Strange

'If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs' wins book title competition

by Rob Peters | March 27, 2008 at 08:55 pm

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How it beat "How to Write a How to Write Book" is beyond me.

"Bombproof Horse" is a good name for a band.

LONDON (Reuters) - Self-help manual "If You Want Closure inYour Relationship, Start With Your Legs" won this year's oddestbook title competition, The Bookseller trade magazine said onFriday.

The book took an impressive one-third of the 8,500 votescast online in The Bookseller's 30th annual competition.

Runner up "I was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen", thestory of a fictitious World War Two pilot forced to bale outover the jungle, polled a distant 20 percent.

"'If You Want Closure', makes redundant an entire genre ofself-help tomes. So effective is the title that you don't evenneed to read the book itself," said the magazine's deputyeditor Joel Rickett.

The winner beat stiff competition from other shortlistedtitles including the somewhat niche "Cheese Problems Solved"and "How to Write a How to Write Book" and the ratherprovocative "Are Women Human? And Other InternationalDialogues".

The annual competition was launched in 1978 at theFrankfurt Book Fair when it was won by the memorably titled"Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on NudeMice".

Since then, with the exceptions of 1987 and 1991 when noaward was granted due, according to Rickett, to a lack ofoddness, the weird and wonderful titles have flowed thick andfast with some eyebrow raising winners.

"Joy of Chickens" took the 1980 title, with "The Theory ofLengthwise Rolling" in 1983, "Lesbian Sadomasochism SafetyManual" in 1990, "Living with Crazy Buttocks" in 2002 and"Bombproof Your Horse" in 2004 are but a sample.

However, the 1997 winner "Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition" doesstand out among the glittering array, and in September thisyear the public will be asked to vote for the oddest of all thewinners.

"That and 'Nude Mice' probably remain among the weirdest,but it is a strong competition," said Rickett.

"And the quality of weirdness does seem to be improving inpart as technology allows greater access to publishing.Certainly we are getting more titles coming forward," he added.