On Strangely-Titled Books

From the Beeb: Baboon book makes award shortlist:

...even avid bookworms may have missed out on Baboon Metaphysics, which is up for this year's Diagram Prize.

The award, which is run by The Bookseller magazine, aims to reveal the oddest book title of the last year.

Five more titles, including Strip And Knit With Style, have been shortlisted. A public vote will decide the winner.

Such things are incredibly subjective, it seems. The Large Sieve and its Applications is faintly amusing, but Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring? How does anyone find that noteworthy? (Though. if you asked me why I found a book about large sieves incongruous, I don't know if I could explain.)

My favourite, though, is The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker. I do not think even a book about baboons can beat that.

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Apropos of all of which, one of the reasons I read so much manga is the titles, which generally attract my interest by being so utterly weird. I bought a couple of volumes of Neon Genesis Evangelion on the basis of the bizarre name (before realising it's actually a perfectly sensible title, just in Greek). Others that have graced my book shelves include Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHolic, Trigun: Deep Space Future Planet Gun Action, Full Metal Panic, She: The Ultimate Weapon, Rave: The Groove Adventure (despite being in English, that's the German title; in English, it bears the more pedestrian title of Rave Master. It is also unspeakably awesome), and Eureka SeveN: Psalms of Planets. I'm currently browsing reviews & suchlike of Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan, on the basis that a title like that demands at least a cursory glance.