Self-help beats cheese guide for oddest title award
Friday, 28 Mar 2008 16:24
Relationship book with advice on legs wins oddest title prize
If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs has won Oddest Title of the Year, after a record-breaking 8,500 votes online.
The self-help manual, by an American writer called Big Boom, won 2,870 votes (33 per cent) since the shortlist was announced on 22nd February by retailer The Bookseller.
Bookseller said this self-help book, written by a man for the benefit of women, seems to be dividing reader opinion.
At Amazon.com, one fan recommends it to "those in need of a simple refresher course on what they were taught as youngsters".
But another retorts: "If you were Whitney and you were dating Bobby, then I can see how you would find this book helpful. However, if you're a college-educated female with more than a high school education, then walk on by."
The runner-up is I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen (20 per cent) and in third place is Cheese Problems Solved, a £135 guide for the most dedicated cheese enthusiast (19 per cent).
Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said: "The winner, If You Want Closure, 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."
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize, Bookseller's annual competition to find the oddest titles in publishing, which was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978.
The If You Want Closure title was spotted by Nicholas Hoare, who runs Canadian bookshops specialising in British books.
In fourth place was How to Write a How to Write Book, followed by Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues and finally People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood.