ITT: God-tier book titles

ITT: God-tier book titles

To those who have read it, is the title relevant to the book? Or did Faulkner just choose it because it sounds cool af?

...

it signifies nothing

Keep in mind the original line and it is relevant to anything really

infinite jest really is a god-tier title

i feel like it would be so much less mythological without that name

imagine if it had been named A Failed Entertainment, like wallace originally planned

It's utterly relevant. The first part is narrated by an idiot.

'life is a tale told by an IDIOT, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'

first part of the novel is through the perspective of a mentally disabled guy

eh that still aint a bad title. reminds me of kafka and khaarms for some reason.

>imagine if it had been named A Failed Entertainment, like wallace originally planned
I wouldn't have read it, for one thing

Fine for a short story. Would you pick up a 1000 pages long Failed Entertainment?

>reminds me of kafka

What, his titles are pretty epic

Steinbeck slayed the title game
>Of Mice and Men
>Grapes of Wrath
>East of Eden
>Cannery Row
>Tortilla Flat
>In Dubious Battle

>Of Mice and Men
>Grapes of Wrath

Brilliant

>East of Eden
Great

>Cannery Row
Good

>Tortilla Flat
Mccarthy tier

>In Dubious Battle
Awful

good point, definitely a short story name, which is probably why it reminds me of those writers lol.

infinite jest is grander.

kafka for best titles, hands down

example: "die verwandlung"

perfect. gets your attention immediately and has you thinking: who's this guy verwandlung? and why on earth does somebody want him DEAD?

O'Connor's
>Wise Blood
>Everything That Rises Must Converge
>The Violent Bear It Away

god damnit

The Recognitions was great because of the multiple meanings behind the word that he put into use over the course of the book.

Some off my favorites as they come to me

Spaceman Blues
1984
Everything and More
Slaughterhouse Five
Bleeding Edge
Inherent Vice
Pale Fire
Darkness at Noon
There Are Doors
Fragile Things
Things Fall Apart
The Deep
Engine Summer
Brave New World
Speaker for the Dead

And for a totally non-lit shout out let me mention how damn good David Bowie was at titles,
Life on Mars?
"Heroes"
Sons of the Silent Age
Sense of Doubt
Speed of Life
Sound and Vision
Where Are We Now?
Blackstar
Dollar Days
Diamond Dogs
Ian Fish UK Heir

Great stuff

Perfect

Both Blood Meridian and An Evening's Redness in the West are fantastic titles

cosigned. Also the bitter irony of A Good Man is Hard to Find

gonna add Calvino to the list:
If on a winter's night a traveler
The Crow Comes Last
Difficult Loves

Its a tortila meme

Ambar waves.

>And for a totally non-lit shout out let me mention how damn good David Bowie was at titles,
Same for Zappa even if his titles were ironic
>Watermelon in Easter Hay
>Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin
>The Duke of Prunes
>Twenty Small Cigars
>Peaches en Regalia
>Who Are The Brain Police
>The Legend of the Illinois Enema Bandit
>Florentine Pogen
>The Deathless Horsie
>The Yellow Shark
>The Purple Lagoon
>Son Of Orange County

Fuckin kek'd

My favorite Zappa title is "Who Needs the Peace Corps?"

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Ask the Dust
The Day of the Locust
The Lathe of Heaven
The Last Picture Show
A Sport and a Pastime
Desolation Angels

Legend.

by this metric Infinite Jest is a masterpiece

50 Shades of Grey

"You Can't Go Home Again"
Thomas Wolfe

pretty much anything by Chuck Tingle

Fuck, he's not wrong.

think how great a title Twilight could have been if it was used for something actually worthwhile. Stephanie Meyer ruined a perfectly good word for an entire generation.

Atlas Shrugged

Say what you want about the book itself but it is a great title.

underrated

It's the title of a William Gay novel too, little known Southern Gothic author. Provinces of Night, another of his, isn't too shabby either, it's taken from a line in Child of God I believe.

The Winter of Our Discontent

'A fart, perchance my dear?'

- James Joyce

Makes me proud to be Irish. Such an icon.

Philip K. Dick is king

The Man in the High Castle
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
A Scanner Darkly

great post.

V.
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Those come to my mind right now.

>Philip K. Dick
He's literally crazy, his books are a madman's schizophrenic ramblings.

Twilight sounds like a great title for a dismally depressing novel, maybe something like a young and depressed author striving for excellence and grandeur while he abandons all of his prior world for the sake of his books.

I would read it.

u a woke nigga

Haven't read any besides Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and I though it was excellent. A Scanner Darkly was a great film, too. To be a great author one doesn't need to be sane and neither does one's writing.

Came here to post this.
Other great "noun verb" titles:

Thus Spake Zarathustra
When Nietzsche Wept
Finnegans Wake

Also, Twilight of the Idols; Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.

>How to Philosophize with a Hammer.
It sounds too gimmicky, trying to hard to be funny.

Götzendämmerung is a great pun though, "twilight of the idols" does not do it justice.
In case some people do not know, the german word for "idol" is "Götze", which sounds like a belittlement of "Gott" (which is "god"). "Götterdämmerung" is the german translation for the nordish "Raknarökr" - "twilight of the gods". Nietzsche probably got the idea from Wagner, oh whom he was a big fan and good friend early on in his life.

>Cannery Row
>not brilliant
Time for you to leave.

>>Tortilla Flat
I thought this was a corncobs mccarthy book xD

Objectively, "As I Lay Dying" is the best book title that exists. Try to prove me wrong.
Protip:you can't.

You're right, but at that point I don't think he was friends with Wagner anymore, since Wagner was a pretty crazy anti-Semite and German nationalist.

God tier title/cover combo

Threads like these really make it obvious how many Veeky Forums users are entry-tier teenage plebs

>kafka is d best man!
>no way dude, faulkner is so much cooler XD
>guys how bout steinbeck tho hehe

I don't think Wagner really was a nationalist (atleast not to the degree that he was an antisemite.)

But yeah, I worded that badly. I don't think Wagner walked up to Nietzsche and said: "Hey Fritz, I've came up with a mad pun, check it out!" I just think that because Nietzsche spend so much time with Wagner earlier in his life, who worked on his Ring der Nibelungen which heavily touches upon Ragnarökr (one part of the cyclus is even called Götterdämmerung), Nietzsche probably got the idea from there just by being exposed to the word so much.

It was also conveniently related to his ideas too though.

buttfflabergasted

Everybody knows what Götterdämmerung is, could've just kept the original title and subtitled it with translation

...

'Everything that rises must converge', probably.

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

All the pretty horses is good. Fight me

Flip Of Mice and Men and East of Eden and you're list is good.

>the sun also rises
i think this would be my pick, but its full names is fiesta:the sun also rises, something about the colon just kinda kills it for me

If shakespeare actually believed it then why live? Why continue living such an utterly pointless and of depressing existence?

I know the title is intentionally ambiguous, but do you really read FW as "Finnegans, wake up" instead of "The wake of Finnegan"? Sounds weird.

>Trivia, or: the Art of Walking the Streets of London
>Wind, Sand and Stars

He didn't believe that.

nice

How do you know?

lel

How do you know he did?
Anyway, he would be clinically insane or would have killed himself if he believed everything he wrote. There is simply no reason to assume he did.

The Savage Detectives
Midnight's Children
How the Dead Live
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Under the Volanco

A Confederacy of Dunces

I read it as Finnegans wake. As in, the Finnegans are waking.

unbelieavable post

The Finnegans are holding a wake

These are great

It's a quote from Swift, orginally

I love the finnish name of this book, "Oikeusjuttu", literally meaning "justice thing" :D

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

...

Weird.

What's a wake?

Its where Irish families get together to arrange a dowry

When someone dies the corpse is balsamated and lies in the open coffin for a few days for the friends and family to say their farewells. In some countries people get pisshorsedrunk while doing that.

Come on if you're going to lie say something believable

>tfw when your question is answered but you have a question about the answer too
What's a dowry?

t. still learning english

It was originally when farm land is divided when a younger brother married and left but now means any swap of property

He's literally right though, what about that sounded like a jape?

I thought it was the property you received from your bride's family when you got married. I've only ever heard it in that context, but maybe I'm a little dumb.

The sound and the fury is my favorite book title. I never read the book, but it reminds me somehow of rites of spring, with the name and the book cover.

Yeah you're a dumbo, keep quiet

miks meiän kieli on niin meemikäs

All Quiet On The Western Front
The Mooring Of Starting Out

The Year of Living Dangerously
The Moon and Sixpence
They Shoot Horses, Don't They
A Movable Feast

movies:

Written on the Wind
The Beat that my Heart Skipped
All That Heaven Allows
Imitiation of Life
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead
One of Our Aircraft is Missing
The Man Who Knew Too Much

I like titles with a rhythm to them.

>non-lit shout out
Bowie is Veeky Forums as fuck, should've won a Nobel.