ANCIENT LOS ANGELES

Ivan the Wrathful has a post about odd book titles: "How to Bombproof Your Horse", etc. To which I would have added The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes, by Michel Pastoureau, and Michael Jacob Rochlin's Ancient L.A.

There was a thing about dull book titles in the Spectator about a decade and a half ago:

The Street Names of Thatcham
With Rod and Reel in Northern Bechuanaland
Teach Yourself Practical Concreting

...are the ones I remember. (All genuine, apparently.) Champion bore Glenn Reynolds has a new book out, but you have to admit that the title is pretty good: An Army of Davids. No doubt the rest of it is the most frightful tosh.

When I was small there was a craze for joke book titles:

The Cat's Revenge, by Claude Balls
Falling off a Cliff, by Eileen Dover
The French Chef by Sue Flay
Nail in the Banister, by R. Stornaway

Good clean fun. Kids these days are probably too busy getting high on glue and headbanging to their "skiffle music".