‘Cooking with Poo’ wins this year’s Oddest Book Title award

Cooking with Poo, by Thai author Saiyuud Diwong, is officially this year's mostly weirdly named book.

The recipe collection has just been announced the winner of The Bookseller magazine's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title.

Online voters picked it over six other strong candidates, including Mr Andoh’s Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge, The Great Singapore Penis Panic and the Future of American Mass Hysteria, and Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World.

According to The Bookseller, Diwong's book gets its unusual title from her nickname, which is Thai for "crab."

There is no formal award for books that win the annual prize, but this year The Bookseller will make a donation to the community cooking school run by Diwong in a Bangkok slum.

"I am lucky to have such a funny nickname," Diwong is quoted as saying. "It helps my business a lot!" Her website sells Poo-brand merchandise, including aprons bearing the legend: "I cooked with Poo and I liked it."

The Oddest Book Title award was conceived in 1978 as "a way to avoid boredom at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair," The Bookseller said.

While it may not be on a par with the Man Booker or the Nobel, the award brings its own cachet, one former winner told the Guardian.

Michael Young, who won last year with Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way, said his career had been "flourishing" since. "Being the winner of the Diagram prize has, I feel, given both the book and me a great deal of credibility, which perhaps without the epithet 'prize-winning' we would never have achieved."

Previous recipients, according to the BBC, include How to Avoid Huge Ships, Highlights in the History of Concrete, and Living with Crazy Buttocks.