 

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:

Winners of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction:

Candidates for the ABSATZ anti-prize:

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.

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