Richard Squire writes to me:
Some friends and I last night came up with a parlor
game, Best Books with Worst Titles. Here were
our finalists:Freakonomics
The Audacity of Hope
The Beautiful and Damned
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Moby Dick (winner)
I agree with the middle three picks but think that Freakonomics and Moby Dick are both very good titles. I’ve never actually liked the title Ulysses, as used by James Joyce. I know all about the structural parallels with Homer’s Odyssey but to me they are superfluous to enjoying the work. The title stresses those parallels and so it irritates me. What nominations do you all have?
“Grey Lamb and Black Falcon”– or, um, possibly the other way around.
-Freakonomics is a better title than it was a book.
-Moby Dick is a perfect title. wtf?
-A Farewell to Alms is the worst title of any book I’ve read. But I don’t consider it a very good book, either.
-So my vote goes to Quantum Generations, a well written, engaging history of 20th century physics, with a stupid title.
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits
The Bible…pretty uninspired title.
This doesn’t qualify but it’s funny nonetheless. Disney published a children’s book of recipes themed around A.A. Milne’s bear: Cooking with Pooh was the unfortunate title.
Its annoying that people seem generally to be encouraged to pick really “catchy” (actually pretentious) titles, I guess by the publishers. There are a lot of bad ones. But maybe its better than falling asleep during the title.
Still, I have filled my bookshelves with wonderful books largely by picking according to title. It would have been difficult if instead of all being called something very nearly like “The Economics of the Soviet Union” or “The Soviet Economic System” they had instead been called “A Cry for Exchange” or something.
“Of Mice and Men” was a pretty lame title, IMO.
As was “The Giver”
Can’t believe I have to go back to middle school to find examples, though…
How about “The Feast of the Goat”, by Mario Vargas Llosa. A great book by one of my favorite authors, but I hate the title.
The sole reason I have not read “the Audacity of Hope” is because its title makes me cringe. I guess we could say “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” though I dunno if that’s a great book in the sense that it’s well-written, intelligent and keeps your attention the whole way through.
I was recently collecting good books with misleading titles, not quite the same thing but close:
Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner. Good book about life in Germany during Hitler’s consolidation of power, but contains almost no defiance.
Glut, by Alex Wright. Another good book, but has very little to say about information glut; instead it is a historical overview of classification schemes and library science.
the sun also rises
Moby Dick is possibly the worst best book ever written, except for the first chapter.
I defy anyone, except those with photographic memories, to tell me the ratio of nautical crap/plot.
It is one of Melville’s worst piece – unlike Dickens he cannot write for a penny a word without being weak.
“Cop in the Hood.”
And the cover is totally 1992.
What about the inverse?
What are the worst books with the best titles?
You should have separate categories for fiction and non-fiction.
After all, most non-fiction books nowadays have a semi-longish subtitle that explains the topic in a nutshell, which allows for greater creativity in the actual title itself.
For instance: Peak Invisible Telepathic Frog: Amphibian depletion at the Earth’s core and the end of the American dream
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick is possibly the worst best book ever written, except for the first chapter.
All I know about Moby Dick is this: I had to read it in high school and loved it. It was, IMO, miles above the other stuff we read – Hawthorne, Austen, Dickens, etc.
“A Prayer for Owen Meany” is unfortunately as pretentious as its title. in fact, the title isn’t pretentious enough.
anything by James Patterson. What’s he going to do when he runs out of nursery rhymes?
Not to be nit-picky, but there isn’t a book entitled The Shawshank Redemption. There is a book called Different Seasons, which has four novellas. One of the four novellas is entitled Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which is even worse than simply The Shawshank Redemption.
Choke, by Chuck Palahnuik, is a book that is better than its title, and Love and Sex with Robots is a horrible title, I don’t care what is between the front and back covers…
May I suggest the 18th century Brazilian classic “Dom Casmurro”, which is a somewhat archaic way to say “Mr. Cranky”? Also, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”, as fine a first novel as its title is bland.
Metamorphoses by Ovid
“What Color is Your Parachute?”
I heard Bolles explain where he got the title and I still didn’t get it.
In response to Jeremiah: Bonfire of the Vanities actually popped into my head when thinking of the topic at hand but my immediate afterthought was, “No wait, that’s actually one of the best titles I’ve ever heard.” Great minds I guess…
“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” is one of my favorite books but I’ve always thought the title sounded bad. I’ll also throw in “A Dance to the Music of Time,” which isn’t the worst title ever but is a lot worse than the book.
Consider Phlebas
I’m surprised to see Keynes and Smith mentioned; both titles do a pretty good job of telling you what to expect beneath the cover (Smith’s even tells you that it’s going to be long and wordy).
I think ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is a rather good title, but then again I liked the book.
I can’t believe that the title ‘Les Miserables’ ever induced anyone to pick up such a long book, unless he were planning to kill himself when he finished reading it. That said, the title does fit the material, and the book is quite good.
James Gould Cozzens, now out of fashion, alas, wrote two superb books with meaningless titles: “The Just and the Unjust” and “Guard of Honor.” For really good titles, I nominate just about anything by Thomas Pynchon. “The Hound of the Baskervilles” ain’t bad either.
Amit,
In Russian, the meaning of “ad” is “Hell” and ada is the genitive, so Ada can also mean “of Hell” or “from Hell.” Nabokov’s title is thus a pun.
“The Lexus and the Olive Tree” and its faux-poetic imagery for a metaphor that only barely existed. You see, Friedman went to an ultra-modern Lexus factory! and uh, over here in the Middle East, something about Jews and Arabs fighting over olive tree groves. Get it?? VOILA, GLOBALIZATION!
(rolleyes)
Good book, though.
Vadranor,
This is very interesting information, and news to me. On the other hand, I’m not sure that this resolves my issue, which is the question of whether the pun constituted by homophony between (a) the name of the eponymous heroine and (b) the English word for the intensity of feeling she inspires, is an awful one or not.
I’ll give it this – it’s better than Nabokov’s other thigh-slapper “You gin? One gin!†, the point of which, you’ll recall, is that “Eugene Onegin† can be mispronounced so as to sound like a skit in which the host of the party asks the guest what he’ll have, and the guest tells him. (Or something. No doubt there’s some Russian angle that I’ve missed that redeems it.)
This is all complicated by the possibility that Nabokov is foisting bad puns on us just to highlight the fact that he is a genius of a sufficiently high order that not even deliberately lame whimsy can dim his lustre. (Not that the Russian one you have described is necessarily bad.)
J. Goard,
Thanks for bringing that one up. At least it’s actually funny. Obviously a reference to Browning’s less well-known sequel to “Pippa Passes” – namely, “Pippa Passes Water”. *rimshot*
Good book with a bad title: Wuthering Heights
Bad book with a good title: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Its a good book but “Discover you inner economist” is very bad title.
“What are the worst books with the best titles?”
The Scarlet Letter. The Thread That Runs So True.
And it never ceases to amaze me what bad taste people have. Even the illustrious readers of this blog. In both the Type I error and Type II error ways.
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