What are some really good names for books? Not the quality of the work itself; the name alone. Notes from Underground is probably one of my favorites.

File: 908 KB, 500x500, 1358070135856.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:26:15 2013 No.3435806 [DELETED]

What are some really good names for books? Not the quality of the work itself; the name alone.

Notes from Underground is probably one of my favorites.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:32:15 2013 No.3435830 I actually really like Atlas Shrugged. A shame really. Also, As I Lay Dying and Their Eyes Were Watching God

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:32:45 2013 No.3435831 The Bible.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:36:51 2013 No.3435837 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (I am totally kidding)

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:37:37 2013 No.3435840 >>3435837 It'd be better if you weren't

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:46:36 2013 No.3435872

Journey to the End of the Night (I also like Long Day's Journey Into Night)
The Way of All Flesh
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Glass Bead Game
Beyond Good and Evil
Brave New World
Pride and Prejudice
The Iceman Cometh
Bleak House
Finnegans Wake
Dracula :)

some random ones that come to mind. totally agree with this guy too >>3435830

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:48:38 2013 No.3435878 >>3435872 I hated Dracula as a title, it's so misleading, he is not even a doctor!

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:49:09 2013 No.3435885 File: 42 KB, 334x270, spock-smiling.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3435878 oh you cheeky bastard

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:49:23 2013 No.3435880 the sound and the fury.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:49:23 2013 No.3435882 >The Sound and the Fury without a doubt

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:50:41 2013 No.3435889 Novels so rarely have nice titles. I like A Farewell to Arms, Love in the Time of Cholera, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:53:46 2013 No.3435899 A Game of Thrones A Clash of Kings A Storm of Swords A Feast for Crows A Dance with Dragons aweyeah.jpg

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:54:03 2013 No.3435901 >>3435830 Atlas Shrugged is terrible I think. Overly symbolic and the motion of shrugging doesn't give the impression of throwing the world from his shoulders, it's too passive a movement.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:56:04 2013 No.3435906 The Naked and the Dead Darkness at Noon The Day of the Locust Desolation Angels The Unbearable Lightness of Being Shit there's lots

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:56:19 2013 No.3435903 File: 216 KB, 289x352, youcannotbeserious.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3435899 be more subtle next time

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:56:50 2013 No.3435905 The Winter of Our Discontent

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:57:21 2013 No.3435908 Atlas Shrugged is probably one of the best titles there is. Also Slaughterhouse-Five, The Doors of Perception, The Idiot

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 21:58:09 2013 No.3435912 I really like: Kafka on the Shore First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Darkness at Noon The Unbearable Lightness of Being Infinite Jest and Of Mice and Men

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:01:09 2013 No.3435919

>>3435901
I also think so as well. It comes off as smug, rather than brave or actually disdainful, profound or whatever the hell she was going for. It has no power, it sounds more silly than anything.

If I forget about the book entirely and reset my head to all that it entails, I can imagine a sweet Woody Allen movie with that title. And then it would be a good title.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:02:09 2013 No.3435925 Blood Meridian Frankenstein, or, A Modern Prometheus Cosmic Banditos The Crying of Lot 49 Dead Souls, in context A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich The Sound and the Fury If on a winter's night a traveler Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:02:09 2013 No.3435926

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” " To Shrug."

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:05:09 2013 No.3435930 A Doll's House The Heart is a Lonely Hunter A Midsummer Night's Dream Dead Souls Favourite album titles? It's interesting what you can convey in so few words.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:05:09 2013 No.3435934 A Study in Scarlet Metamorphosis The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest The Man Who Would be King Farenheint 451 Honorable mention: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:09:10 2013 No.3435945 >>3435926 Really it's just unfortunate that there doesn't exist a verb that describes the action of throwing down a load, but there does exist one for moving your shoulders.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:11:09 2013 No.3435951 >>3435945 Atlas Dropped

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:14:06 2013 No.3435960

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Something Wicked this Way Comes
The Winter of Our Discontent
But the Dead are Many
The Mote in God's Eye
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea
The Engineer of Human Souls
A Dance to the Music of Time
In Watermelon Sugar
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
The Days Run Away Like WIld Horses Over the Hills
You Get so Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

I personally think that most of the better names go to Science Fiction books.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:14:36 2013 No.3435957 DER PROCESS i love saying that in an angry german voice

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:14:52 2013 No.3435958 >Valerie and Her Week of Wonders >The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman >Hebdomeros

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:21:15 2013 No.3435979 War and Peace The Bonfire of the Vanities Something Wicked This Way Comes The Melancholy of Resistance Pale Fire If on a Winter's Night a Traveler The Silmarillion Les Miserables

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:26:14 2013 No.3435987 Pull a phrase from Ecclesiastes or Shakespeare. Boom, killer book title.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:28:14 2013 No.3435992 The Possibility of an Island Requiem for a Dream

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:40:01 2013 No.3436034 I read The Diary of a Superfluous Man precisely because of the title

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:46:08 2013 No.3436056

the sound and the fury is probably the coolest.
Against the Day
Atlas Shrugged [to say nothing of how shit the book is]
Bend Sinister
Les Miserables
A Clockwork Orange
Siddhartha
Paradise Lost
Agape Agape
2666 [runner up for coolest]
One Hundred Years Of Solitude [gf called it 'that prison book' because of title lel]
South Of No North
Nausea
Blood Meridian [not as good as title would imply]
V.
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Godel, Escher, Bach
The Screwtape Letters

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:46:38 2013 No.3436059 >>3435901 >>3435919 >too passive a movement That's the point. Those who hold up the world are doing so through great effort and strength. It takes inaction (something as simple as a shrug) to change the world entirely. Good job missing the point.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:47:25 2013 No.3436061 >>3435987 very, very true also a lot of titles are pulled from poets such as Donne, Blake, Tennyson, and the like

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:47:40 2013 No.3436062

>The Sound and the Fury
Takes the cake, I think. I can think of nothing so evocative as to chill my spine like these words do, nor any other title more fitting for the work over which it is superimposed.

>Infinite Jest
I'd call it a clever joke, but that would only add another layer to the meaning (and of course, pointing that out gives us jokes ad infinitum, that is, infinte jest).

>Pale Fire
A mysterious morsel with a tantalizing "taste" on the tongue, almost as if it begs the reader to consider the purpose of the institution of titling... (hint: it does.)

I guess there's just something about Shakespearean titles, eh?
I also like
>The Crying of Lot 49
The joke might fall hollow on some, but it's worth a mention...
>Bend Sinister
I enjoy heraldry and the symbolic implications of this blazon are interesting, but unfortunately I've heard the novel is less than stellar...
>A Scanner Darkly
I had to have something Dick on this list, and I had to have something Biblical, this takes care of it.

>>3435919
I kind of disagree, I have no particular reverence for the crackpot Rand or her works, but I've always thought the image was a powerful one. I don't think "Shrugged" is an inadequate verb in the context: it's not "God Shrugged"--it specifically refers to Atlas, who carries the world on his shoulders and who, of course, cannot shrug. For anyone else shrugging is merely an inconsequential act of non-commitment, but for Atlas it would be the most significant decision he could ever make. The irony there isn't subtle, but I rather like the characterization of the otherwise apathetic "shrug" as an act of rebellion.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:48:42 2013 No.3436065 >>3436062 >Infinite Jest stolen from shakeshisbeard see >>3435987 >>3436061

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:50:30 2013 No.3436071 >>3436065 >I guess there's just something about Shakespearean titles, eh? Do you understand that all the titles I listed above that line are "stolen from Shakespeare?" It's ok if you want to go ahead and delete your post now.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:50:45 2013 No.3436072 File: 138 KB, 232x239, 213194009342.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Finnegan's Wake The Sun Also Rises What is the What Trainspotting Thus Spake Zarathustra Brave New World The Doors of Perception (for its time at least)

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:51:02 2013 No.3436075 >>3436072 You mean >Finnegans Wake The title actually means something, putting that incorrect apostrophe there pretty much destroys that.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:51:46 2013 No.3436074 >>3435945 >>3435951 Atlas Relinquished Atlas Discarded Atlas...shed ...dispatched? pussyed out

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:52:52 2013 No.3436076 The only one not mentioned that I can think of is Gravity's Rainbow

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:53:40 2013 No.3436084 The Guns of August

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:53:54 2013 No.3436086

>>3436074
Atlas Discarded would be pretty accurate I guess, but I don't think it's evocative or visual enough to be a good title. "Shrugging" is "discarding" for Atlas. Whatever it is, it definitely has to be something passive, though. That's the whole point.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:54:55 2013 No.3436089 >>3436062 I never thought of it like that. I have some appreciation for the title now. Does the allegory extend to how Atlas came to be in his predicament?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:56:28 2013 No.3436093 >>3436075 My bad

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:57:00 2013 No.3436098 >>3436075 Nice comma splicing.

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:57:45 2013 No.3436097

MACBETH:
...
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Gives me chills every time I read it. Thought the whole sentence deserved posting.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 22:59:47 2013 No.3436101 >>3436097 I fucking LOVE that passage. My highschool english class completely skippe over it, but I copied down every line Jesus christ. Macbeth realizes the absurd before existentialism was a thing.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:01:03 2013 No.3436103 As I Lay Dying is one of my favorites.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:05:54 2013 No.3436112 "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream A Fire Upon the Deep i have a boner for sf titles

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:07:25 2013 No.3436117 >>3436112 Stranger in a Strange Land Great title, not my favorite book though.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:11:15 2013 No.3436122 >>3436098 That's how you use that comma as it mimics how people speak.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:11:15 2013 No.3436123 >>3436112 Somehow I read your prose as if you were quoting a verse. The titles combined make little sense, but sound good.

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:15:08 2013 No.3436129

>>3436123
Somehow I read that as "Sometimes I read your prose..." and I got to thinking about how one anon would recognize another's prose even if it just consisted of a list of titles.

>>3436122
I was going to make a snide post about how I am free to use a realistic verbal voice style, and about how correcting Finnegans Wake isn't just pedantry, but somehow I feel like it is more mature to just be happy that you pointed that out for me.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:17:55 2013 No.3436134 Bright Lights, Big City A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius Neuromancer

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:24:14 2013 No.3436150 >>3436129 Damn, that was a slip, I meant to say "post" instead of "prose". lol

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:26:14 2013 No.3436156 >>3436097 >>3436101 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnDRwu84

Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:44:37 2013 No.3436187
File: 2.48 MB, 200x150, 1359666880874.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3436156
>Shakespeare in a modern setting
>mfw

Fuck it, I hate this shit. Stewart's performance is great, no doubt about that. The text is the same, actors good, alright.

But fucking modern settings, man... They appear to say something like "oh, look how universal the story is", "you can relate to it too, you know!" or something of the sorts of "this is how the audiences experienced it at the time" (even if a lot of the plays were already historic even for the time they were written). It looks and sound so arfificial. I feel that if one or two directors chose to do that, it could be a bit controversial and raise attention, but this is such an old gimmick.

I absolutely hate it. Takes me completely out of the play, it makes me connect even less, I have to focus on the actor and pretend all the rest is not there.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 4 23:58:43 2013 No.3436209 Naked Lunch. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 00:09:08 2013 No.3436231 A Fairly Honorable Defeat a complicated kindness

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:05:11 2013 No.3436360 >>3436074 Those are all pretty bad. They don't take into account the imagery of Atlas literally holding the world. With shrugging, there's a stronger link to the physicality of Atlas carrying the world with his arms.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:07:12 2013 No.3436366 >>3436097 Ho shit, I had no idea Faulkner took his title from this

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:10:11 2013 No.3436368 Is there really something wrong with a comma in >>3436075 ?

Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:10:11 2013 No.3436370

>>3436360
>>3436086
>>3436074
Not to mention that shrugging also means not giving a fuck. That's why the title suits the book and that's also why I hate it just as much as the book itself. It simply means Atlas was there holding this big ass world, feeling the heavy stuff and then he stopped and said "lol the fuck I'm doing?", Atlas, let the world down, and that world was in flames. He paused for a moment, Atlas shrugged, did a 360 and walked away.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:12:11 2013 No.3436376 The Remains of the Day

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:12:11 2013 No.3436377 >>3436370 Based Atlas, man. He doesn't give a fuck. Deal with it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:28:13 2013 No.3436411 >>3435889 Love in the Time of Cholera is brilliant.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:31:13 2013 No.3436420 >>3436056 >Blood Meridian [not as good as title would imply] Fuck you

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:39:12 2013 No.3436440 >>3436420 >I enjoy sucking cock You don't have to mask it in aggression man just say it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:40:12 2013 No.3436441 I liked "Moscow to the End of the Line" and thought it was one of the few times a liberal title translation was better than the original (Moscow-Petushki).

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:42:12 2013 No.3436446 Eeeee Eee Eeee

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:43:12 2013 No.3436450 Bad Boy Brawly Brown

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:48:12 2013 No.3436456 feel like i 'sincerely' like 'shoplifting from american apparel'

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 01:56:13 2013 No.3436466 >>3436446 >>3436456 go to bed tao

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:11:10 2013 No.3436486 For Whom The Bell Tolls Unbearable Lightness Of Being Gravity's Rainbow Decay Of The Angel A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court The Silmarillion Dead Souls Steppenwolf Confessions Of A Mask

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:21:08 2013 No.3436494 Pat the Bunny

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:24:09 2013 No.3436495 >ctrl-f >"A Confederacy of Dunces" >0 of 0 This saddens me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:29:08 2013 No.3436497 >Tender is the Night >This Side of Paradise >The Sound and the Fury >Light in August >As I Lay Dying >The Sun Also Rises >For Whom the Bells Toll Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner generally have some great titles.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:35:08 2013 No.3436500 File: 9 KB, 225x172, 01.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] The Name of the Rose

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 02:50:37 2013 No.3436516 >>3436495 >>ctrl-f >>"Neon Bible" This too saddens me.

Anonymous Tue Feb 5 14:34:21 2013 No.3437875

>>3436368
It was ungrammatical because the comma separates two independent clauses that should be sentences on their own, without joining them with a conjunction.

Casual usage like that is fine--it reproduces the voice in which people actually speak, which is why I used it--and I think many people wouldn't even find it objectionable in more formal contexts, especially where there is an interest in brevity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 5 14:36:07 2013 No.3437880 Crime and Punishment

Advanced search
Text to find
Subject [?]Search by post subject. Leave empty for any.
Username [?]Search for user name. Leave empty for any user name.
Tripcode [?]Search for tripcode. Leave empty for any.
Email [?]Search by email. Leave empty for any.
Filename [?]Search by image filename. Leave empty for any.
From Date [?]Enter what date to start searching from. Format is YYYY-MM-DD
To Date [?]Enter what date to start searching until. Format is YYYY-MM-DD
Image hash
Search in	All Posts OPs Only
Deleted posts	Show all posts Show only deleted posts Only show non-deleted posts
Internal posts	Show all posts Show only internal posts Show only archived posts
Order	New posts first Old posts first
Capcode	All Posts Only by Users Only by Mods Only by Admins Only by Developers
Results	Posts Threads
Action	[ Simple ]

/lit/ - Literature