It arrived in my email today, buried in the list of other books that I always want but must refrain from buying. It made me go read the blurb... and it meets all three of Girl Scholar, PhD's criteria for book titleage in the post I linked to yesterday (which must have still been fresh in my brain)...
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums
I like the first part the best.
I also appreciate that this is a real book, unlike the winner of the 2008 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, "The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais." (Ok, ok, best and oddest are not necessarily the same thing). The title was coined by a method and apparatus for automated authoring and marketing (a machine/program designed to eliminate pesky human authors), and does not constitute a real book. For which it should, imo, have been disqualified. This would have left the more worthy titles of actual books with actual authors, like, "Baboon Metaphysics" to take home the prize.
Full disclosure: The full title of "Baboon Metaphysics" is "Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind." I like the first part the best, even though it's the second part that will probably get me to read it.
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