It’s pretty good - wait for the paperback, though.
Joe
“Breakfast of Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut is my all time favourite title of a novel.
ETA: “Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald as my runner up.
Pretty much everything from Garcia Marquez (I think the dutch translations sound better tough)
Love in the time of Cholera
Chronicle of a death foretold
No one writes to the Colonel
Of love and other demons
and of course
Memmories of my melancholy whores
I think I can top that with
Golfing for Cats
a collection of humorous essays which have nothing whatsoever to do with golf. Or cats. I have it in hardcover, and the cover is bright red with a large swastika on it. The book also has nothing to do with Nazism.
Somewhere along the line, the cover was changed to this. I’m really not sure if that makes it better, or worse. I can’t find any images of the original; I may have a collector’s item on my bookshelf.
Island of the Sequined Love Nun - Christopher Moore
Great movie title: “Slavegirls From Beyond Infinity”
Books
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Fairy Chessmen
“Shut Up He Explained” – another Jack Douglas title
Great Mambo Chickens and Transforming the Human Condition (nonfiction)
Music:
In the 7th Moon, the Chief Turned into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of his Enemy by Magic
A record by the Kasai Allstars. This is also the title of one of the songs.
Éric Satie is always a great source of odd titles:
Embryons déssechés – Dried-up Embryos
4 préludes flasques (pour un chien) – 4 Flabby Preludes (for a dog)
Books:
Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?
By Edward Behr, a fascinating behind-the-scene look at journalism, especially war journalism.
*Drinking Midnight Wine
The Water of Thought
Flow My Tears the Policeman Said*
Great video game title:
Leather Goddesses of Phobos (an old Infocom text adventure)
When I was a teenager and worked in a library, I always thought The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was a fantastic title.
Along slightly different lines, two of Abbie Hoffman’s: his book of con artist tricks, Steal This Book, and his rant against the war on drugs, Steal This Urine Test.
A more recent addition: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
Michael Moorcock has many good titles, such as:
The Dancers at the End of Time
The War Hound and the World’s Pain
The Brothel in Rosentrasse
to name but three.
O’Rourke also wrote the famed short story "The King of Sandusky, Ohio."
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
Damn good reading if you want to know what the 60’s were really like.
I Still Miss My Man, But My Aim Is Getting Better, by Sarah Shankman
Plus, Why Do Men Have Nipples? : Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor after Your Third Martini
stolen from a famous Ring Lardner sentence (I admit, I had to Google to see whether it was he, S. J. Perelman, or Robert Benchley)
nitpick: Evidence that this is a great title is that, even though it’s been over 15 years since I read it, I still remember that it’s actually Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition.
How about
Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton
I bought the book Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx just because of the title. Luckily, it turned out to be a very good novel…
To me the accordion in itself is, with a few exceptions, a crime against humanity.
ETA: Just remembered that someone once defined a gentleman as ‘someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t’.
Robert Fulghum also has “Was (Was Not)” and “Uh Oh (Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door”
How to Shit in the Woods (nonfiction book on , well, that)
The Way the Future Was, Frederik Pohl’s autobiography. Another great book!