Finalists for oddest book title prize showcase ‘cats’ and ‘feces’

What do cats, feces and pies have in common? Well, besides the fact that many can be found in a typical American and British home, they’re also in the titles honored by the Bookseller for being the strangest book titles of the year.

The British trade publication has awarded the Diagram Prize since 1978, recognizing such titles as “Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice,” (the first winner), and “Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way” (the 2010 champion).

This year’s finalists are:

“Working Class Cats: The Bodega Cats of New York City,” by Chris Balsiger and Erin Canning, from SCB Distributed Publishers.

“Are Trout South African?: Stories of Fish, People and Places,” by Duncan Brown, from Picador South Africa.

“How to Poo on a Date,” by Mats & Enzo, from Prion Books.

“Pie-ography: Where Pie Meets Biography,” by Jo Packham, from Quarry.

“How to Pray When You’re Pissed at God,” by Ian Punnett,” from Harmony.

“The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us about Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society” by David Walter-Toews, from ECW.

“It is a truly inspiring list celebrating the art of title-making that goes from the sublime to the fantastic,” said Horace Bent, who runs the prizes for the Bookseller. “It runs the gamut from a book with a Darwinian pun and a very liberal sprinkling of the S-bomb within its pages, to a title that hints at the heretofore unreported class struggle amongst the moggies of the Big Apple. ”

Readers can vote for the winner at the We Love This Book website.

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hector.tobar@latimes.com