Great titles: Inherit the Wind - Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert - Ward Just Never Victorious, Never Defeated - Taylor Caldwell A God Against the Gods - Allen Drury A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Doug Adams A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Trustee from the Toolroom - Nevil Shute Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson Welcome to Havana, Senor Hemingway - Alfredo Jose Estrada The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman The Sum of All Fears - Tom Clancy Titles that didn't do the book justice: All of Michener's novels.
Personally, I can't get past Christopher Brookmyre for inventive titles. Some examples (but by no means all) : Quite Ugly One Morning One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
Haven't read that one, yet, but probably the best title I've ever seen. I also like Pale Fire The Wind in the Willows A Modest Proposal (Essay) The One and Future King
Creation of The Gods - How else to better title an ancient fantasy novel? Journey to The West Dombey and Son - The title means a lot when you know the story Fight Club - Simple greatness I take titles very seriously. It's the line that everyone will think of when your work is summoned to mind, and should take a lot of your time to come up with. The Member of The Wedding means more after you read it, too bad the book itself is a worse, shorter draft of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I also like simple, elegant titles that convey a lot of what the book is about, and make you want to dive in. Examples: AB Guthrie's The Big Sky and The Way West James Welch's The Heartsong of Charging Elk Robertson Davies's The Cunning Man Charles M Russell's Trails Plowed Under. And then there are the ones that give no clue about the subject matter of the book, but still make you want to dive in. Examples: Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams Kage Baker's In the Garden of Iden WE Bowman's The Ascent of Rum Doodle Terry Pratchett's Going Postal
A Confederacy of Dunces. Yeah, that's a great title. And a book I've bought twice. It's really unique.
Lol, I know I'm going to sound silly but A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords by George R R Martin are amazing titles in my opinion. Whenever I think about these titles, I feel like I've been carried in the Medieval Age in the middle of an epic war.
The first one to spring to mind is: The Moon's a Balloon, a biography of actor David Niven. I only came to realise recently that the foreword contains E.E. Cummings poem of the same name.
Oh, oh.... can't forget good ol' Robert Rankin... I love his quirky titles: The Antipope The Brentford Triangle East of Ealing The Sprouts of Wrath Armageddon: The Musical They Came and Ate Us (Armageddon II: The B Movie) The Suburban Book of the Dead (Armageddon III: The Remake) The Book of Ultimate Truths Raiders of the Lost Car Park The Greatest Show Off Earth The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived The Garden of Unearthly Delights A Dog Called Demolition Nostradamus Ate My Hamster Sprout Mask Replica The Brentford Chainstore Massacre The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag Apocalypso Snuff Fiction Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls Waiting for Godalming Web Site Story Fandom of the Operator The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse The Witches of Chiswick Knees Up Mother Earth The Brightonomicon The Toyminator The Da-da-de-da-da Code Necrophenia Retromancer The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends
Some great (IMHO) non-fiction titles: At Dawn We Slept - Gordon Prange The Borrowed Years - Richard W. Ketchum A Time for Trumpets - Charles B. McDonald The Vineyard of Liberty - James MacGregor Burns Presidential Lottery - James A. Michener Balls - Terry Pluto How Life Imitates the World Series - Tom Boswell Decartes' Bones - Russell Shorto Nigger - Dick Gregory* *Gregory's autobiography, written in the 1960s. He dedicated it to his mother and said that, from then on, any time she heard the word, it was someone promoting his book.
For non fiction, Nietzsche was always nice and melodramatic: The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music Twilight of The Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Beyond Good and Evil Human, all too Human The Anti-Christ The Genealogy of Morals Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One is
Eek! The word chronicle in any title is like nails on a chalkboard to me. My all-time favorite title for any book has to be DUNE (Frank Herbert) It cannot be further reduced and to add to it is to destroy its power and simplicity. My second favorite title is Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (Samuel R. Delaney). His genius with language is present from the cover to the final page.
