So I can only be jealous that Daphne Gray-Grant, the Publication Coach, again achieved her goal of reading 52 books over a year. (Here’s her list of recommendations.)

Between Daphne’s recommendations, suggestions from friends and ones I’ve heard about, my “books to read” list is now close to 100 books. With school continuing to mid-July, my work is cut out for me.

Are you a book reader? Do you track how many books you read?

Image credit: jscreationzs and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

I discovered this contest in 2008, and have looked forward to the results each year since then. It’s not always about the titles themselves, which actually seem to have grown less odd each year. More often I have enjoyed the way Horace Bent, The Bookseller’s diarist and custodian of the Diagram Prize, describes the contenders and the contest. See if you don’t agree:

“In the end, it wasn’t even close. Much like the tyrant himself, Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way ruthlessly slaughtered the opposition, and scored twice as many votes as the runner-up, 8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings.”

Bent also notes that the winner:

“…joins an illustrious list of former winners including Living with Crazy Buttocks, Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, How to Avoid Huge Ships, and Highlights in the History of Concrete…I am delighted that in economically troublesome times publishers the world over have continued to publish incredibly niche titles with powerfully obscure titles.”

What I also find so appealing about this contest is that it apparently started as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair more than 30 years ago.

The odd Oddest prize goes back more than 30 years, when Bruce Robertson, founder of The Diagram Group (a “publishing solutions firm”), came up with the idea as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The prize is administered by The Bookseller, a leading business magazine for the book industry and web site that provides daily news and comment about the book business.

Bookseller “diarist” Horace Bent had worried that oddly-titled books would suffer in tough economic times, but was delighted that “oddity endured.”

I find the whole contest amusing, especially the part about it being conceived as a way to avoid boredom!

While blogger Ralf Schwartz suggested that the best way to thank your teacher is to teach others “by further developing what your teacher has taught you,” I think an equally excellent option is to say thank you.

And so I found myself digging through old report cards to remind me of the name of my grade 7 teacher. Mrs. McLelland was also the school librarian, and she recognized and nurtured my own love of reading by giving me first dibs on incoming books she thought I would enjoy.

I found a link to the school, which I attended for just that one year, on my high school web site. From there was a link to an e-mail address for Mrs. McLelland’s son. I sent him a note, sharing my fond recollection of her kind actions and asking about her. He responded promptly, telling me that sadly, she died in 2001, but she “would certainly be happy that she had a positive influence in your life, which I think is the goal of all good teachers.”

He added that her own first love was reading, something she had instilled in him and his eldest daughter, who was now teaching grade school.

I recalled that one of the books I enjoyed way back then was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Thinking I might like to read it again, I took the book from my library shelf and found inside, in the handwriting of that shy 13-year-old, a note that Mrs. McLellan had given it to me at the end of that school year. How cosmic is that?

My point, and I do have one, is that if you have had a wonderful teacher who succeeded in touching and making a difference in your life, please let him or her know. Say thank you. The best teacher gift is not a mug that says “World’s Best Teacher” but the heartfelt note that describes how you’re a better person for having been in that particular class with that particular teacher. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to tell Mrs. McLelland that, but something tells me that she knew.

“I love that you sent me an actual letter. I can feel your hand on the pen, pressing firmly on the paper. Did you moisten the envelope with your lips?”

“If you were here now, I would kiss you. I would hold your hand and look at you with wonder. And then, if you would let me, I would kiss you again. And again. And again.”

“The man of your dreams, perhaps not — maybe just one of the many that have fallen, but for now I am ridiculously happy to be the one who curls himself around you.”

“The first thing I want is a park bench. Wooden, weathered, solid, comfortable. And with a view. Doesn’t have to be of the ocean. Could be a simple garden. Or a squirrel in a tree. Would you sit next to me, on my park bench? Would you take my hand and help me watch that squirrel?”

Besides the romantic interlude, what’s fun about the book is that you see the letters as they were written, on napkins, crumpled paper, e-mail printouts, postcards and scraps of paper. They are scrawled, carefully printed, typed. And at the end, there are comments from some of the people who contributed the love letters, describing how they felt digging them out (“I cried my eyes out,”  “I was completely surprised by how painful it was,” “I saw progress in how I dealt with rejection…”).

The book also includes a section with an update on how some of the lovers met and what happened to them. Some have since married; some dated briefly and then split up. One of the most touching, “Reasons Why I Love Kay” (100 things like “I can be myself when I am with you” and “You’re the one that holds the key to my heart”) was composed as a gift from Don to his wife of 24 years. Not long after, she was killed in a car accident.

When I looked up the love letter book, Amazon helpfully told me that people who bought it also bought PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives by Frank Warren, which I also talked about. I’m not sure what that says about our voyeuristic tendencies!

Again, the book contains heartfelt messages from ordinary people. In this case, they are all writing a postcard to share a secret they have never told another soul, in response to what began as an art project in 2004. Warren started by handing out 3,000 postcards, but he has now received more than 150,000. The secrets are shared in this book and three others, the most recent being PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God, (being released Oct. 6), and on www.postsecret.com. The site gets six or seven million visitors every month, and in five years, the PostSecret community has raised $500,000 for suicide prevention.

There are happy or funny secrets:

“I bought a bunch of postcard stamps to use for PostSecret but I used them to write to my friends instead.”

“I stole your duck and took him to San Francisco.” (with a photo of a stuffed duck in hat and overalls)

“Loving you saved my life…”

but more often they are painful, touching, wistful:

“I hope there is a heaven (and I hope you’re there)”

“I wish my parents could see me for what I am…instead of what I didn’t become.”

“I’m 25, and I’ve never been kissed. It’s not that I don’t want to…it’s just that no one else does.”

Warren says, “After seeing thousands of secrets, I understand that sometimes when we believe we are keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us.” He relates his own experience, being reminded of a childhood humiliation he had long buried, then writing it on a postcard and walking away from the post office feeling lighter.

“Some of the most beautiful postcards in this collection came from very painful feelings and memories,” he says in the introduction. “I believe that  each one of us has the ability to discover, share, and grow our own dark secrets into something meaningful and beautiful.”

I just love how she describes its philosophy:

“Life takes action, not wishful thinking. It takes mindfulness and intention. It takes slowing down and saying yes and being generous and being amazed and loving more.”

Hear, hear.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Confession: I am a hopeless romantic. Actually, make that hopeFUL romantic. So I looked forward to reading this collection, described as “testimony to the creative powers of our leading writers…each guaranteed to seduce.”

Each piece was indeed “radically different from the others,” as billed. While the pieces are set up as letters, they are really more like short stories in some way related to some kind of love. For instance, there’s a stalker, a daughter writing to her dead father, an e-mail exchange sent to the wrong address, an ode to a house. Yeah, a house.

In 245 pages, only two passages really spoke to me:

“I cannot wait to hear your voice again. This is such a frustratingly cold medium in comparison to the heat of your touch, the warmth of your smile, the glow of your expression when you catch my eye.” (Lionel Shriver)

and

“…the town is behind me, the moon rides gloriously high above and I am scudding along the coast road towards Llanystumdwy. Ah, I feel the ecstasy rising! That light beyond the woods up there? Can it be your light? Is the breeze from the sea stirring your heart at this moment as it stirs mine? Is your kitchen door open for me, with a flicker of your firelight brightening the yard? Oh my love, my light, my glory! I am coming! You are waiting!” (Jan Morris, talking about “my one and only house”)

So now I’m in search of Other People’s Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See, by Bill Shapiro, which sounds more like what I was looking for:

“Fevered notes scribbled on napkins after first dates. Titillating text messages. It’s-not-you-it’s-me relationship-enders. In Other People’s Love Letters, Bill Shapiro has searched America’s attics, closets, and cigar boxes and found actual letters — unflinchingly honest missives full of lust, provocation, guilt, and vulnerability — written only for a lover’s eyes…what at first appears to be a deliciously voyeuristic peek into other people’s most passionate moments will ultimately reawaken your own desires and tenderness…because when you read these letters, you’ll find the heart you’re looking into is actually your own.”

Now, doesn’t that sound like something for a hopeful romantic?

I’m sure you are wondering, how could that possibly have beat out Baboon Metaphysics (#2) and Curbside Consultation of the Colon (#3)? Such is the nature of the wonderfully whimsical contest, now in its 31st year after being conceived by The Diagram Group’s Bruce Robertson as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Bookseller posted a short list of six books vying for the prestigious title, receiving just over 5,000 votes in an online poll to come up with the winner. “Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected,” said Philip Stone, a sales analyst at The Bookseller.

He added that The Diagram Prize “celebrates the diversity within book publishing today, the risks publishers are willing to take to support freedom of information, the beauty of print-on-demand for fascinatingly niche titles, and perhaps most of all, complete and utter oddity.”

(Thanks to Gloria for reminding me to blog about this.)

The author observes, “Rarely in history have sensible human beings found it so hard to say simple things.” He gives lots of examples, analyzing and discussing them (OK, sometimes at a bit too much length). I particularly liked his description of “anesthetic writing”:

“You cannot read it without losing a degree of consciousness. You come to and read it again, and still your brain will not reveal the meaning — will not even try. You are getting sleepy again.”

Most amusing is the glossary at the end. Don’s examples substitute buzzwords in well-known lines from Shakespeare, songs, speeches and other sources and he encourages the reader to think of a more effective way to say the line.

During a game of Trivial Pursuit, my opponent practically rubbed his hands with glee at the question he was going to ask me. “Oh, you’ll NEVER get this,” he laughed. The question was something along the lines of “Name the author of the book called Working, about people in everyday jobs.”

Unfortunately for my opponent, I had recently read Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do for a writing class. Well, the glory didn’t last long. I had plenty of time to trip up on sports category questions.

Reading the various accounts of Studs that have appeared in the paper since his death, I found out how he got the nickname. He worked as a radio show producer during the Depression and, in his spare time, acted in the Chicago Repertory Theatre. His nickname came while acting in a play with another Louis. To keep the two straight, the director named Terkel after a character in the book he was reading:  the hero in James Farrell’s Studs Lonigan, about Irish life on the South Side of Chicago.