I was just wondering about what everybody's favorite titles are. For me, an enticing title always persuades me to pick up a book, though some of the greatest novels ever have titles that aren't very exciting.
I believe my favorite title is "Never Let Me Go" by Ishiguro, but "In Search of Lost Time" and "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka" are close seconds.
tonto and the lone ranger fist fight in heaven
Armageddon in retrospect
Last edited by FalseReality; 07-22-2009 at 02:58 PM.
Aaah, I'm sure there are so many favourites that I just can't think of right now, but I quite like most of Haruki Murakami's titles. "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World", for instance.
Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is another one that just came to mind.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
I think that The Idiot is my favorite title ever.
The Once and Future King - TH White
As I Lay Dying except some crappy metal band used it as their band name. My friend said they haven't read it. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, they should really consider reading it.
Augusto Monterroso- Complete Works and Other Stories
Italo Calvino- If on a Winter's Night a Traveler...
Carlos Fuentes- Constancia: And Other Stories for Virgins
Robert Burton- Anatomy of Melancholia
Thomas De Quincey- Confessions of an English Opium Addict
Dave Eggers- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Francesco Colonna- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Oscar Hijuelos- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Machado de Assis- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
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I'm a fan of 'Decline and Fall' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
The titles of Faulkner's major four novels, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and Light in August are all nice euphonic titles.
Also good - As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing, and Finnegans Wake for its thematic playfulness.
I second "As I Lay Dying" being a wonderful title.
I've also always liked "Of Mice and Men", haven't read it though. And I love Barth's "Lost In The Funhouse"
All aboard. All souls at half-mast. Aye-Aye. -Samuel Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks
I like "Of Human Bondage," "The Bell Jar" (because hey, gross) and "Make Room! Make Room!" (that one especially)
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"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
I second the Philip Dick - some others of his come to mind: Lies, Inc, The Man in the High Castle.
Also, Fish's Is There a Text in This Class?
[EDIT
double-posted by accident]
How could I possibly resist a book called The Earth Hums in b Flat by Mari Strachan? It turned out to be a rather fey but charming tale of growing up in 1950s Wales. And Have the Men Had Enough? by Margeret Forster drew my attention - it struck an all too personal chord, being about how one elderly person's dementia has its affect on several generations of the family.
Recently If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor and If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino leapt off the shelves at me.
east of eden
the turn of the screw
to kill a mockingbird
the sound and the fury
persuasion
in cold blood
house of leaves
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