The Oddest Book Titles

Since 1978, the pseudonymic diarist Horace Bent of the Bookseller magazine, with the sponsorship of The Diagram Group, has managed an annual contest for the oddest book titles. The contenders are often as alarming as the winners.

In 2008, a book celebrating the prize winners and nominees was released:

Joel Rickett,
How to Avoid Huge Ships: And Other Implausibly Titled Books,
Aurum Press, 2008,
ISBN: 9781845133214.

2008

• A God or a Bench, by Anne Betty Weinshenker.
• All Dogs have ADHD, by Kathy Hoopman.
• Baboon Metaphysics, by Dorothy Cheney.
• Christian Texts for Aztecs, by Jaime Lara.
• Curbside Consultation of the Colon, by Brooks Cash.
• F**k It, by John Parkin.
• Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings, by Kuzhali Manickavel.
• Living with Dormice, by Sue Eden.
• Malformed Frogs, by Michael Lannoo.
• Sketches of Hull Authors, by Reginald Walter Corlass.
• Strip and Knit with Style, by Mark Hordyszynski.
• Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring, by Lietai Yang.
• Winner:
  The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Frommage Frais, by Philip Parker.
• The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials, by Erika Doss.
• The Industrial Vagina, by Sheila Jeffreys.
• The Large Sieve and its Applications, by Emmanuel Kowalksi.
• The Price of Everything, by Russell Roberts.
• Toilets that Make Compost, by Peter Morgan.

2007

• Winner: If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs, by Big Boom.
• I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen, by Jasper McCutcheon.
• How to Write a How to Write Book, by Brian Paddock.
• Are Women Human? and Other International Dialogues, by Catherine MacKinnon.
• Cheese Problems Solved, edited by PLH McSweeney.
• People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Doctor Feelgood, by Dee Gordon.

2006

• Winner: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, by Julian Montague, published by Harry N Abrams.
• Runner Up: Tattoed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan: Magic Medicine Symbols in Silk, Stone, Wood and Flesh, by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov, Alex Binnie.
• How Green Were the Nazis?
  - Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich, edited by Franz-Josef Brueggemeier, Mark Cioc, Thomas Zeller.
• D Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D Di Mascio of Coventry - an Ice Cream company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans, by Roger De Boer, Harvey Pitcher, Alan Wilkinson.
• Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium, edited by Robert Anderson, Juliet Brodie, Edvar Onsoyen, Alan Critchley.
• Better Never to Have Been: the Harm of Coming into Existence, by David Benatar.

2005

• Winner: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders - and What to Do About It, by Gary Leon Hill, said to have sold 15,000 copies.
• Ancient Starch Research, by Robin Torrence and Huw J Barton.
• Bullying and Sexual Harassment: A Practical Handbook
• Circumcisions by Appointment; A View of Life in and Around Manchester in the Eighteenth Century
• Dining Posture in Ancient Rome
• How to Toilet Train Your Cat
• Introduction to Adult Swallowing
• Knitting with Dog Hair
• Living with Sheep
• Nessus, Snort and Ethereal Powertools
• Prophets Facing Backward
• Queen Victoria and Ping Pong
• Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa, by Simon Milledge
• Scouting for Boys
• Short Walks at Land's End
• Soil Nailing: Best Practice Guidance
• Urogenital Manipulation
• What Bird Did That?

2004

• Winner: Bombproof Your Horse, by Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden
• The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox
• Application of High Tech Squids
• Detecting Foreign Bodies in Food
• Equids in Time and Space
• Sexual Health at your Fingertips

2003

• Winner: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, by Alisa Surkis and Monica Nolan
• 227 Secrets Your Snake Wants You to Know
• The Voodoo Revenge Book: An Anger Management Program You Can Really Stick With
• Hot Topics in Urology
• Celtic Sex Magic: For Couples, Groups and Solitary Practitioners
• Design for Impact: 50 Years of Airline Safety Cards

2002

• Winner: Living with Crazy Buttocks, by Kaz Cooke
• After the Orgy: Towards a Politics of Exhaustion
• The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy: Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking
• First You Take a Leek
• Forensic Examination of Rubber Stamps
• Melons for the Passionate Grower
• Passing Gas
• Postmortem Collectibles
• Red-Haired Irishwomen on the Bog
• Second-hand Parrots: A Complete Owner's Manual
• Six-Legged Sex: The Erotic Lives of Bugs
• Wigglers, Undulators, and Their Applications
• Without Regret: A Handbook for Owners of Canine Amputees
• Women and Integrated Pest Management

2001

• Winner: Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service, by Gerard Forlin
• Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself
• The Flat-Footed Flies of Europe
• Lightweight Sandwich Construction
• Tea Bag Folding
• The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers: No Paint, No Ink, Just a Hammer!

2000

• Winner: High Performance Stiffened Structures
• Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno
• Whose Bottom? A Lift-the-Flap Book
• Psoriasis at Your Fingertips
• The Sexual Male: Problems and Solutions
• Wood Carving with a Chainsaw

1999

• Winner: Weeds in a Changing World,
• Male Genitalia of Butterflies of the Balkan Peninsula with a Checklist
• Guide to Eskimo Rolling, by Derek Hutchinson
• Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research and Treatment
• Good Practice with Violence
• Toothpick Culture and Ice Cream Stick Art
• Women and Wasteland Development

1998

• Winner: Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding: New Opportunities to Widen the Use of Straw

1997

• Winner: The Joy of Sex, the Pocket Edition, by Mitchell Beazley

1996

• Winner: Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers (In 2008, this also won the prize as the oddest oddest title of the 30 years of competition)

1995

• Winner: Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes,

1994

• Winner: Highlights in the History of Concrete

1993

• Winner: American Bottom Archaeology

1992

• Winner: How to Avoid Huge Ships

1991

• (No award)

1990

• Winner: Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual

1989

• Winner: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art

1988

• Winner: Versailles: The View From Sweden

1987

• (No award)

1986

• Winner: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality

1985

• Winner: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts

1984

• Winner: The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History, and Its Role in the World Today

1983

• Winner: The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling

1982

• Winner: Population and Other Problems: Family Planning, Housing 1,000 million, Labour Employment

1981

• Winner: Last Chance at Love - Terminal Romances

1980

• Winner: The Joy of Chickens

1979

• Winner: The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution

1978

• Winner: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
• 100 Years of British Retail Catering
• 50 New Poodle Grooming Styles

Contenders of Unknown Date

• Attractive and Affectionate Grave Design
• God's Chewable Vitamin C for the Spirit
• Gymnastics for Horses
• Hair Loss for the Next Millennium
• Male Genital Organs and their Improvement
• A Method for Calculating the Size of Stone Needed for Closing End-Tipped Rubble Banks in Rivers
• Pedagogical Lexicography: A Case Study of Arab Nurses as Dictionary Users
• Postal Rates in Iceland 1870-1997
• The Prostate: A Guide for Men and the Women Who Love Them
• Stick Making: A Complete Course
• A Theory of Shopping

Just Odd

• Amputation Stumps, Their Care and Aftertreatment, Godfrey Huggins, 1918.
• Build Your Own Hindenburg
• Constipation and Our Civilization, by JC Thomson, 1943.
• Daddy Was an Undertaker, McDill, McGowan, and Gassman, 1952.
• Explosive Spiders and How to Make Them
• Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer's Fecopoetics
• A Government Committee of Inquiry on the Light Metal Artificial Leg, by Henry Hulme and Chisholm Baird, 1923.
• Heave Ho, My Little Green Book of Seasickness, by Charles Mazel.
• How to Manage Your Dick, by Sean O'Reilly.
• The Lull Before Dorking
• Monumental Beginnings: Archaelogy of the N4 Sligo Inner Relief Road
• More Balls Than Hands, by Michael J Gelb (about juggling)
• Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention
• On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers
• Optical Chick Sexing
• Penetrating Wagner's Ring, by John DiGaetanao.
• A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coating, 1981.
• The Punctured Thumb, or, Cactus and Other Succulents, by George Ashley.
• The Romance of Leprosy, by E Mackerchar, 1949.
• The Romance of Proctology
• Round Ireland with a Fridge, Tony Hawks
• Sex After Death, BJ Ferrell and DE Frey, 1983.
• So Your Wife Came Home Speaking in Tongues! So Did Mine!
• A Study of Masturbation and its Repeated Sequelae, JFW Meagher, 1924.
• Waterproofing Your Child
• Who's Who in Barbed Wire
• Why Bring That Up? - A Guide to Seasickness, by JF Montague, 1936.
• The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India, a print-on-demand book of 144 pages, selling for $495, and issued by Philip Parker's Icon Group International. Parker claims to have developed algorithms that allow him to assemble a book on a specific topic using a small amount of specific text plus the reformatted results of Internet searches, in about 13 minutes. Parker has "authored" or generated more than 200,000 books this way.

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