TITLE BOUT: More good titles. Here’re a few I forgot:

WE WERE THE MULVANEYS (no desire to read this, but love the title)

THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN

(in context) WISE CHILDREN

(because it’s so fluorescent!) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

A CONSUMING FIRE: THE FALL OF THE CONFEDERACY IN THE MIND OF THE WHITE CHRISTIAN SOUTH

TIME ON THE CROSS: THE ECONOMICS OF AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY

And here are readers’ contributions. I note that many of you have tastes even gaudier than my own. I’m really not sure what makes some gaudy titles work for me (THE DEAD PALM-WINE DRINKARD…, THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA) and others sound overdressed and clever-clever. Anyway, your suggestions (an asterisk means I agree that this is a great title):

Joe Marier gives us categories: Alliterative titles:

* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Final Fantasy

* From Dawn To Decadence

Flags of Our Fathers

In your face titles:

You Don’t Know Jack

Your Marketing Sucks

* Parliament of Whores

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut

You know exactly what the work is about titles…

* Treasure Island

Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton

A Brief History Of Time

War Requiem

Effortless Mastery

Titles with the word “chronicles”

Chronicles of a Death Foretold

Chronicles of Narnia

Epic-sounding titles:

Lord Of The Rings

Ben-Hur

Weird, funny titles:

Sluggy Freelance

Homestar Runner

Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Who knows why it’s good titles:

Brideshead Revisited

Men At Arms (So good, two books have this title!)

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Angelic Layer

Double-meaning titles:

Follies

* High Fidelity

Tomorrow The World (it’s a plug for my fiancee’s comic book project, but it’s also a good title!)

The Shifty Shellshock Vador Freeform Power Hour Of Power (a radio show from my college days)

Ann Kerns: Wise Blood

Why I Live at the P.O.

The Neon Bible

The Last September

Just Before the War with the Eskimos

* Girls in their Summer Dresses

The Ponder Heart

* Sweeney Among the Nightingales

Precious Bane

Michael Yaeger: The Tragedy of the Commons (law review article)

The Lobster Gangs of Maine (ditto)

* Unforgiven

The Idiot

Jesus’ Son

* In Search of Lost Time

Ulysses

Huckleberry Finn

* Look Back in Anger

Reservoir Dogs

Heart of Darkness

* Parliament of Whores

The Secret Sharer

The Thin Man

* A Confederacy of Dunces

Persecution and the Art of Writing

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Fire From Heaven (history of puritans in Dorchester, England)

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

* The Wind in the Willows

* God in Search of Man

To Recover the Questions (chapter heading in God in Search of Man)

Blood Simple

Pink Cashmere (Prince Song)

My Science Fiction Twin (Elvis Costello)

Brutal Youth (ditto)

* Exile on Main Street

Fables of the Reconstruction

[Eve adds: Oh, if we can add album titles, I want to plug PICTURES OF STARVING CHILDREN SELL RECORDS.]

Mark R: AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN

Bruce Holder: Annals of the Former World

The Curve of Binding Energy

Dancing at the Rascal Fair

The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test

A Fire Upon the Deep

A Live Coal in the Sea

* Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman

Speaker for the Dead

The Player of Games