No ordinary title wins this book prize
April 5th 2010 05:17
For all those who have been frustrated for years by the lack of a scholarly and definitive book about the relationship between crocheting and hyperbolic planes, your wait is over.
The book, written by Dr Daina Taimina, proudly announces its subject matter in its lyrically descriptive title, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes.
Not surprisingly, it has leapt to international renown by taking out the 2010 Diagram Prize, awarded annually by The Bookseller for the world's oddest book title.
"One hopes that Dr Taimina's win prompts other enlightened crocheters, knitters and embroiderers to produce similar works, so I look forward to seeing books such as Cross-stitching String Theory and Felting Feats with Phenomenology in the near future," said Diagram Prize organiser Horace Bent.
"I think what won it for the book is that, very simply, the title is completely bonkers."
Although the author will receive no physical prize — the Diagram is one of those honour things — Horace Bent noted that Dr Taimina will no doubt benefit from "the sales boost that will now inevitably occur".
Mr Bent's tone of levity is in line with the culture of the Diagram Prize, which has been a humorous fixture of the literary calendar since 1978, but is slightly at odds with the seriousness of this year's winner.
Yes, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is a serious work.
Dr Taimana is a mathematician at America's Cornell University. Her husband, David Henderson, explained that a hyperbolic plane "is a simply connected Riemannian manifold with negative Gaussian curvature". Hyperbolic planes – surfaces with constant negative curvature – have traditionally been hard to visualise. Dr Taimina's breakthrough was to use crochet to create such shapes.
All the shortlisted finalists for this year's Diagram Prize were: Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (Daina Taimina, AK Peters); Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter (David Crompton, Glenstrae Press); Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich (James A Yannes, Trafford);
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (Ronald C Arkin, CRC Press); The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky, SLACK Inc); What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? (Tara Jansen-Meyer, Mirror).
guardian.co.uk; image: BetterWorldBooks
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