What are your favourite titles?

Books, movies, anything. I know the title doesn’t make the book (or movie, or painting) but I love it when they’re interesting. Mine are:

*Their Eyes Were Watching God

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

That Hideous Strength

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Everything That Rises Must Converge*
I tend towards wordy. And they’re all books. What are yours?

Lord High Executioner.

Grand Poobah.

Both books:

My War Gone By I Miss It So

The Country Ahead Of Us, The Country Behind - I haven’t actually read this, I just love the title. And feel no need to spoil my enjoyment of it by reading what might be a less-than-satisfactory book.

I’m sure there are more but those are the two that I think of when I’m grouchy and want to cheer myself up.

To me, the perfect title to a play was Children of a Lesser God. Summed up the whole thing in 5 words.

That and The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. :smiley:

__________ for Dummies. I love the concept, and the fact they deliver what the title promises.

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.

Books:

A Clockwork Orange

Movies:

American Psycho

Grave of the Fireflies

Children of the Corn

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?. Mysterious, until you see the movie, when all becomes clear.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Elllison. Ellison is a master at great titles (Crazy as a Soup Sandwich; The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World; Repent, Harlequin, said the Ticktockman), but this is his best.

The Women Men Don’t See by James Tiptree, Jr.

I must say that I appreciate the nerve it took for someone to call his book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

It’s lucky for him it was actually good, wasn’t it? :slight_smile:

The shopping carts book is great- we had it at work.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

The Places in Between

Holy the Firm

The Word for World is Forest

Christopher Hitchens was on tv a while back saying how he wanted to name his recent book that took a critical view of Mother Theresa Holy Cow because it was a triple entendre. Alas the publishing company wouldn’t let him. Pity

I like Sharon Kay Penman’s titles, such as:
The Sunne in Splendour
When Christ and His Saints Slept

I also like Alexander McCall Smith’s titles:
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Morality for Beautiful Girls
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
Tears of the Giraffe
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

I’m surprised, Lissla, you like That Hideous Strength. I’m nonplussed by that and many CS Lewis titles – Till We Have Faces and Mere Christianity being two others. I never really get comfortable with them, either, even after years of being familiar with the books.

But you did say you like when a title is interesting. I like it more when they have a grand sound.

Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
Of Mice and Men

Shut Up, He Explained (title of a Ring Lardner short story collection).

Falling Through the Earth
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Milagro Beanfield War

“No Country For Old Men” is a great title.

“Fargo” is a great title.

“The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner”.

Some westerns. . .

“High Plains Drifter”

“For a Fistful of Dollars”

*Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time*

The Friday Book: Or, Book Titles Should Be Straightforward and Subtitles Avoided by John Barth

One of several titles of the Werner Herzog film about Kasper Hauser is Every Man For Himself and God Against All..

Don’t forget Poo-Bah’s title: Lord High Everything Else!