The oddest book title of the year is about goblins charming chickens
THE winner of the Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for the weirdest book title of the year is…Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop. The blurb tells readers:
Plagued by pixies, goaded by goblins or bothered by gnomes? Help is on the way! Help is here. This is the essential primer for banishing the dark Fairy creatures that are lurking in the dark corners and crevices of your life. In this charming guide, fairy hunter Reginald Bakeley offers practical instructions to clear your home and garden of goblins and banish them forever!
The word charming somewhat kills it, no? It makes the book sound twee and small. ‘Offensive’ would have been better geared to marketing, or ‘inappropriate”. Both are words trending with buzz.
The winning author is Clint Marsh, whose own names suggest a cowboy who never made it to the prairies because it was raining when he looked out the window, so he wrote a book about something other than cows, in that case chickens.The title saw off competition from How Tea Cosies Changed the World, God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis, How to Sharpen Pencils, Was Hitler Ill? and
What’s in a name, eh? Plenty is you want to sell a book. Philip Stone,the Diagram prize’s administrator, says:
“Books such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time all owe a sizeable part of their huge successes to their odd monikers.”
If right, you’d just pick two words that point to popular things and stick them together. Golfing with Cats, anyone? What about Sex and Bargains?
(More epic covers here. And more lusty stuff is here.)
Posted: 23rd, March 2013 | In: Books Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
