British magazine Bookseller recently published poll results that revealed the past year's three strangest book titles, continuing the magazine's annual trend.
The award, named the Diagram Prize, for the oddest book title for 2007 was given to one titled "If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs."
The book's author, going under the nom de plume Big Boom, described the book to be "a self-help book, written by a man for the benefit of women."
According to the AFP, Bookseller deputy editor Joel Rickett heralded the book's title as something that "makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes. So effective is the title that you don't even need to read the book itself."
The book was awarded the prize based on the responses of an online poll, which this year garnered 8,500 votes. This procedure, however, was criticized by Bookseller diarist and awards organizer Horace Brent, who voted for the winner to be determined via his decision.
"The public: you just can't trust them," said Brent.
"Among the many problems with letting the unwashed masses decide," he continued, "is their debased vulgarity."
He noted a previous winner via online poll, a book entitled "High Performance Stiffened Structures."
"A fine work about professional engineering, to be sure," he said, "but I fear it was favoured for other reasons."
Winners from previous years included "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide To Field Identification" (2006); "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting Bystanders And What To Do About It" (2005); "Bombproof Your Horse" (2004); "The Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories" (2003); and "Living with Crazy Buttocks" (2002).
The New York Times reported that the Diagram award has been offered since 1978, with the first winner being "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice."
















