Speccie: Bizarre Books
 

Bazza and Bill back on form. Chris O'Carroll, Jayne Osborn and Marion Shore join them as winners. Robert Schechter close but no cigar

No. 2640: Bizarre books
You are 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 Wormhunter (150 words maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 March.

It's hard to imagine doing much better than the actual product copy taken from Amazon:PS--
The wormhunter title recently was recognized for its bizarre title:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_471383.html

or

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertain...re/8530144.stm

How To Write A How To Write Book

A stunning achievement. This is the book you wish you had written yourself, but didn't know how.


I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen

Having survived Japanese interrogators during World War II without disclosing more than his name, rank and serial number, Captain Mitchell thought he was tough enough to withstand anything. But when Louisa May Alcott ties him to a chair and forces him to listen to nauseating tales of Meg and Jo March and other "little women," will he betray his God, his family and his country just to make her stop?


Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter

"He sought them with thimbles, he sought them with care," Lewis Carroll might have put it, but David Crompton will have none of this. "I sought them with gloves," he assures us. "And I'm not being snarky."

let's hear it for the prose writers
 

I think the thing I most regret, aside from buying a KFC takeout – and eating it – was teaching creative writing. I had my Master's & a decent list of publications, but a couple of semesters destroyed my initial belief in what I was doing. Now it's an industry.

Onward –


Now half the nation has discovered the joys and challenges of authorship How to Write books are flavour of the month – or the decade. But how many readers of these books end up baffled by conflicting advice, or lost among the intimidating arcana of 'narrative arcs' and injunctions to 'show don't tell'? There is a history here of cruelly defeated aspirations; but now they can be a thing of the past. Both writers and readers of of How to Write books will welcome this timely breakthrough publication, which sets forth with impeccable clarity the requirements for a How to Write book that will teach How to Write book authors to teach people how to write. It covers all aspects of the How to Write writer's craft, from the choice of word-processing software to the protocols of book-signing at Waterstones. An astounding début that augurs an accomplished future.

Your novels have been compared to Tolstoy and Dickens. People constantly ask you, "How do you do it?" You'd like to explain, but when you try to write your how-to book on writing, the blank page mocks your every effort.

Sound familiar? Now, at long last, comes a guide to guide you in writing your guide to guide others.

Learn all about:

• the power of bulleted lists to drive home a point,
• the use of bold fonts,
• and when, if ever, to combine bold and italic fonts within bulleted list items.

Have you written a single paragraph that says everything that needs to be said? Learn how to expand that paragraph to fill chapter after chapter.

Congratulations on the critical acclaim your novels have garnered. But isn't it time you started to make some real money?

On the button, Roger.


bazza

Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter

After thirty years in Plunkett Pond, Camilla Carp sets off on a whirlwind tour of Hoover Dam, only to find that she misses the plump nightcrawlers she relished in home waters. Eager to get back to her pond, she enlists the aid of a dapper dogfish and a handsome trout, who connive to send her to a fish-stick factory…

Roger, I laughed out loud at your last one, especially the lines,"Have you written a single paragraph that says everything that needs to be said? Learn how to expand that paragraph to fill chapter after chapter."

Susan

You've got a good idea for a Pixar film here!