Books with memorable titles

November 11, 2008 6:31 PM

I need examples of books with memorable titles.

Apologies for such a subjective question, but I'm drawing a blank. Which, I guess makes the titles I can't think of not particularly memorable, but still. Bukowski's "Love Is A Dog From Hell" is my ur-example. Most of David Sedaris's books would do as well.

They don't need to be well-known, recent, or even good books, just ones with unique and memorable titles.

posted by Simon! to writing & language (59 comments total)

You might consider the winners of the Diagram Prize for oddest titles.
posted by Toekneesan at 6:36 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not sure if you care if they're fact or fiction, but perusing my bookshelf:

Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"
Robert Anton Wilson's "The Earth Will Shake: The History of the Early Illuminati"
Gregory Levey's "Shut Up, I'm Talking"
Philip Gourevitch's "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families"
Romeo Dallaire's "Shake Hands With the Devil"
Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower"
Philip Roth's "The Human Stain"
Stephen Hawking's "God Created the Integers"
Salmon Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses"
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:39 PM on November 11, 2008

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, a book about categorization and culture by George Lakoff, is a favorite of mine.
posted by kittydelsol at 6:42 PM on November 11, 2008

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish by Douglas Adams
posted by kimdog at 6:48 PM on November 11, 2008

Although Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is more famous, I like the title of Hans Zinsser's Rats, Lice, and History.

Also, How to Read a Book. And, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
posted by mhum at 6:50 PM on November 11, 2008

John Leonard's "When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Geeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Alien Sperm-Suckers, Satanic Therapists, and Those of Us Who Hold a Left-Wing Grudge in the Post Toasties New World Hip-Hop"
posted by johngoren at 6:51 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores" - Gabriel García Márquez
"Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" - Susanna Clarke
posted by cranberrymonger at 6:52 PM on November 11, 2008

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
War Trash by Ha Jin
Their Eyes were Watching God by Zore Neale Hurston
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
posted by runningwithscissors at 6:55 PM on November 11, 2008

"Special Topics in Calamity Physics" (Marisha Pessl)
"In Defense of Lost Causes" (Slavoj Zizek)
"My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up" (Stephen Elliott)
posted by milkrate at 7:00 PM on November 11, 2008

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Chandler (it's the title of a story and also of a book of stories)
posted by moonmilk at 7:01 PM on November 11, 2008

Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
posted by infinitywaltz at 7:03 PM on November 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

Mark Leyner's My cousin, my gastroenterologist
posted by Utilitaritron at 7:06 PM on November 11, 2008

I saw "Humpty Dumpty: An Oval" in the library like ten years ago and have never forgotten it. I've also never read it. So.
posted by frenetic at 7:07 PM on November 11, 2008

From glancing at my shelf, I would choose:

The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind
The Time Traveler's Wife
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
All My Sins Remembered
Lucifer's Hammer
Seeing Voices
God: A Biography

Those all stuck in my mind, anyway.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:07 PM on November 11, 2008

This one, with a word I don't want to write in the title.
posted by mattholomew at 7:26 PM on November 11, 2008

Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 7:28 PM on November 11, 2008

Nick Flynn - Another Bullshit Night In Suck City.
posted by HopperFan at 7:34 PM on November 11, 2008

"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", "Still Life With Woodpecker", and "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" by Tom Robbins
"Sometimes a Great Notion" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey
posted by Benny Andajetz at 7:37 PM on November 11, 2008

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead-- by James Kirkwood
posted by pushing paper and bottoming chairs at 7:40 PM on November 11, 2008

Silent Spring
1984
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
posted by Autarky at 7:43 PM on November 11, 2008

The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (best title ever)
You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here but it Helps
posted by lemonade at 7:44 PM on November 11, 2008

Another Bullshit Night In Suck City is the first one I thought of.
posted by redsparkler at 7:57 PM on November 11, 2008

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Hawking

Thank You For Smoking - Buckley

T.Rex and the Crater of Doom - Alvarez
posted by Midnight Rambler at 8:02 PM on November 11, 2008

Pecked to Death by Ducks, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and pretty much everything else by Tim Cahill.
posted by drjimmy11 at 8:16 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm fond of good subtitles, so I hope these are what you're looking for:

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:30 PM on November 11, 2008

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
posted by dbiedny at 8:39 PM on November 11, 2008

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
posted by Rock Steady at 8:51 PM on November 11, 2008

A Short History of Nearly Everything is by Bill Bryson, Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:54 PM on November 11, 2008

Dave Eggers "What is the What"
posted by mumstheword at 8:57 PM on November 11, 2008

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Steal This Book - Abbey Hoffman
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:03 PM on November 11, 2008

John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began
posted by purenitrous at 9:09 PM on November 11, 2008

• When you are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• Seconding Rats, Lice, and History
• Far from the Madding Gerund, by the Language Log crew
• Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon
• Nigger: the Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy
• Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway

posted by adoarns at 9:12 PM on November 11, 2008

On following links, one of mine was the one mattholomew was loth to write (although my policy is, if it has an ISBN number, it's fair game).
posted by adoarns at 9:15 PM on November 11, 2008

The Pirates! in an adventure with scientists

The Roaches Have no King

The Brief History of the Dead

Man Walks Into a Room

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

and pretty much everything Phillip K. Dick ever wrote. google it, i wont even BEGIN typing that list....
posted by swbarrett at 9:23 PM on November 11, 2008

The Great American Novel -- Philip Roth
Everything That Rises Must Converge -- Flannery O'Conner
The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality -- William Sloane Coffin
After Virtue -- Alasdair MacIntyre
The Signifying Monkey -- Henry Louis Gates
Write If You Get Work: The Best of Bot & Ray -- Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding
The Road to Miltown: Or, under the Spreading Atrophy -- S.J. Perelman
Horton Hears a Who! -- Dr. Seuss
Paradise Lost -- Milton
Bonk -- Mary Roach
posted by doncoyote at 9:29 PM on November 11, 2008

Seconding all Tom Robbins books.

To The Unbearable Lightness of Being, add The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, maybe.

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer

The Crying of Lot 49, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater- I have no idea what these are about, but I remember them.

I have a book, still unread, that I picked up based on the title- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:57 PM on November 11, 2008

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? by Alan Moore
Great Mambo Chicken & the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis
Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches by Marvin Harris
Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay
Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Robert Sheckley and Roger Zelazny
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:21 PM on November 11, 2008

Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art
posted by MLIS at 11:34 PM on November 11, 2008

It's hard to beat carburetor dung; that was the first title I came up with too, dbiedny. And hurrah for Zed_L; I haven't thought about Great Mambo Chicken for years. The works of Tom Holt come to mind as well: Snow White and the Seven Samurai, Who's Afraid of Beowulf, Ye Gods!, Paint Your Dragon, Expecting Someone Taller, etc.
posted by LeLiLo at 2:56 AM on November 12, 2008

The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner. Why the misspelling? Someday I'll have time to read it and find out...
posted by SuperSquirrel at 5:52 AM on November 12, 2008

Sophie's Choice
What did she have to choose? Hearing the title made me want an answer to this question, and eventually I read the book to satisfy my curiosity.
posted by Shebear at 6:08 AM on November 12, 2008

Of Mice and Men
The Red Badge of Courage
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, which includes a sure-fire winner in the short story category, "The May-Pole of Merry Mount".

Kid's lit comes up with some good ones:
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
The Shark in Charlie's Window
How to Eat Fried Worms
posted by hydrophonic at 6:22 AM on November 12, 2008

Oh my, George Saunders is a gold mine for you: The Braindead Megaphone, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, In Persuasion Nation, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip.
posted by the matching mole at 7:36 AM on November 12, 2008

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2008

How To Pick Up Japanese Chicks And Doom Your Immortal Soul

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
posted by namewithoutwords at 10:47 AM on November 12, 2008

I don't know if this counts, since it was originally published as a short story in a collection, but it's also been published on its own as an illustrated book, so I'm including it:

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:15 AM on November 12, 2008

I bought How to Shit in the Woods just for the title.
Why Buildings Fall Down and its companion Why Buildings Stand Up.
What is the Name of This Book? by Raymond Smullyan.
Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. by Robert Paul Smith.
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky.

I'll check the bookshelves when I get home. I'm sure there are more...
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:30 AM on November 12, 2008

Almost forgot Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:34 AM on November 12, 2008

ObscureReferenceMan, my mom also bought How to Shit in the Woods at a used bookstore just for the title, and then was disappointed to find out that it wasn't a humorous camping travelogue but an actual reference work.
posted by moonmilk at 3:59 PM on November 12, 2008

one short, and one long:

I Love Dick by Chris Krause

Ballad of Dingus Magee: Being the Immortal True Saga of the Most Notorious and Desperate Badman of the Olden Days, His Ruination of Poor Helpless Females, His Blood Shedding & Cetera by David Markson
posted by dizziest at 4:18 PM on November 12, 2008

The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike by Philip K. Dick
Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe
Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask by Jim Munroe (and most of the rest of his titles)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 5:07 PM on November 12, 2008

I Am Papa Snap and These Are My Favorite No-Such Stories by Tomi Ungerer

The Stupids Die by Harry Allard and James Marshall
posted by lukemeister at 8:17 PM on November 12, 2008

memorable titles, i often recall there was a book in my highschool library titled:
"Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!"

never read the book, but we used to joke about the title, i think it was about a kid getting hooked on heroin or something, that was like 15 years ago, so that counts as memorable i think
posted by swbarrett at 9:07 PM on November 12, 2008

Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit
posted by davemack at 3:27 PM on November 13, 2008

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel

Can't belive we got this far without Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Tom Wolfe:
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
From Bauhaus to Our House
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There by Sylvia Boorstein

BLAST Your Way to Megabuck$ with my SECRET Sex-Power Formula by Ramsey Dukes
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:09 PM on November 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Work Would Be Great If It Weren't for the People by Ronna Lichtenberg.
posted by easilyamused at 4:45 PM on November 13, 2008

Some books I remember from childhood come to mind:

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs; Judi Barrett
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very-Bad Day; Judith Viorst
A Hero Ain't Nothin But A Sandwich, Alice Childress

Also:
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air; Marshall Berman
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning; Chris Hedges
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; JD Salinger
Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloon, Vonnegut
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; Haruki Murakami
posted by aka burlap at 3:31 PM on November 15, 2008

J.G. Ballard's short stories include "The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race" and "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (that from 1968). These were included in a collection variously titled The Atrocity Exhibitor or Love and Napalm: Export USA which are pretty good, if not as striking as the stories' titles.

Various Pinkwater titles like his essay collection, Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights (later merged with Fishwhistle to become Chicago Fish, Hoboken Whistle.) But also his fiction, like The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, or The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.


Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler and Fritz Wegner
posted by Zed_Lopez at 2:47 AM on November 16, 2008

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:24 AM on January 13