Six books to leave unread when you die

The recent challenge to compose the most off-putting book blurb imaginable elicited an avalanche of entries. This was one of those competitions that is both a pleasure and a pain to judge: a delight to read through but devilishly difficult to whittle down to just half a dozen winners. Virginia Price Evans’s entry was a masterclass in impenetrable jargon: ‘Policy Initiatives is an essential tool for civil servants responsible for driving effective public policy. Disdaining Ernest Gowers’ simplistic bourgeois maxims, the authors show how the use of prolix and abstruse circumlocution will facilitate meaningful dialogue and incentivize empowerment mechanisms, eventuating in sustainable outcomes for holistic governance.’ And I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy Jonathan Friday’s ‘groundbreaking exploration of the neglected beauty of bodily fluids and excreta’, which features ‘a striking array of scratch’n’sniff imagery’.

Other unlucky losers included Gail White, Chris O’Carroll, J.R. Johnson and Bill Greenwell. G.M. Davis nabs £30 and his fellow winners take £25 each.