Good titles
Pirate Brandon's reference to Housman's poem "Terence, this is stupid stuff" reminded me how great a title it is for a poem. My all time favorite title is "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" by Sherman Alexie.
What are your favorite book/poem/song/album/movie titles? The actual contents of the artwork need not be good, just the title.
What are your favorite book/poem/song/album/movie titles? The actual contents of the artwork need not be good, just the title.
posted by Chaka at 10:29 AM
15 Comments:
I like the band name Wolfmother.
The Arctic Monkeys have an absolutely awesome album title:
"Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not"
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Barenaked Ladies is another great band name, somewhat obscured by the fact that it is no longer shocking. Remember that moment when you first heard the name? Then you heard what they sounded like?
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Solzhenitsyn.
The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup, by Susan Orlean. Too bad it was an awfully boring book.
The Swimming Pool Library. Found at the U of M library book sale, it has two amazing things in the title, and I could only imagine the wonderfully and delightfully profound ideas it would reveal to me. Lacking a dust jacket, and therefore a synopsis, I paid my 2 dollars out of hopeful faith it it's greatness. Bad move. After about 5 pages of sheer confusion, I googled it. That's a shocking activity for those who dare. That was the first and last book I ever threw away. Still one of my favorite titles ever, though.
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi. Clearly, I was instantly intrigued. But this time I was rewarded with enjoyably comic and insightful tales of an Italian Jewish chemist's stories from before, during, and after his experiences in a concentration camp. The best part is that each title is the name of an element (but no, there aren't 115+ of them). Ingenius!
Okay, last one for now. The Literary Cyclist, by James Starr. I never read it because it would have fallen so low on my list of books-to-read that I would have died long before getting there. Anyway, it was a compilation of all the great uses/appearances in literature of bicycles or cyclists. How cool is that?!
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values," a book by Robert M. Pirsig
Bonnie reminds me of a great anthropology book with a great title:
Why do men barbeque? by Richard Shweder
Spoiler alert: he never answers the question.
My First Day !!!
I should also note that technically, "Terrence, this is stupid stuff" is not entirely the title. The poem in its original form is untitled, and since there are exactly 12 billion poems that are untitled, scholars refer to untitled poems by their first line. In this case, that first line is: "Terrence, this is stupid stuff."
Thanks, poetry nerd.
what about bad titles ?
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