Comments on: 40 Worst Book Covers and Titles Ever

40 Worst Book Covers and Titles Ever

dancestoblue — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 17:56:49 -0800

Exactly what it says on the tin -- 40 Worst Book Covers and Titles Ever These things have got to be real, no one could ever dream this stuff up.

I think that these are as good as a link I remember, from here I think, a link to images of comical record albums -- do you remember that link? I'd love to see that again, too, be a great companion piece for these.

By: msalt

msalt — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:04:38 -0800

How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? (Paperback)

By: LogicalDash

LogicalDash — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:07:12 -0800

no one could ever dream this stuff up. but i was taught that was how you made book covers this is going to take a lot of work to process

By: Thing

Thing — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:10:00 -0800

Some of these books and their covers show far more humor and intelligence than the person who whelped this list into being.

By: swift

swift — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:19:08 -0800

do you remember that link? Ah yes, I remember that link well. Like it was yesterday. But links like that don't come around every day. What we have here is fool's gold, but that was the real stuff, it was. Real funny stuff. I believe I saw it over on BoingBoing, maybe Kottke, and some say it was even on Facebook. Somebody even got me the book version for Christmas one year, from the Barnes and Noble I believe it was. I remember it well. But you can't keep a book like that for very long. And so I gave it up to a Salvation Army, amidst some of the very album covers it mocked no doubt. But I think of it often, I remember it well. Maybe they should put that book of funny album covers on this list of funny book covers, so that you might link it here. That would be very meta, as they say around here. They don't really say it, but they do sort of mutter it under their breath. That's so meta. I believe that's what they do, but I don't really know, because you can't hear through a computer monitor. And I don't like to meet people.

By: louche mustachio

louche mustachio — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:25:11 -0800

What? Some of these are GREAT. Eating People is Wrong and How to Make Money in Your Spare Time are quite good. Apples don't poop, though. At least, I have never seen them do it, and my research into their anatomy does not reveal any mechanism that would allow them to do so.

By: louche mustachio

louche mustachio — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:26:46 -0800

Speaking of poop, this is incredibly useful information if you actually have to do this sort of thing.

By: bunderful

bunderful — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:26:52 -0800

The "Mommy Drinks Because You're Bad" cover is a photoshop, based on the comments at boredpanda.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:29:01 -0800

I bet this guy also refuses vaccinations for his children.

By: codswallop

codswallop — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:29:29 -0800

> How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? (Paperback) Nishigaki, you magnificent bastard - I read your book! It was one helluva ride. Not an easy read.

By: jamincan

jamincan — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:30:46 -0800

The cover of How to Make Money in Your Spare Time is pretty successful, I think. My first reaction was to chuckle at the joke, and then with closer examination of the author, wonder if it was a joke after all.

By: anothermug

anothermug — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:35:58 -0800

The Hitchens one is a classic, as the book debunks the myth of Mother Theresa as benevolent, harmless nun. The "the" is just a "the" but the rest of the words are an assortment of puns and pokes in the eye.

By: murphy slaw

murphy slaw — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:37:16 -0800

"Eating People is Wrong" has a cover illustration by Quentin Blake and is therefore Great Literature.

By: Trochanter

Trochanter — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:43:29 -0800

anothermug, Hitchens apparently had also considered for that book: "Sacred Cow" Which I also liked.

By: anothermug

anothermug — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:52:22 -0800

Hitchslap!

By: Behemoth

Behemoth — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:54:16 -0800

The Amazon reviews for "How to Avoid Huge Ships" are worthy of mention.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:54:17 -0800

"Reusing old graves" -- that's a real issue some places. In New Orleans, the water table is only a couple of feet below the surface, so they can't use dug graves to bury their dead. Instead you have cemeteries full of marble structures above the ground, and the law is that a new body can be put in one of them if it's been at least a year and a day since the last one. (The bodies aren't in coffins, either.)

By: hap_hazard

hap_hazard — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:55:14 -0800

Hasn't it been scientifically proven that the site linked in the fpp is one of those ebaumsworld2.0 deals where all the content's all 'found on the web so I presumed it to be public domain because either I am an idiot or more likely I am a disingenuous ripoff artist' ? No offense to the OP- it's not like it's not enjoyable 'content', even if it's pretty evenly divided between obvious intentional jokes, stuff that's funny because 'boner' used to mean something different, and photoshops. Without the amazon links, I'd probably just sigh at it and move on. This is why it's not good to think too much about the internet, because it makes you feel about a million years old, and instead of wondering who the low-functioning, robotic, fucking void is behind those 1.9M (are you fucking serious?) pageviews, you start hating yourself for not getting that money yourself because fuck. And then you end up too jaded to even snark about it on metafilter. Which, god forbid.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:56:21 -0800

I have read at least three of those books, and owned at least two.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:01:11 -0800

Whoever came up with this idiotic list seems to think they're the only person who understands humor. Well, them and whoever their target audience is. But not old people. Humor is a new invention.

By: kozad

kozad — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:03:40 -0800

Everyone Poops is a charming book we read to our fascinated pre-semi-pooper. How to Shit in the Woods is something every hiker/camper should read. Others: well, pretty funny or creepy, yeah. Of course: cultural/linguistic context changes are what makes most of them strange in 2014.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:03:44 -0800

"Eating People is Wrong" is a reference to the song "The Reluctant Cannibal" by Flanders & Swann (starts at 2:02 here).

By: Sequence

Sequence — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:20:44 -0800

I'm pretty sure the quilting lady knows quite well what stripping is. It's like the person who compiled this doesn't like puns, or something. (Whether or not one likes her ideas on everything, Catharine MacKinnon's question about the humanity of women seems like a question that still needs asking in many places where women still hold status more like property than people, and for that matter in the rest of the world with regard to what we ought to be doing about that.)

By: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:22:52 -0800

Needs more Cooking with Pooh.

By: oliverburkeman

oliverburkeman — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:25:17 -0800

An epic exercise in missing intentional humour. From the comments: The author of this article probably has another pointing out how klutzy and stupid Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were.

By: computech_apolloniajames

computech_apolloniajames — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:26:46 -0800

I knew that the "Mommy Drinks" was a fake! The artwork stirred some long ago memory of a book from childhood.

By: deadbilly

deadbilly — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:30:51 -0800

I own "How to Shit in the Woods"

By: munchingzombie

munchingzombie — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:37:02 -0800

What a humorless person. Most of these books are fine.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:42:47 -0800

This list is too harsh on Roger Welsch. Tractors are certainly Very Important to the well-being of us all, and Roger's just trying to share his considerable (I'm guessing) knowledge of their upkeep and maintenance with us, WHILE MAKING US BETTER PEOPLE, TOO. So lay offa Roger, listicle meanie.

By: partly squamous and partly rugose

partly squamous and partly rugose — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:45:11 -0800

I received "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" as a book award in school about 15 years ago, and only just realized in this post there was a naughty subtext to it! I went to a religious (Protestant) highschool, and was so distracted by the dramatic revelations in it that I never noticed the obvious joke.

By: potsmokinghippieoverlord

potsmokinghippieoverlord — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:48:14 -0800

But if God loves me, why can't I get my locker open?

By: wotsac

wotsac — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:48:24 -0800

Avoiding Huge Ships is easy, unless you're in the middle of a busy shipping lane in a small boat. I seem to recall it being an enormous problem for round the world sailors.

By: Ray Walston, Luck Dragon

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:50:07 -0800

I've only constricted my anus 26 times and I already have a splitting headache I think I'm in big trouble

By: jonmc

jonmc — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:52:54 -0800

I've seen most of these and plenty of other doozies pass over the buying desk at my store.

By: Chuffy

Chuffy — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:53:23 -0800

Somebody has a little problem with the poopie...

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:54:17 -0800

Exactly what it says on the tin -- 40 Worst Book Covers and Titles Ever That's not at all what's in the tin. Also, there is no tin.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:58:16 -0800

P.S. Albums + Albums + Albums ...

By: goofyfoot

goofyfoot — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 20:03:55 -0800

I read the Hitchens book when it came out, and wondered why it hadn't been called "God fodder."

By: Tube

Tube — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 20:05:36 -0800

I own a copy of this book, a fascinating account of the intersection of geometry and mechanics.

By: notsnot

notsnot — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:03:29 -0800

deadbilly: "I own "How to Shit in the Woods"" Me too. Sitting (as it were) on my bookshelf, it has an amazing ability to draw the eye, so almost anyone who so much as looks at the bookshelf is drawn in, and reads the title out loud.

By: Sebmojo

Sebmojo — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:10:14 -0800

'Why cats paint' is a real book, but a spoof - it's a deadpan examination of cats alleged artistic urges.

By: Dip Flash

Dip Flash — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:35:45 -0800

"Castration: The Advantages and Disadvantages" raises the obvious question of what the fuck the advantages could possibly be? Powells books in Portland used to (and may still, I haven't been there in a while) have an amazing ever-changing display of books that had been brought in that would put this listicle to shame.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:46:40 -0800

dancestoblue: "I think that these are as good as a link I remember, from here I think, a link to images of comical record albums -- do you remember that link? I'd love to see that again, too, be a great companion piece for these. posted by dancestoblue (41 comments total) [add to favorites] 4 users marked this as a favorite [!] [quote]" dancestoblue, I was willing to believe you were just being coy, and phrasing your post that way to draw clicks... but you really don't get the jokes, do you? These books aren't at all like that list of awful albums; these are witty titles for humorous books (except for the odd zinger like Hitchens' hit piece).

By: quarsan

quarsan — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:00:57 -0800

Well, someone's not noticing either gentle or self-depreciating humour. I'm also developing a soft spot for Roger Welsch and his tractors, mainly by reading the 'Look Inside' and there is charm there. Who can't admire the author of 'Weed em and Reap' ?

By: bonehead

bonehead — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:05:33 -0800

How to Shit in the Woods is a great book. The Practical Pyromaniac is awesome too. It's sitting on my desk right now, part of planning for the kids' camp for this summer.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 23:06:53 -0800

I can attest that the Welsch books are fairly good, he can spin a yarn. I may even own both of the titles there.

By: MartinWisse

MartinWisse — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 23:09:19 -0800

Wilde was wrong, the humourous listicle is the lowest form of wit. Especially when assembled by somebody with a worse sense of humour than the books they try to mock.

By: You Can't Tip a Buick

You Can't Tip a Buick — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 23:29:29 -0800

Oh come on how do people not know who Catherine Mackinnon is?

By: mayhap

mayhap — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 23:44:47 -0800

"Castration: The Advantages and Disadvantages" raises the obvious question of what the fuck the advantages could possibly be? Supposedly it might increase your life expectancy, although that still leaves the question of whether you would consider that to be an advantage, post-castration.

By: marienbad

marienbad — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:24:35 -0800

"Oh come on how do people not know who Catherine Mackinnon is?" Most people don't know who she is. I had a mate who read the grauniad and she was on the cover of the G2 section many many years ago, and when I said "Hey look, Catharine Mackinnon," he just looked at me blankly. Unless you are involved in areas where she is active or know about her work with Linda Lovelace then it is likely you won't have heard of her. These books are great. The avoiding large ships one was all over the internet in about 2002.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 01:27:50 -0800

"How to Raise Your IQ by Eating Gifted Children" Highly recommended. Ask me! It works! OTOH: Many of these just seem deliberately provocative to catch an eye, in hopes of a sale. What's wrong with that? Lots of these are very dated, so why would you expect it to make sense today? Poorly titled article, really. The titles are dated, not the "worst ever". I mean, "Games You can Play with your Pussy" is a perfect, British title. It's only funny to Americans, who, after all, eat candy branded as "Fanny Farmer", so who are they to poke fun?!

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 02:18:15 -0800

40 Worst Book Covers and Titles list ever.

By: howfar

howfar — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 03:50:40 -0800

I mean, "Games You can Play with your Pussy" is a perfect, British title. It's only funny to Americans Mrs Slocombe's pussy suggests otherwise.

By: Hogshead

Hogshead — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:07:42 -0800

A lot of these books are taken from the annual Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, which has been running since 1978 and has also produced such must-reads as 'People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It' and 'The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais'

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:19:44 -0800

Everyone Poops is a charming book we read to our fascinated pre-semi-pooper. Yup. We read the same book way back when we were raising nascent potty-poopers.

By: pony707

pony707 — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:24:10 -0800

This list is missing my favorite, The Jewish/Japanese Sex and Cookbook and How to Raise Wolves.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:42:21 -0800

All these books look awesome. Replace "worst" with "best" and this list would be alright. I need a copy of Anybody Can Be Cool, because I would really like to be lovingly admired by a entire cadre of ethnically diverse and attractive young women at my earliest possible convenience. Being a bass player has been of more limited utility in this endeavor than previously advertised

By: tommasz

tommasz — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 08:21:35 -0800

Is that The Pocket Book of Boners in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 09:28:55 -0800

No, it's just some book I'm fucking.

By: bruce

bruce — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 13:13:40 -0800

the authors of "why cats paint" are also responsible for "dancing with cats", which someone gave me years ago, i can see it from where i'm typing now. the booksellers/diagram prize has also given us such deathless titles as "managing a dental practice the genghis khan way" and "bombproof your horse", for when just leaving the horse in the barn isn't an option. perhaps my all-time favorite is "dildo cay" (that's an island).

By: hoodrich

hoodrich — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 14:04:03 -0800

Worst book covers and titles ever? I still regret not buying celebrity stalker Dessarae Bradford's self published endevour - "I Fucked Adam Baldwin In His Ass" - when I had the chance.

By: chainsofreedom

chainsofreedom — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 18:18:30 -0800

My SO and I just laughed for a good 5 minutes straight at "Images You Should Not Masturbate To."

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 07:39:36 -0800

How To Avoid Huge Jokes

By: Gordafarin

Gordafarin — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 13:05:07 -0800

This cover shows an actual forest in Germany. No one knows who planted the swastika, which is only visible during a few weeks of the year, and it wasn't discovered until after the end of WWII.

By: msalt

msalt — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 17:43:27 -0800

"Castration: The Advantages and Disadvantages" raises the obvious question of what the fuck the advantages could possibly be? Duh, he stops bugging you for sex. Oh, you mean self-castration?

By: Kerasia

Kerasia — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 00:40:07 -0800

Avoiding Huge Ships is easy, unless you're in the middle of a busy shipping lane in a small boat. I seem to recall it being an enormous problem for round the world sailors. And anti-nuclear activists on surfboards.