Nothing complicated about today’s post. I recently featured
a book with a wonderful title: Brother
of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido. I got to thinking about what
makes a great title, and of course which books have them. So I’m making a list
of mine, and inviting in your ideas.
As with so many lists, this one would be quite different a year ago or a year from now: many of these books are ones which have recently been featured, mentioned or discussed on the blog or in the comments. Actually, it would probably be a different list next week.
They are not in order, just a collection of ones I like. I don’t think you can love the title of a book if you don’t love the book (YMMV) but today we are looking at the titles, with only a glance at the content….
1 Love in a Cold Climate by
Nancy Mitford is all
over the blog, and I wrote about it for
the Guardian, and so familiar that it’s easy to forget what a clever title
it is (like the Capote title at no. 8)
2 For Esme with Love and Squalor by JD
Salinger – he was always good on titles and this short story was one of his
best, as well as having the best title.
3 The Old
Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett – even better because the
book starts with some very young women. He is showing you how they will get to
be old wives one day, but how great to call it that. People are quite snooty
about Bennett – ‘so middlebrow’ – but I think he deserves to be rediscovered.
He wrote about women much more pleasingly than most of his male contemporaries.
Dancing
Bears, and where to find them has more bears than you could shake a stick
at, but to find the comment you need this post
Stage Door Enquiries - theatrical mystery and prop guns from Derek Smith
-where the listing of bear books began. And the featured
book there is another wonderful title, from Derek Smith
5 Come to Paddington Fair
Enticing and intriguing and not as nice as it sounds.
6 Darkness Falls From the Air by
Nigel Balchin. See the post for discussion of this title
7 The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis. I said back in 2012: the third of the
Narnia books, and the one with the best title.
8 Breakfast
at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. I
said
recently:
There is an absolutely splendid idea floating round the
internet that potential future archaeologists will find a distinctive blue
Tiffany's box, and eventually conclude that it must be from a 20th century
breakfast cafe.
The phrase has entered the language to such a degree that
it can be hard to remember what a great, perfect title it is.
9 We
Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Indescribably
creepy and enticing, so compelling. You want to read it but you almost don’t
want to know…
And ending up where we began:
10 Brother
of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. Judi Dench’s delightfully named memoir of her life with Will. This is how she and her husband Michael Williams affectionately referred to him.
ReplyDeleteFootnote: identifying The Man Who Pays the Rent was recently a final question on Jeopardy. No one got the answer and I recall they were all silly, including James Bond.
Yes very clever and nice! When I saw Shakespeare as your first word I thought 'ooh I hadn't thought of any Shakespeare plays...' I'm not sure his own play titles were that striking.
DeleteTrue, that, about Mr S. The historicals and tragedies are simply the names of the main characters. And as for the rest, mostly comedies, the names are generic. I swear I can never recall All’s Well from As You Like It. Only The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night’s Dream 🧚🧚♂️are specific to the play. And good titles, too
DeleteNow that I'm more awake, I'll modify the above comment. Perhaps half of the comedies (though I question that category for some) bear relevant titles: Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, the Tempest, the Taming of the Shrew and perhaps The Comedy of Errors (since it involves twins)
DeleteSara Woods uses quotes from Shakespeare (I think) as titles of her Antony Maitland books. They're not necessarily descriptive of the books themselves, though!
DeleteHe sometimes sounds as though he has worn himself out with the play and is too tired to think of a title. I see him shrugging as he writes 'Twelfth Night, or What You Will' or 'As You Like it'.
DeleteBut so many books are called after quotes from within the plays... I did a Guardian piece just on books called by names from Hamlet
https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/guardian-books-crime-titles-from-hamlet.html
Another Hamlet title - Patricia Wentworth's The Traveller Returns. Titles aren't among her strengths in my view but that's a good one in a subtle way.
DeleteSovay
Too many of her titles could apply to any of her books! eg Miss Sillver Intervenes. But yes Traveller Returns is a good title and a good book
DeleteI'm considering titles - would have mentioned Darkness Falls From the Air if you hadn't already done so.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall liking the Chronicles of Narnia much, though they must have had some kind of hold on me as I got into bother at school for reading The Magician's Nephew under the desk in a geography lesson.
Sovay
I loved Narnia, but also loved the names and titles, they sounded so romantic and glamorous to me. Voyage was the best, but also Prince Caspian - the cover had a young man on a horse galloping through woods and I loved that.
DeleteGavin Maxwell did good titles: Ring of Bright Water, Raven Seek Thy Brother, God Protect Me From My Friends, A Reed Shaken By The Wind, etc. All snippets of poems, quotations and the like. For me, not all the books lived up to them- that's the trouble with enticing titles.
ReplyDeleteAll The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) did live up to its title, thought. And one of my favourite books ever, that I can never get anyone else to read because its title is so dreary (Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther-Elizabeth von Arnim) far surpasses its title.
(In my limited experience, authors shouldn't necessarily be blamed for the titles of their books. Publishers are the chief inflictors- once I asked for a disclaimer on the title page to say, in effect, not in my name- but of course, this was refused.)
Oh yes, A Ring of Bright Water, that title fascinated me as a child.
DeleteAnd Fraulein Schmidt! I might have known you would be the only other person who has read it. I don't like all Von Armin's books, but I LOVED that one. I remember racing through the last pages, so worried that someone would make the wrong decision, I honestly don't know many books where I was so concerned about how it was going to come out...
"The Day Without Yesterday" is a good title of a not very good non-fiction book.
ReplyDeleteGreat title - I hadn't heard of it and looked it up, and probably wouldn't read. But can't fault the title.
DeleteWhat a great idea, Moira! And you've got some terrific titles. My first thought was Mari Strachen's The Earth Hums in B Flat.
ReplyDeleteGreat one for the list - I read that just because it had such a great title. Do you think it's true that the earth hums in B Flat...? 😀😀😀
DeleteGreat subject! I like Darkness Falls From the Air as a title. Barbara Pym has some good ones: Some Tame Gazelle and The Sweet Dove Died, for example, and both quotations of course.
ReplyDeleteTana French:Broken Harbour is a good one, I think.
There's a title I used to see in my local library when I was little, Ghosts and Greasepaint, which I thought was fascinating, not knowing hat it was about.. Many years later I bought a copy; broadly speaking, it's a theatrical history by the splendidly named W. Macqueen Pope, and very interesting.
I had books like that, that I always looked at in the library. I hadn't come across that, but it sounds charming, and the early editions have a very nice cover.
DeleteI just re-read Broken Harbour and was struck all over again by what a perfect title it was. What a wrenching book
Going back to the Darkness Falls From the Air post*, and spotting your request for references to the all-night Boots in central London, I think Rosamond Stacey in Drabble's The Millstone (US: Thank You All Very Much) visits it.
ReplyDelete*Somehow I got that wording, rather than "brightness," stuck in my head 15-20 years ago, and had a dreadful time tracking down the quotation. I got there eventually, but it was one of those times when I felt a complete fraud as a professor of English.
All-night chemists - yes indeed, well-remembered, and there is a blogpost here
Deletehttps://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2025/01/xmas-and-all-night-chemists.html
I didn't know the book had an alternate title
Confuse by someone else's misquotation! I think that's excellent
Oh, goodness--wrong chemist, and I even commented on that post yet I have no recollection of it at all! I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.
DeleteNot at all! All late-night chemists accepted! I am just so impressed that you remembered that...
Delete'I Capture the Castle' has to be on the list. Javier Marias's 'Poison, Shadow and Farewell' is a beauty (good book, too). Jean Rhys did well with several of her books, especially 'Tigers Are Better-Looking'. 'The Dog at Clambercrown' is intriguing, and let's not forget 'The Three Christs of Ypsilanti'.
ReplyDeleteYes to all! I had never heard of Three Christs so looked it up - wow, that's unusual....
DeleteElizabeth Smart's emotional and poetic By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept and John Warren' s photographic tribute to New York - Even before I got to Grand Central Station, I sat down and wept.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, how could I have missed the Smart! I didn't know about the Warren book but am truly intrigued.
DeleteTwo fashion favourite of mine: a rather sad memoir by Andre
ReplyDeleteLeon Talley, The chiffon trenches and Lauren Weisberger's The devil wears Prada. Such a good title.
I just went to see the film of the Devil Wears Prada, and thought what a great title it was! I was not at all keen on the book, but it still should have made the list for the film title. Such a clever phrase, it has really entered the language.
DeleteOne of the few books I really regret reading is the sequel to Devil Wears Prada. I came away thinking what a deeply nasty piece of smug self-satisfied work the narrator/Mary Sue was, it just all felt incredibly spiteful and mean spirited and everyone was just irredeemably horrible all the time, but you were obviously meant to like them.
DeleteExcellent sweeping verdict, and much of it applies to the first book, which as I say above I did not like. But I love both films....
DeleteYes, The devil wears Prada is a rare example of the film much, much betyer than the book
DeleteYes, exactly. The film cut out all the guff from the book, recognized the silliness of it all, and made something hugely entertaining
DeleteAlso the film almost completely reimagines all the characters. If I recall correctly, Emily is the only one who's mostly similar to her book counterpart, but she's actually also (weirdly) one of the few book characters to feel sympathetic/real even if she's still kinda awful. I actually found myself feeling for Miranda in the books too, especially the second one, as even though she was ghastly, deluded, and monstrous, she was very much in her context/world, especially when she sends Andy a gorgeously expensive luxury baby blanket in the second book, and the author is ABSOLUTELY desperate for us to know how sad and pathetic and disgusting it is that Miranda makes a gesture like this. I was just thinking, urrrrgh, stick the blanket on Ebay if you don't want it, there's no need to make a huge deal about what a bitter, ungrateful wench you are and we're supposed to like you for that behaviour?
DeleteAlso, Meryl Streep was SO good in the first film, I think she really brought a lot of little moments to the role where you glimpse, briefly, the person behind the persona. I like how the film allows Miranda and Andy to acknowledge each other in their own way, it just feels so much more satisfying than the book
DeleteYes - the books gave me that uncomfortable feeling where you think 'does the author know how badly her autobiographical self is coming over?' she seemed blissfully unaware. I suppose she sold millions, but I never understood it.
DeleteSuch good titles of books I didn't know. I have just remembered Antony Powell's Dance to the music of time series especially Books do furnish a room and Casanova's Chinese restaurant.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, he was a genius at titles. Books do Furnish a Room
DeleteI thought of AP, and those are the two I'd have picked, though I also like The Military Philosophers.
DeleteSovay
... and Valley of Bones - he could really give good title
DeleteI didn't care much for the book, but I was intrigued by the title of David Niven's Bring on the Empty Horses.
ReplyDeleteYes, clever, you want to know what it means
Delete‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ by Kate Atkinson has come to mind; also Sylvia Townsend Warner’s ‘The Corner That Held Them’ and Sarah Caudwell’s ‘The Shortest Way to Hades’.
ReplyDeleteSovay
Yes, good ones. All Sarah Caudwell's titles in fact.
Delete'Goldengrove Unleaving' by Jill Paton Walsh is a title that's evocative of the story - title and novel are favorites of mine. Does anyone know Alan Bradley's series of Flavia de Luce novels? Intriguing - at times straight out eccentric - titles, such as 'The golden tresses of the Dead' and 'The Dead in their Vaulted Arches' reflect the character of Flavia and the feel of the writing.
ReplyDeleteOh yes - the JPW title from the beautiful Hopkins poem. Wheneve I hear the name Margaret it runs through my head.
DeleteYes Flavia has clever titles
Yes, you shouldn't always blame the author for a poor title. It is one of the things they complain about when they get together. My first novel was Dead Letters in the UK, but the US publishers didn't like the title and asked for alternative suggestions. I sent them some and added, tongue in cheek, Murder is Academic, not thinking for a moment that they'd choose it and of course they did! Chrissie
ReplyDeleteNobody's doing any blaming here! Do you think publishers DO know better than authors or not?
DeleteNo indeed as to blaming. I think it varies. Sometimes the publisher is right, sometimes the author. Sometimes the UK title is best, sometimes the US, but it can be annoying or even misleading for the reader when the same book has two titles.
DeleteSo true about catching you out with the titles - I just bought a book thinking it was one I hadn't come across, then found it was a US version with a different title. Annoying.
DeleteThere's an Ogden Nash poem about repeatedly buying the same crime story under different titles. His fictional British crime writer is called - ahem - Melisande Misty, allowing him to call the poem 'Alias and Melisande'.
DeleteZoe
Oh brilliant! He was so clever
DeleteEllis Peters had some good titles for both her Cadfael and Inspector Felse books. A Morbid Taste for Bones (Cadfael) and A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs (Felse) come to mind.
ReplyDeleteYes, they are excellent titles
DeleteOccasionally I would come across a Puffin paperback as a child and the books listed at the back of the book that weren't in my library always intrigued me: The Fair to Middling, The Family at One End Street and two I never found - Palaces on Monday and a whole series about Worzel Gummidge. I remember complaining to my mother how unfair it was that our very well-stocked library didn't have everything.
ReplyDeleteBut E.L. Konigsburg has the best titles: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the runner up and the winner of the 1968 Newbery Medal. A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (about Eleanor of Aquitaine) is another favorite by her.
cI know exactly what you mean, I was always fascinated by the books advertised at the back and longing to read them. And Still She wished for Company, and The Viper of Milan are two I remember.
DeleteYes, EL Konigsburg. When my daughter was 16 I took her to New York, and at the Met Museum she wanted to go where Claudia had gone....
Ohhh, The Viper of Milan! I had that book almost 60 years ago and had forgotten it until reading your comment. I don’t remember anything much about it except the title. A nice example of the power of titles, I think.
DeleteNerys
Yes! I didn't find it till years after I first saw it, I think from the pulic library where so much of my early reading came from. I remember it as being dark, real Renaissance Gothic with much melodrama. The author wrote it when she was very young - 16? - which was another reason I was fascinated. I do remember thinking - bearing in mind that I was much older by then - that a 16yo was likely to write a book with either a ridculous unbelievable happy ending, or else an overblown doom-laden miserable ending. No spoilers...
DeleteAnd - any way you look at it, a great title
And Still She Wished for Company is a wonderful book and why it hasn't been reprinted (as far as I know) bothers me. If you hadn't mentioned it, I was going to. And it's good to know other people look at the lists of books at the back of old novels.
DeleteYes, it's a habit formed in childhood which I will never lose. I have often looked up obscure books after seeing them described, and then got hold of a cheap 2nd-hand copy
DeleteI think Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lisa Evans) is an excellent title. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteSorry, Lissa! That was down to spell-check.
ReplyDeleteYes, hard agree, brilliant title
DeleteI've never understood why the film producers changed the title to Their Finest, which makes no sense at all.
DeleteSovay
Yes we need Lissa to come and tell us why it was changed
DeleteRight, I asked Lissa, and this is what she said:
Delete"Unfortunately a film came out just the year before called The Finest Hours - it was quite a big release (Disney, I think) & it was felt that it was just too similar to the book title. I *did* mind, yes, but I understood why (and my husband minded because he'd thought of it in the first place!)"
Well there's some logic, I suppose - though I've never heard of the film that gazumped the title. But surely they could have found a new title that actually MEANT something ...
DeleteSovay
I think I'm going to have to watch the film again after this discussion
DeleteI nominate Things Fall Apart and Brave New World as well deployed quotations. I would also like to mention Rebecca, not because it's inherently a striking title, but because it so perfectly encapsulates the book. It could have been called The Second Mrs. de Winter or Mrs. Norris's Revenge, or Awful Times at Manderley.
ReplyDeleteNerys
A well-used quotation is a wonderful thing.
DeleteAnd I can remember the first time I came across this quiz question: 'which novel is called after a character who never appears, and is narrated by another character who is never named?' the idea is thrilling.
Why Shoot a Butler? is an absolutely cracking title for a whodunit, I've always thought. It's very easy to create killer titles (pun intended) for whodunits though, so perhaps they shouldn't count.
ReplyDeleteThey totally count! And there are good ones and bad ones.
DeleteAND, you set us off on that whole questions-in-book-titles thing when you last mentioned that butler...
The title's better than the book deserves IIRC, though there is a fancy dress ball which is always fun.
DeleteSovay
Yes the fancy dress made up for a lot for me
DeleteThere was a book written about the grandes horizontales of the 19th century titled "A Fanfare of Strumpets"
ReplyDelete"Fashion is Spinach" by Elizabeth Hawes.
"The Cat Who Came in from the Cold" by Deric Longden - actually, his books all had pretty good titles.
"The Year of the Cornflake" by Faith Addis. One of the first books I remember picking up because the title was so intriguing and it and its sequel are two of the funniest books I've ever read, about running a holiday camp for kids in the 1970s. Definitely a different time then.
Oh yes, "My Family and Other Animals" is an absolute CORKER of a title. Durrell was good with titles, but on that note, I think his first wife, Jacqueline, did very well with her own autobiography titled "Beasts in my Bed"
Great ones. I like titles that riff on another - Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog.
DeleteAgree about the Durrell.
Never heard of the Cornflake book.
Faith Addis is one of those writers who can tell a very engaging story about her own lived experience, lots of insights into the time, including having to do laundry at the launderette during the Great Drought (and the kids brought all the stinking horse blankets from the farm, and nearly got them banned).
DeleteShe wrote a few other continuations after they sold the holiday camp, they're still charming and insightful and often funny, but the absolute chaos of The Year of the Cornflake is hard to beat.
I will have to look this up!
DeleteI found four Faith Addis books on archive.org and read them all when I should have been making final paper! A cross between Jeremy Clarkson and Betty MacDonald, with a splash of Gerald Durrell. Not much in the way of clothing, except in the first one there's a Spanish child who arrives in layers of white smocking and leaves in jeans and a red anorak--those should provide good pictures!
DeleteThere's a bit more than that, I recall descriptions of what's clearly a pair of wannabe punk siblings (and their mildly apologetic "normal" mother) and quite a few comments about how people look (one mother is described as 'blinking beautiful' with legs hooked up under her bust) and a kid who turns up in Laura Ashley and when explaining that it's lawn cotton, not linen, teaches the Spanish child the phrase "unsuitable for small children" which the Spanish child REALLY likes and starts using to describe everything.
DeleteI must say you're both making this sound very tempting!
DeleteElizabeth Bowen's short story The Happy Autumn Fields is a memorable title and a story that stayed with me painfully for ages after I first read it.
ReplyDeleteGosh, that's quite the recommendation, but would have to be feeling strong...
DeleteIt's a very haunting story - the whole wartime collection (The Demon Lover) is worth a look.
DeleteSovay
I know I should read - I always prefer novels to short stories, but I should make exceptions
DeleteI have always liked the title of George Simenon's novel The Man Who Watched Trains Go By.
ReplyDeleteyes, and it was a good book. It was made into a film - and then that reminds me of the Czech book and film, Closely Observed Trains. I love that title too (trains always do it for me...) and that film is one of my all-time favourites
DeleteNtozake Shange’s "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf"
ReplyDeleteYes, intriguing - and unusual back in the day
DeleteIn the nonfiction category, I nominate "And the Band Played On," Randy Shilts' searing history of the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when the disease was stigmatized for affecting "them." You know, the 4H Club: homosexuals, heroin addicts, Haitians, and hemophiliacs.--Your blogfriend, Trollopian
ReplyDeleteIt was an extraordinary book, searing a good word for it - very long but earned it. I couldn't read it again though.
DeleteI nominate two children's books: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea.
ReplyDeleteYes! Great choices
DeleteWhen Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit! Again, I think this is a case where children's books are more likely to have great titles like this, but I wish I'd thought of Pink Rabbit. Good call. Wasn't one of the follow ups called A Small Person, Far Away?
DeleteAnyone would want to read that book... I didn't know about the followups.
DeleteYes, the third one is A Small Person Far Away, when Anna goes back to Berlin in 1956 to visit after her mother. The small person far away is her childhood self. The middle book was originally called The Other Way Round but it now seems to be published as Bombs on Aunt Dainty.
DeleteThanks - helpful info! The third one sounds very interesting
DeleteBombs on Aunt Dainty!!
DeleteThat's another amazing title, I wonder why it was renamed and presumably Judith Kerr had some involvement in the rename
It's certainly a more striking title.... I suppose literally in the case of the bombs
DeleteAlso in the nonfiction category, David McCullough "The Path Between the Seas" is a wonderful title. Though I bet his publishers insisted on the subtitle ("The Building of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914").
ReplyDeleteTimothy Snyder's "Bloodlands" befits its terrible subject, the millions of murders perpetrated by the Nazi and Soviet regimes and their puppets.
-- Trollopian
I don;'t know either of yours, but the McCullough is a great title, and a shame it wasn't left to stand alone!
DeleteBloodlands a chilling title
Just remembered Christopher Fowler's Book of Forgotten Authors....
ReplyDeleteYes, very enticing, though wholly factual & descriptive
DeleteMaya Angelou's autobiographies all have INCREDIBLE titles. Obviously, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, but also "Singin' and Swingin' and Getting Merry Like Christmas" and "All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes"
ReplyDeleteI'm just remembering some of Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy's titles like "Flaunting, Extravagant Queen" (I think that was JP's book about Marie Antoinette) and as Victoria Holt, there were titles like "Legend of the Seventh Virgin", "The Silk Vendetta" and "On the Night of the Seventh Moon". She really cornered the market in great titles.
I nearly included Maya Angelou, she got bumped at the last minute!
DeleteThose Holt titles are brilliant! My favourite Jean Plaidy was The Goldsmith's Daughter, which I think is a great title, it could take you anywhere