Diagram of diagrams.

Here is this year's short list...

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/53656-oddest-book-titles-prize-shortli...

At a rather nice B&B in Norwich I went to this year, there were two books left by the bed: "The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Sexual Love" and "Sainsburys: The Best Butter in the World." Which I thought were not only odd in themselves, but also in their juxtaposition.

maddan - I think those books were jointly made into a film, weren't they? Last Tango in Paris?

Can't come up with any surreal titles at this moment, but from my own shelves the two least commercial titles (for books aimed at a general readership) are: 'Mathematics Made Difficult' and 'Innumeracy'. The prize for the title most interfered with by lawyers goes to 'Intellectual Impostures'. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet £lots that the original title was ' - Imposters'. My vote for the best title of all time goes to 'A Brief History of Time'. Like so many others I bought the brilliant title and ended up with the mediocre book.

I own a copy of "Div, Grad, Curl and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus" - which is actually a very well known and highly regarded book (in it's field).

I bet we could come up with some excruciating titles for books aimed at a specialist readership, but I was thinking more of books intended to be sold on the high street to passers-by, so to speak. I came across 'Innumeracy' while I was killing time before a dental appointment. I assumed it was for teachers of remedial arithmetic and picked it up in mild curiosity about how that might be done. The book turned out to be no such thing, and far better than its title. I wonder how 'Rings, Fields and Groups' would fare on the high street? So long as it was wrapped so that nobody could see the contents, it might do quite well. Sounds as if it might be about rings of the lord-of-the variety, and groups of Hobbit folk in fields!

I was delighted to find a book with the title "ENTS" as I've always wished Tolkien had said a bit more about them.
I am fairly sure that Tom Bombadil must be older then Treebeard but I'm not certain and I was hoping for an account of the origins of the tree shepherds...

I was very disappointed to find it was a book on ear, nose and throat problems :o(

I always thought LAPD was short for Lapdancer. Now I find I've been misunderstanding all those cop shows. Mind you, I prefer my version.