Just A Guy Thing

Some books, like The Da Vinci Code, have great marketing and slick, appealing titles. Others, well, don’t.

The Bookseller magazine has picked the six strangest book titles of 2008:

Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press)

Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash (SLACK Incorporated)

The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press)

Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T)

Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead)

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker (Icon Group International)

Frankly, if the Fromage Frais book doesn’t win oddest title of the year, Professor Parker was robbed.

Philip Stone, a sales analyst at The Bookseller, commented: “We received a huge number of entries this year and the debate was furious as to which would be included on the shortlist. Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected.”

The first ever winner of the annual Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year was the University of Tokyo Press? Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, in 1978. Last year?s winner was If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.

The winner of the 2008 award will be chosen by an internet vote at http://www.thebookseller.com and will be announced on March 27, 2009.