Competition | 3 April 2010

In Competition No. 2640 you were invited to provide the publicity blurb for one of the following implausibly titled but real books: I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen; How to Write a How to Write Book, or Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter. These enticingly titled tomes have all, at one time or another, been shortlisted for the annual Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, previous nominees for which include The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais and Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality. The award, dreamed up in 1978 to fend off boredom at the Frankfurt book fair, attracted a record-breaking number of entries this year. In the face of stiff competition, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes stormed home to take the title.

While Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter left the reading public cold — as of mid-February it had failed to sell a single copy in the UK or US — it was top choice with competitors, though tough to do justice to.

David Mackie, P.C. Parrish and Josh Ekroy were narrowly outflanked by the winners, printed below, who earn £25 each. Patrick Smith pockets the bonus fiver.

Like an earthworm with a sense of humour, this eagerly awaited third volume of Doug Leaflitter’s writhingly honest autobiography is, by turns, hilarious and deeply moving. An uplifting, unputdownable follow-up to The Nematode Road and the Brandling Prize-short listed Pupate on a String, this latest segment begins with Doug’s life at a crossroads. His passion for all things vermiform has now become a destructive obsession, driving Lotte, his wife of 20 years, to leave him. When he is ‘outed’ as a trafficker of lobworms by animal rights activists, public opprobrium forces him finally to acknowledge the depth of the hole he has dug for himself.