Monday, February 03, 2014

Best Titles: Book or Movie

What are some of the best titles? What title made you want to pick up a book or go see a movie. Here are some of my favorites.

GONE GIRL, BLEAK HOUSE, CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, BURY ME DEEP, WATERSHIP DOWN, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN A CASTLE, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, DAUGHTHER OF TIME, THE DEAD OF JERICHO, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
 

How about yours?

27 comments:

  1. These may not all be great titles, but they are books and movies I read or saw based on the title alone. In some cases I knew nothing about them other than the title and went into the book or movie blind. Most of the time it was rewarding, in some cases (like Sara Gran's book which I never finished) I was very disappointed.

    BOOKS:
    The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death
    The Sisters Brothers
    The Men Who Stare at Goats
    Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead
    The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (I think all of Bradley's books abou Flavia have superb titles, but of course they're all taken from splendid poems.)

    MOVIES:
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Moonrise Kingdom
    Seven Psychopaths
    Barking Dogs Never Bite -fantastic movie from Korea, highly recommend it!
    OSS 117: Lost in Rio
    The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
    Hideous Kinky

    And nearly every giallo (Italian crime movies usually with gory violence) I've ever seen I've wathched only because of the title. The English titles at least tend to be bizarre and evocative: Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Don't Torture a Duckling,(!) What Have You Done to Solange?, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, etc. etc.

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  2. Jane Austen's PERSUASION
    Thomas Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW

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  3. Anonymous10:38 AM

    As John said, all the Alan Bradley books have great titles. I also like:

    A Confederacy of Dunces
    Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse
    The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
    Baby Moll
    Nuclear Jellyfish
    Interpreter of Maladies
    Disco for the Departed
    The Two-Bear Mambo

    Jeff M.

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  4. Gerard11:00 AM

    ZOMBIE BUTTS FROM URANUS. Great title but a very disappointing book.

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  5. My favorite titles, stolen from my own blog a couple years ago. Ha.--

    One Monday We Killed Them All
    CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
    Gun, with Occasional Music
    By Bizarre Hands
    Here Comes a Candle
    Bury Me Deep
    City of Widows
    New Hope for the Dead

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  6. Gerard1:06 PM

    Heath's title reminded me of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families

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  7. The Man in My Grave
    The Sands of Time
    The Postern Gate
    The Big Sleep
    In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

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  8. I love this question. Just a few:
    Always Coming Home
    When Will There Be Good News?
    Another Country
    My Family and Other Animals
    An Anthropologist on Mars
    The Girls Who Trod on a Loaf
    The Secret History
    Bastard out of Carolina
    Stone Butch Blues
    Between the Acts

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  9. I'll grant you, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES isn't a bad title. Perhaps that is why the novel is so wildly overrated.

    YOU'RE ALL ALONE
    JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
    YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN
    "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
    -OR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS
    "The King of Central Park"
    HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT
    DON'T LOOK NOW
    COLD IN JULY
    THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY
    "The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity"
    "A Deskful of Girls"
    THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (hence its repeated employment)
    "A Pail of Air"
    ALL THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE
    TELL ME A RIDDLE (for the collection, in other form for the story)
    WOMEN SHOULD BE ALLOWED
    "The Night They Missed the Horror Show"
    A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
    AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (particularly when contrasted to the alternate titles)
    RED HARVEST
    "If All Men Are Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"


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  10. Sorry, the one is actually (the much better) "The Lord of Central Park"

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  11. Anonymous2:03 PM

    Great (but enigmatic) title: WISE BLOOD. Even when readers finish the book, they remain uncertain about the "meaning" of the title. Readers may tell you who has "wise blood," but then, when you ask them what that means, the stumbling begins.

    And, just for simplicity's sake, has there been a better title for anyone's first book than this: GENESIS.

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  12. WHO WILL RUN THE FROG HOSPITAL?
    DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
    THE CRYING OF LOT 49
    DOPE
    DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL
    RABBIT RUN
    EAST OF EDEN



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  13. Steve Oerkfitz3:45 PM

    Flow My Tears The Policeman Said
    Galaxies Like Grains of Sand
    Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
    Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
    The Long Good Friday

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  14. And THE LONG GOODBYE too.

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  15. Reform School Girl
    Naked on Roller Skates
    Nigger Heaven
    Three's a Sandwich
    Kiss My Fist

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  16. Well, THE BIG SLEEP, too.
    DINKY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK!
    FROM THE MIXED UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER
    HARRIET THE SPY
    THE LONG SECRET
    THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
    STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
    THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE
    SOME OF YOUR BLOOD
    THE QUIET AMERICAN
    "And in the House, Another"
    "Come Closer"
    NORMA JEAN, THE TERMITE QUEEN (similarly, MEMOIRS OF AN EX-PROM QUEEN)
    IMAGINARY CRIMES
    "Affair with a Green Monkey"
    "The Most Dangerous Game"
    "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper"
    "The Funnel of God"
    NIGHT-WORLD
    PLEASANT DREAMS
    "My Boyfriend's Name is Jello"
    "Horrer Howce"
    HARD LANDING
    THE ABORTION: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE 1966
    WAITING FOR NOTHING
    PERSONAL VELOCITY
    THE BOOK OF SAND
    THE CASTLE OF CROSSED DESTINIES
    IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER...
    MARTIAN TIMESLIP aka ALL WE MARSMEN
    JESUS CHRISTS
    DAMNED YANKEES
    DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE SOMETHING FURTHER TO ADD?
    THE FEMALE MAN
    NAKED CAME THE STRANGER

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  17. THE END OF THE AFFAIR
    FORBIDDEN GAMES
    THE 400 BLOWS
    "Strangers in the Fog"
    TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS
    SLOW LEARNER
    THE STARS, LIKE DUST
    THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE STARS
    THE TRACK OF THE CAT
    BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

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  18. DEATH QUALIFIED
    THE PRICE OF SILENCE
    THE KILLER THING
    THE MIND THING

    wv: things ymozcal

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  19. Ah, yes, Richard noted THE BIG SLEEP.

    LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES
    "The Women Men Don't See"
    "237 Talking Statues, Etc."
    "Who Goes There?"
    THE HIEROS GAMOS OF SAM AND AN SMITH
    VERGING ON THE PERTINENT

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  20. Al Tucher5:55 PM

    Just thought of a few:

    THE BIT DIRT NAP, by Rosemary Harris.
    THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE, by Vincent Patrick
    And one of my favorite titles of all time, THE TWO DUDE DEFENSE, by Walter Walker.

    It's a reference to your basic criminal dimwit's alibi: "Wasn't me, man. It was this other dude."

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  21. Clearly more good titles than bad ones.

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  22. Anonymous6:39 PM

    Todd, surely it's DAMN YANKEES, right?

    I remember first reading it in one of my mother's Readers Digest Condensed Books under the original title, THE YEARS THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT. For those too young to remember there were only two years in the 1949-1964 period that the Yankees didn't win the pennant.

    Jeff M.

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  23. What was it with that generation and condensed books? My mother and grandparents had all of them.

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  24. It is DAMN, of course. Thanks, Jeff.

    RD, once the most popular magazine in the world, damned near threw the Condensed Books at their subscribers.

    Though it's amusing that at least one of the favored titles here is one of your least favored, Patti. A snappy title that works out of context, as opposed to those that work so much better in context ("The Funeral", THE SERVANT, THE LOVED ONE) is certainly one way to go...and almost no one really wants to name their baby THUNDERBALL.

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  25. CAN YOU FEEL ANYTHING WHEN I DO THIS?
    I GO POGO!
    A CONTRACT WITH GOD
    LITTLE MURDERS
    AH, WILDERNESS! and its rewrite, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, which leads me to wonder if Celine's title inspired O'Neill's.

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  26. By Tom Robbins:
    Jitterbug Perfume
    Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
    Another Roadside Attraction
    Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
    Still Life with Woodpecker


    When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? --George Carlin

    By S.J. Perelman:
    The Rising Gorge
    Westward Ha!
    Chicken Inspector No. 23
    The Road to Miltown

    Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
    --Christopher Moore

    The Search for My Great Uncle's Head --Jonathan Latimer writing as Peter Coffin

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  27. I love good, evocative titles.

    All heads turn when the hunt goes by.

    I have no mouth and I must scream.

    The Swords of Night and Day

    In the Electric Mist with Confederate dead.

    Something wicked this way comes

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