I am probably the last person in the world who should write this post given my horrendous track record for book titles. None of my published novels has the title I came up with. Not one. But the fact that I’m the world’s least successful titler of books does not stop me from having many opinions on the subject.
For instance, t’other day I was chatting with my friend Jennifer Laughran and she was raving about a wonderful middle grade she’d recently read. Sounded great. A bit later I decided to get a copy but for the life of me I could not remember the title. I asked Jennifer. I forgot it again. And repeat.
Turns out the only reason Jennifer can remember it is because she forced herself to. The title in question—and I had to go look it up again—When You Reach Me.
We had a long discussion about how some titles are just black holes. No matter what you do they won’t stick. For me Sherman Alexie’s wonderful book will always be Part-Time Indian and M. T. Anderson’s duology is Octavian Nothing. I love those books but no matter how hard I try I cannot get the full titles to stick in my brain.
Is it a long title thing? But I have no difficulties with E. Lockhart’s brilliant The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks or Samuel R. Delany’s genius Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.
Maybe it’s the vagueness of the title? When You Reach Me could be any genre really. Romance, Crime, Thriller, Horror, Memoir etc. It took me ages to be able to remember the equally vague How We Live Now 1 and then Life as We Knew It came along and now the two titles are forever mashed in my brain even though the two books are very different from each other.
While not exactly the same I notice that lots of people call Scott’s Uglies and Midnighters series The Uglies and The Midnighters, which strikes me as odd given that it’s an extra word to remember. People frequently remember Magic or Madness as Magic and Madness which wipes out the premise of the book, though it reassures me that I’m not alone in forgetting and misremembering titles.2
I notice that people are having zero problems remembering the title Liar. Imagine if they’d kept the title I wanted: Why Do I Lie?
What titles do you find it impossible to remember?
Anyone got any theories about why some titles just won’t stick?