An academic treatise on dung, a how-to guide of acupuncture for horses and the first-ever German language entry are among the six books in the running for the 40th edition of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The prize, founded by Trevor Bounford and the late Bruce Robinson of publishing solutions firm the Diagram Group, is the annual celebration of the book world's strangest and most perplexing titles. The Bookseller and its legendary diarist Horace Bent have been custodians of the prize since 1982.
The six books up for what Bent has called "the most prestigious literary gong Britain - nay the world - has ever known" are: Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits? (Open Dissertation Press); Call of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung (Pelagic Publishing); Equine Dry Needling (tredition); Jesus on Gardening (Onwards and Upwards); Joy of Waterboiling (Achse Verlag) and Why Sell Tacos in Africa? (Blue Ocean Marketing).