The best book titles

[kev67]

Which book titles are the best?

I've never watched any of the films from the Angry Young Men period in 1950s Britain, or read the books they were based on, but I often thought they had good titles. Recently, I discovered Alan Sillitoe was responsible for two of them: Satuday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is such a clever title, while The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner has a good rhythm to it. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is on my must-read list btw. A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow, is another favourite title from this period.

Recently I've read Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I've thought this was a great book title for as long as I remember. I have read that Thomas Hardy played around with different character names and titles for years until he hit upon d'Urberville. iirc he played around with names like Troublefield and Troublewell for his main character, and Turberville for his villain. Then settled on Durbeyfield for his heroine and realised a similarity with d'Urberville. Then he was going to call his book Daughter of the d'Urbervilles, but for some reason, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is so much better. On the negative side, it sounds a bit like The Hound of the Baskervilles, but that was written afterwards.

[dfloyd]

Far from the Madding Crowd. The main characters were also aptly named: Bathseba Everdene and Gabiel Oak.

[kev67]

Far from the Madding Crowd. The main characters were also aptly named: Bathseba Everdene and Gabiel Oak.

Far from the Madding Crowd is taken from a poem, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

It has a similar rhythm to Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

[PoeticPassions]

I think (if my memory serves me correctly) there was a thread like this already... people posted some good ones... lemme dig it up.

[PoeticPassions]

ah, found it: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44624&highlight=title

:)

[kev67]

That's annoying. I did a search before starting the thread and didn't find it.

Another title I liked the sound of was 'The Pale King' by David Foster Wallace.

[PoeticPassions]

Yeah it is hard to find anything here... I actually think the one I found is not the one I meant... since there was one more this year, I believe.

I just finished (finally) One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is a great title, as most of Marquez's titles are.

Some other ones I like:
Pale Fire
A Clockwork Orange
Gravity's Rainbow
Tender is the Night


And many more, which I noted in this thread: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67902

Heh, sorry to rain on your parade... it is okay to have duplicate threads, but just not sure how many responses you will get.

[Lokasenna]

The Sound and the Fury has always been a favourite title, though I've never read it. Ditto No Country for Old Men, though like everyone else I've seen the film.

I think my favourite title from the books I've actually read would be Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. That said, we mustn't forget the truly great: Paradise Lost is an awesome title for an awesome work.

[MarkBastable]

Paradise Lost[/I] is an awesome title for an awesome work.

We may have to agree to differ here. And I'm using 'differ' in its emphatic sense of 'exist in completely separate and incompatible realities'.

[kev67]

When I was a boy, I think I remember my mother reading a book called The Wide Sargasso Sea. I wasn't sure I liked the sound of it, but it was an intriguing title. The only thing I had heard about the Sargasso Sea was that eels went there to breed. I somehow doubted it was about eels.

David Lodge wrote a book called Nice Work, which I think is probably his best book. It's not a particularly poetic title, but it's clever considering what the book was about. It was a story in which a university lecturer is obliged to follow around the managing director of an engineering firm, as part of some government initiative to forge links between industry and academia. "Nice work" is something somebody in a manufacturing trade might say of something that was well made, while "Nice work if you can get it," is something he might say of someone he percieves to be in a cushy job, such as a lecturer. It's a brave title for an author to pick though.

[Lokasenna]

We may have to agree to differ here. And I'm using 'differ' in its emphatic sense of 'exist in completely separate and incompatible realities'.

Do you really think so? Do you dislike the work, or just the title? I've always thought the title Paradise Lost rolled off the tongue rather well...

[Kafka's Crow]

I see these chick-lit paperbacks in my local supermarket and they have very strange titles like'... then he ate my boy entrancers.' or Angus, thongs and full-frontal snogging and they intrigue me. What are these books about? what are 'boy entrancers'?