Am I jaded? I don’t think that this year’s nominees for the UK’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year are actually all that odd. The six finalists are

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
• How to Write a How to Write Book
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
• Cheese Problems Solved
• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
• People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

That’s what goes for odd these days? Last year’s nominees are lunatics by comparison, with gems including

• D. Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans
• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
• Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan, and
• Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium

The 2008 winner will be announced March 28.Wake me when it’s over.–David E