A self-help guide called "If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs" has been voted the oddest book title of the year.
It beat off stiff competition from another entitled "I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen" to win The Bookseller magazine's prize, reports the BBC.
"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."
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. (BBC)
《字詞解析》
self-help guide -- (n.) 自助指南；自助手冊。文中使用了不同的名詞，如 self-help guide, self-help book, self-help tome 和 manual，但指的都是同樣的東西。
beat off -- (v.) 擊退，趕跑。
stiff competition -- (n.) 激烈競爭。
pygmy -- (n.) 侏儒；微不足道的人。(adj.) 矮小的；極小的；微不足道的。亦拼成 pigmy。
Bookseller -- (n.) 英國「書商」雜誌。
So effective is the title that... -- 這是表示因果關係的 so...that 句型，原句為 "The title is so effective that..."，但為了加強語氣，而將 so effective 挪到句首，並將主詞與 be 動詞對調。這是英文中用來加強語氣的倒裝句之一。
redundant -- (adj.) 多餘的；累贅的。文中這個 redundant 直接放在 make 的後面，看起來似乎不合文法，其實不然。由於 make 的受詞 "an entire genre of self-help tomes" 太長，因此把受詞補語 redundant 挪到受詞前面，這是英文常見的寫作技巧之一。另外，在經濟不景氣時代，許多公司因業務萎縮或為節省成本而進行裁員、解雇掉一些員工。如果您不幸在一夕之間成為冗員而遭解雇，那麼您就可以說 "I was made redundant"。
genre -- (n.) (法) 文藝作品之類型。
tome -- (n.) 大部頭書；又厚又大的書。但這本書名最怪異的書「如果你想結束你們的關係，那麼就從雙腿開始」(暫譯) 應該不是這種書。請注意 tome 與 tomb (墳墓) 的區別。
for the benefit of -- (prep.) 為了。
roll-call -- (n.) 點名。
延伸閱讀：新聞英語的語法結構