The Best Literary Title You Know

[miyako73]

Mine is "The Mute's Soliloquy" by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

[FalseReality]

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven-Sherman Alexi

[mikey]

'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' (Seth Grahame-Smith) caught my eye. What it says on the tin apparently.

[keilj]

To A God Unknown


Winner Take Nothing

[Scheherazade]

And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island That I Won Off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game
by David Forrest (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nephew-Albert-Leave-Island-Fatty/dp/0340128046)

[Modest Proposal]

I was always partial to "Of Mice and Men", "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Sound and the Fury".

A good quote is always nice. Maybe that's why I like, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem".

[dfloyd]

A Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

[mal4mac]

Huxley had a knack for making titles out of some of Shakespeare's best lines - 'After Many A Summer', 'Time Must Have a Stop'. I quite like Maugham's title's - 'The Moon in the Gutter', 'The Razor's Edge'. Joyce - 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' is a great 'what it says on the tin' title. Others: 'Murder on the Orient Express', 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'...

[Silverblue]

it's probably been mentionned before but :

"On murder considered as one of the fine arts"

:thumbsup:

[Snowqueen]

East of Eden and Far from the Madding Crowd.

[MarkBastable]

Mourning Becomes Elektra

The Illustrated Man

Adios, Scheherezade

[blazeofglory]

The Prophet is a book I never got tired of reading and after reading it I felt that the author of this book is a mystic. I got transformed after that. I am no longer the same and my attitudes have undergone a sea change.

This book is unbeatable and recommendable for those who is interested in spirituality.

[Emil Miller]

Huxley had a knack for making titles out of some of Shakespeare's best lines - 'After Many A Summer', 'Time Must Have a Stop'. I quite like Maugham's title's - 'The Moon in the Gutter', 'The Razor's Edge'. Joyce - 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' is a great 'what it says on the tin' title. Others: 'Murder on the Orient Express', 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'...

Interesting that you call The Moon and Sixpence the Moon in the Gutter is that perhaps a foreign translation?

[blazeofglory]

I recommend the Bothers Karamazov too

[LeavesOfGrass]

Les Miserables is always a worthy read.

[mortalterror]

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea

[Katy North]

Kafka on the Shore.

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

The Catcher in the Rye

The Once and Future King

[Kafka's Crow]

Look Back in Anger
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
'Tis Pity She's a Whore
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Idiot

[sixsmith]

You Bright and Risen Angels - William T Vollman

[WuWei]

Elective Affinities - Goethe

La vie: mode d'emploi. Romans - George Perec (Life: a User's Manual. Novels)

[blp]

Funny, was just in a bookshop thinking about this. In no particular order:

A Clockwork Orange

Lord of the Flies

Naked Lunch

A Handful of Dust

Nausea

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Airtight Garage

Roadside Picnic

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Whatever Happened to the Happy Laughing Girl in the Red Gingham Dress?

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses over the Hills

Vanity Fair

To the Lighthouse

Heart of Darkness

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

The Rape of the Lock

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Grapes of Wrath

[blp]

And

The Sun Also Rises

and

Tender is the Night

I knew I'd think of a few more.



A good quote is always nice. Maybe that's why I like, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem".

I second this one.

[prendrelemick]

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.


a good book too.

[blp]

Corrigendum: One of those above should be

What Happened to the Laughing and Loving Girl in the Gingham Dress?

I kind of prefer my wrong version, though.

[Griffith]

Dostoyevsky - The house of the dead.

ps: "The Once and Future King " what an idiot title

[Modest Proposal]

Dostoyevsky - The house of the dead.

ps: "The Once and Future King " what an idiot title

I hope you are joking. You know what it means?

[Travis_R]

I've always been partial to the titles A Clockwork Orange, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and Beyond Good and Evil.

[Phaedra's Love]

The Swimming-Pool Library

[dig_thestreet]

While I did not particularly like the book, I've always liked the title Their Eyes Were Watching God.

[Gregory Samsa]

À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)

[Riverrun...]

Kafka on the Shore.

I second this.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.
Everything is Illuminated
Love in the Time of Cholera
The God of Small Things
Brave New World (was this taken from The Tempest?)
At Swim-Two-Birds
The Bell Jar
If This is a Man
A Tranquil Star
Cry, the Beloved Country
Things Fall Apart
I haven't read it, but A Thousand Splendid Suns caught my eye in Waterstones recently.

There are so many others. I'm always disappointed when a title is original and promising, but the book doesn't live up to its name.

[MadcapLaugher]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

And although it's mostly non-fiction, My Tank Is Fight. A book on different types of weaponry.

[aliengirl]

Some of my favorite titles (from different genres):-


A Midsummer Night's Dream
Waiting for Godot
The Guide (The title is quite apt to the novel.)
The Shadow Lines
Untouchable
Things Fall Apart
And Then There Were None

[Lokasenna]

How about Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter?

On a more serious note, how about:
Tender is the Night
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Paradise Lost
The Sound and the Fury

And that's to name but a few...

[JBI]

East of Eden and Far from the Madding Crowd.

Hmm, both lifted though - allusions count?

[stlukesguild]

I quite like Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up:ack2:

[IceM]

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
As I Lay Dying
On The Duty of Civil Disobedience, even though it's an essay.
Slaughterhouse Five
Breakfast of Champions

[Tallon]

Tender is the Night
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Sound and the Fury
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Stars My Destination

[Jazz_]

I've always liked:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Midsummer Night's Dream

[Riverrun...]

I saw a 'young adult' book with the title, ''Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You''. I thought it was quite nice.

[Taliesin]

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Against The Day
The Kindly Ones
Monday Begins On Saturday
Waves Extinguish The Wind
Consider Phlebas
Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition

There are of course many more, however, it seems that if one considers a book good then it's title also seems interesting. It's not absolute, of course, but there's a leaning, methinks.

[iamnobody]

'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' (Seth Grahame-Smith) caught my eye. What it says on the tin apparently.

'Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters' (no kidding, that's real too)

[Pensive]

One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Watership Down.


Monday Begins On Saturday
Being the kind of person who gets easily intrigued by titles, makes me wonder what this book might be about! :D

[PabloQ]

Maybe a little more modern, but I like:
Another Roadside Attraction
Trout Fishing in America
A Confederacy of Dunces
Lost in the Funhouse
Everything that Rises Must Converge
to name a few

[Pensive]

Oh and I totally forgot Something Wicked This Way Comes, To Kill a Mockingbird and Someplace to be Flying.

[laymonite]

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (collection) by Raymond Carver

[JuniperWoolf]

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (collection) by Raymond Carver

Hah, I like it.

I also like Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

[tscherff]

here are a couple interesting ones

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
metamorphosis
one flew over the cuckoo's nest

[ktm5124]

good titles...

This Side of Paradise
The Great Gatsby
For Esme - With Love and Squalor
Catcher in the Rye
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Room with a View
Lolita
Hamlet
White Fang
Middlesex
The Iliad (how regal sounding this is)
The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock
Great Expectations
The Brothers Karamazov (okay, it's the translated English, but it still sounds monumental)

[jackgoosey]

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

[Veho]

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor