Odd Book Titles Voting Time...

Yes it's time to vote (if you're so inclined) for the fun titles in the shortlist for the Diagram Prize, the Oddest Book Title of the Year- for 2011. You can read about it here on the Bookseller website.

"The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year was first awarded in 1978 to Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice""

(The fact that it is still going suggests there's a slightly dippy portion of the population who like it- me included- and authors who are smart...)

I've voted, and have to say it was a tough choice this year. :-)

My personal favourite is the Estonian sock patterns, but I don't expect my choice to win this year, when it's up against titles like 'Cooking with Poo' ( it's actually Crab) or 'The Great Singapore P*nis Panic...' I think the latter is going to rate highly- and it's the only one available in digital format...

For the full list and voting form, go here. You can see the book covers too- which are quite normal, considering the titles.

If you've managed to miss this prize, then you can find out about it's history and discover what the winning book titles from earlier years were actually about, here.

If you're going to be in the running for a fun award, this is it. And you can be sure that it will get publicity and sales for books that wouldn't get much recognition beyond their own circles, or interest groups...

The winner will be announced on the 30th March.

Are you voting?

Early 19th Century Slang Examples...

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue-  a Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, an Pickpocket Eloquence by Francis Grose (a soldier) is now available as an e-book on the Project Gutenberg website (*).

There's a short piece in the Telegraph Books section about it's download popularity.

Just reading through a few of the words and their explanations quickly open the world of the past- as long as you remember that not everyone spoke this way all the time, it can start a creative spark for a low-life character, or an immature young man about town- I have a couple of low-life hired men lurking in my brain for a future story...

For the writers among us, we're Brothers of the Quill...Okay, I know we use computers and it should be Sisters of the Quill, but we all know the problems female authors had being taken seriously at that time.

As a left-hander, I'm Caudge-Pawed, but I'm not a Chatter Box- still basically means they talk too much today, as then.

A Cloak Twitcher would suggest a dubious character anyway, and it seems they lurked in dark alleys and lanes to snatch cloaks from passengers- clothes were valuable and a decent cloak would have been expensive to some people.

And how could you describe someone with one eye? They had a single peeper.

There are a lot of words and phrases we'd still recognise now, and others that we may even remember older relatives using.

If it becomes very popular again, who knows what words might start to appear in conversation...:-)

(*) Project Gutenberg works within the American copyright system, so they may have books available to download that are not out of copyright in the UK, so check out any author dates under the Bibrec tab.