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A book title that needs no text
Posted by civil truth on March 29th, 2008
Today’s top story is the eagerly-awaited announcement of the winner of The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year.
The winner, by a large voting margin, was a self-help book by the title:
As Joel Rickett, Deputy Editor of The Bookseller, observed, “[This book] 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.”
Indeed, after reading this title, is there really any reason for another self-help book about getting out of relationships?
In my mind, the only comparable book title I can think of comes from these lines by Tom Lehrer
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can’t communicate, children who can’t communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can’t communicate.
I feel that if a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up!
…which, if there were any justice in this world, should have inspired the following book to end all self-help books about communications:
enough said…
March 30th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
This reminds me of people on diets who aren’t having success:
IF YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT, STOP EATING SO MUCH!!
lol
March 30th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Or to put it another way:
I can’t understand you because your body’s talking a different language…