Legs manual wins odd title prize

The book beat off competition from I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen to win The Bookseller magazine's prize.

Cheese Problems Solved took third place in a poll which attracted 8,500 votes.

Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said of the winner: "So effective is the title that you don't even need to read the book itself."

SELECTION OF PAST WINNERS

• The Joy of Chickens
• American Bottom Archaeology
• Versailles: The View From Sweden
• Re-using Old Graves
• Highlights in the History of Concrete
• The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
• Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
• The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
• People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

He added that it "makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes".

The manual, whose author is named Big Boom, is described as a "self-help book, written by a man for the benefit of women".

Bookseller's contest began in 1978, and the roll-call of previous winners includes High Performance Stiffened Structures, Living with Crazy Buttocks and How To Avoid Huge Ships.

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