I have never been happy with any of the titles for my first book had finally settled with Someone Else's Life but last night had a dream I spent whole night telling myself off about it being the weakest thing about the book and trying to change it. Dream is right it is rubbish lol I know publisher may change it but I still need to get an agent to be attracted to my story. My other books Socrates' Children, Stoned Witches and Coffee Killer came so easily. What titles have stood out to you on a bookshop/library shelf and just drawn you in before you even looked at the cover?
A lot of Philip K. Dick titles. Like: A Scanner Darkly The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch We Can Build You Now Wait for Last Year Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike and of course Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep. Interesting titles.
lol I like some of them - love the Flow My Tears, The Policeman said. hmm Maybe it should be Bird Resurrection lol sounds more horror though than fantasy, Return of the Falcon sounds like a porn movie.
I like obscure titles that make no sense on a surface level but total sense when you think about it. My own novel is called "Trepidation" which makes total sense to me but my friends don't understand it. "To Kill A Mockingbird" is a great well known one. The title, apart from one reference in the story, doesn't make sense until you start thinking about what the book is all about.
Yes, that's how I view titles that stay with me. Some of my favorites are: Starting Out in the Evening (Brian Morton) - about a graduate student doing her thesis on an aged author whose fame is in the distant past. A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller) - a dystopian novel that begins with a novice monk in a post-nuclear world copying schematic drawings (much as medieval monks copied manuscripts) drawn by a man named Leibowitz, thinking they are holy relics. They are actually plans for missile silos. The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman) - about a struggling international newspaper and the people who work on it. The imperfections refer to both the paper and the people. Terrible Angel (Dermot McEvoy) - about Michael Collins, Irish revolutionary, freed from purgatory and sent back to Earth with an assignment to free a man wrongfully imprisoned as a means to earn his way into heaven.
Currently, my favorite title is by Jim Harrison: The Woman Lit By Fireflies. Now THAT is a great title!
lol I actually have a book that is called What About the Firefly? Not sure if it is staying Hmm Minstrel maybe I should call it King Oaf - using his nickname. You reminded me. Four and Twenty Birds and a King Oaf - rubbish but going in the right direction me thinks. Two Birds get Hitched is probably too much for a YA - Maybe Flocking Together
Hi, I like Piers Anthony and especially the Xanth series of books. So Crewel Lye, Night Mare, Dragon on a Pedestal. Also Bob Shaw's Who goes Here. Cheers.
Lala Pipo by Hideo Okuda. I took interest in this book based on the title alone. It doesn't make any sense until the final chapter.
The Blind Assasin (Margaret Atwood) You Shall Know Our Velocity (Dave Eggers) WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING (Haruki Murakami) The Things They Carried (Tim O' Brien) Finding George Orwell in Burma (Emma Larkin) Something Happened (Joseph Heller) And it just so turned out that they were all really great books.
I realised I haven't put mine lol Mist Over Pendle my favourite book drew me in but because I knew the hill Oronoko by Aphra Behn (I loved her name didn't realise the history of it at the time) Roots by Alex Hailey Evening News by Arthur Hailey (Hope I have those two the right way round lol) Resurectionist by can't remember and have yet to read it Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Its not a book title, but ' The King Of Limbs' the Radiohead album is an interesting title, and leaves you puzzling. It does have meaning though.
I probably shouldn't try to name your story for you but... If your book is about the story where it opens with the view inside the big dome, from what I think I've read so far from the rest of your posts, maybe "Torn feathers over the deep sea" might be a good title. However books that I like the titles of, The mote around Gods eye, Prey, Going postal, See Spot Run, Monsoon and The seventh scroll.
Shakespearean phrases provide so many great book titles, my favorite being Something Wicked This Way Comes, and for a more pithy title, Infinite Jest. I'm currently reading Cutting For Stone. I'm not crazy about the title mainly because I had no idea what it meant before starting the novel. Now that I understand the meaning behind it, it's a really cool title--it's a phrase, I think, from the oath that doctor's take, and it has a double meaning with the story's plot.
All the King's Men -- Robert Penn Warren. Started Early, Took My Dog -- Kate Atkinson The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- Stieg Larsson It's Kind of a Funny Story -- Ned Vizzini
Many of these are short story titles: The third thing that killed my father off So much water so close to home - all Ray Carver Are these actual miles? Sonny Liston was a friend of mine - Thom Jones The trembling of a leaf - Somerset Maugham Goodbye to all that - Robert Graves
I don't think I have any particular favorite titles, now that you've mentioned it. There are certain formulas for creating a title that I prefer, but they have no real impact on my likelihood to buy a book. I like "X and the Y" titles, a lot. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Harry Potter and the ___________, etc. Thematic titles are nice, too. Something that is a metaphor. Preferably not stated somewhere in the book, but I'm not too picky. I would be lying if I said I didn't love alliteration, as well. My own titles are near all alliterative (Aesthetic Anathema, Loricate Larceny, The Dust of Dead Desire).
The Word for World is Forest by Urula K. LeGuin - has rhythm and alliteration, and uses imagery from nature. Driver Dagg, Faller Regn (Drivng Dew, Falling Rain) by Margit Söderholm - has alliteration and perfect rhythm, and uses imagery from nature.
You have to admire A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for sheer audacity, if nothing else. Pretty sure it was the first novel Dave Eggers published.
