Let’s Talk Bookish: Book Titles

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022.

Another fun topic for this week’s Let’s Talk Bookish. Book titles are such an interesting area, both as a reader and a writer, though they definitely give me more headaches as the latter! So, let’s dive in.

Let’s Talk Bookish November 10th
Book Titles
(Davida Chazan @ The Chocolate Lady’s Book Review Blog)

Prompts: Do you ever get a book with a title that sounds great but the book isn’t? Maybe you’ve read a book that was great, but the title didn’t really fit the book. Sometimes US and UK titles are different – does that bother you? Which ones do you mostly prefer?

Titles can be incredibly tricky – they have to convey so much about a book, and it can be a reader’s first impression of a book, even before there’s a cover revealed. I always find it interesting when you see a title that could match multiple genres – The Wedding Confession (J.J. Knight) is a contemporary romance, but with a title like that it could have easily been a crime novel. The Rose Daughter as a title seems like it would be something YA, maybe second world fantasy, instead it’s an adult urban fantasy novel.

Sometimes I do pick up a book because I’m attracted by the title, and end up ultimately let down. Most recently, I was excited for The Hollow Kind, but me and that book just didn’t click all too well. Similarly with Scareground, though I know plenty of others really enjoyed that one much more than I did. A Terrible Kindness is a great title, especially for the ‘terrible kindness’ it refers to in the book, but the event the title referred to became such a backdrop moment it felt like ultimately it didn’t quite fit for the rest of the book.

She Gets the Girl is a good example of a really good book with a so-so title, I think. But I think other than that, it’s very rare I read a book I really loved and felt like the title didn’t fit, though maybe it’s because we really can become attached to the title as we read. And like I said, I’m usually attracted to the titles of the books I read, so it’s rare I read a book where I feel like the title should be ‘better’.

I try not to pay attention to alternate titles – it makes sense when titles are translated that it might not be a direct match, but sometimes when I do come across differences between UK & US titles it really makes me wonder why that decision was made. Okay, yes, if you had something like The Travelling Sofa, maybe altering it to The Traveling Couch fits to sell it better, but when titles are hugely different I do ponder, and it raises questions on the setting – if you set something in the UK, do you change it for a US audience? If the title is different, do the characters say sidewalk instead of pavement? It wouldn’t make sense for a UK character to start talking ‘like an American’, so why change the title?

I feel like that’s a topic that could have it’s own post. So what about you – any titles that spring to mind when you think of great titles? Ones you particularly love, or titles that stood out so much you had to pick up the book?