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Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year goes to the goblins

This article is more than 8 years old
Reginald Bakeley's tongue-in-cheek manual, Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop, beats How Tea Cosies Changed the World and How to Sharpen Pencils to win weirdest title award
Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop
And the prize for oddest title goes to … Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop
And the prize for oddest title goes to … Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop
Fri 22 Mar 2013 04.00 EDT

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop – a "practical" guide to how to "clear your home and garden of goblins and banish them forever" – has been named the weirdest book title of the year.

A public vote saw Reginald Bakeley's tongue-in-cheek manual to "scheming flower-fairies and other nasty members of the fairy realm" beat a shortlist including How Tea Cosies Changed the World, and How to Sharpen Pencils to win the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year. Pointing to William Allingham's well-known poem "Up the airy mountain/ Down the rushy glen/ We daren't go a-hunting/ For fear of little men", the author of the guide warns: "If we follow the advice of Mr Allingham and other weak-constitutioned fairy sympathisers, then the whole of the outdoors will soon be snatched away from mankind, its rightful master."

The book joins former winners of the Diagram – given out annually by the Bookseller magazine – including Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, Highlights in the History of Concrete, Bombproof Your Horse and last year's triumphant victor, Cooking with Poo. The first ever winner of the prize, in 1978, was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

"On behalf of Reginald Bakeley and Conari Press, I am honoured to accept this award," said Clint Marsh, Bakeley's US editor. "The Diagram prize celebrates the playfulness that is at the heart of much of the world's best book publishing. Thank you to everyone who voted and allowed Goblinproofing to join the distinguished list of Diagram winners. Reginald and I take this as a clear sign that people have had enough of goblins in their chicken coops. Our campaign against the fairy kingdom continues."

Philip Stone, the Diagram prize's administrator, said the art of naming books was much undervalued, and could actually "make or break a work of literature". "Books such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time all owe a sizeable part of their huge successes to their odd monikers," said Stone.

"The kind of niche, off-beat publications that often appear on the Diagram prize shortlist might not make their writers or publishers rich beyond their wildest dreams, but the fact that writers still passionately write such works and publishers are still willing to invest in them is a marvellous thing that deserves to be celebrated."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/22/diagram-prize-oddest-book-title-goblins
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