Which book titles are the most intriguing to you...or have made a book irresistable for you to avoid? Some titles that have been worth investigating, in my opinion, have included:

'Guns, Germs and Steel' (A title that surely must stir the testosterone in any man....a 'book for guys who like books' if you'll forgive the vulgar culture reference!)

'Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot' (Ad Hominem attacks *do* sometimes work!)

'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' (Sentimental, perhaps...but certainly a magnetic title...)

'Satanic Verses' (Seems evil and cool at the same time...)

'Over all the Obscene Boundaries' (Poetry collection by Ferlinghetti)

'Nausea' by Sartre, 'The Plague' by Camus and 'Suicide' by Durkheim (One word titles that elicit immediate visceral responses!)

And my favorite Shakespeare title...'The Taming of the Shrew' (Any high school student must be mesmerized by a title such as that!)

Please add your choices to this fun list!

I bought a book entitled "Ponder This" which I found interesting, but I ended up pondering the title as it commanded, so I never did go beyond the title page.

At-Swim-Two-Birds-Flann O'Brien
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?-Horace McCoy
The Postman Always Rings Twice-James M. Cain
Swimming Man Burning-Terence Fitzpatrick
The Rivet In Grandfather's Neck-James Branch Cabell
Lady Into Fox-David Garrett
His Monkey Wife-John Collier
An Armful Of Warm Girl-W.M. Spackman
The Search For My Great-Uncle's Head-Johnathan Latimer
Breakfast At Tiffany's-Truman Capote

tjoeb};>

What about Malachy Mc Court: A Monk Swimming , which turns out to be a mispronunciation of Amongst Women.
The Crying of Lot 49 was mysterious enough too as a title.
Other beauties: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and
Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party.

Some more facinating titles:

The Last Enemy-Richard Hillary (death)
The Four Feathers-A.E.W. Mason (signs of cowardice)
The Red Badge Of Courage-Stephen Crane (a battle wound)
The Blue Hammer-Ross MacDonald (a pulsing vein)
The Scarlet Ruse-John D. MacDonald (a floppy red hat Travis McGee uses to outwit a killer)
The Man Who Folded Himself-David Gerrold (a man duplicates himself through time travel)
The Zebra-Striped Hearse-Ross MacDonald again (a zebra-striped hearse!)
The Demolished Man-Alfred Bester (about telepathic policemen tracking a killer)
Death And The Compass-Jorge Luis Borges (one of the wierdest detective tales ever written!)
The Absent-Minded Coterie-Robert Barr (sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story, doesn't it?)

tjoeb};>

The Wind in the Willows I wanted to read that book the minute I set eyes on it--such a lovely, peaceful title

Gone With The Wind The title says it all, for their way of life was, wasn't it?

Death Be Not Proud I loved the book and the title, taken of course, from the poem

I Sing The Body Electric I love that Bradbury took the title of his book (and one of the stories in the collection) from the poem by Walt Whitman.

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: LindaC007 ]

Boy Still Missing-John Searles(I just wanted to know if they ever found the boy)

She's Come Undone-Wally lamb(She really does come undone, amazing book).

Catch Me If You Can:the amazing true story of the most extraordinary liar in the history of fun and profit-Frank W. Abganale(ok, so no way can u remember that whole title but it really doesnt matter Catch Me If You Can is what got me , it reminds me of being five and playing tag, and the book is just one big game of tag).

I always thought Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" was an intriguing title.

A title that intrigued me was "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by a neurologist called Oliver Wolf Sacks,though I must admit that I wasn't intrigued enough to actually read it.

The Man Who Was Thursday--G.K. Chesterton
Tristam Shandy-Laurence Sterne
Oblomov-Ivan Goncharov
A Catskill Eagle-Robert B. Parker (he uses quotes of famous authors in his titles; this comes from Melville's "Moby Dick")
A Confederacy Of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole (he got it from Johnathan Swift!
The Catcher In The Rye and Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut-J.D. Salinger (The first came from the hero's mangling of "Coming Through The Rye", the other, a short story, became the film "My Foolish Heart")

And in this Black History Month, The Color Of Water, Joseph MacBride's memoir of his biracial heritage (his white mother, when he asked what was God's color, answered God is the color of water...no color.)

Speaking of memoirs...Lilian Hellman's Pentimento
(old images showing through fading revisions in an old oil painting) and Gore Vidal's Palimpsest (an old parchment re-used for further writing) tjoeb};>

...on title only...
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me....
Leonard Cohen?

No, Richard Farina

Dumb...dumb...dumb..dumb!
Thank you, Dubrov!

I can only judge from the comments you've written in the Forums, but I think that 'dumb' is not the adjective you should use to describe yourself. Ever. You sound observant, curious, interesting and very smart. Thing is, Farina was a big hero of mine and I read that book a LOT. That doesn't make me any smarter.

Yikes I forgot. My favorite and most mysterious and beautiful book title is 'Lark Rise to Candleford', the trilogy by Flora Thompson.

[ 02-13-2002: Message edited by: Dobrov ]

"Steal This Book" Abbie Hoffman
"Another Roadside Attraction" Tom Robbins
"What Color is Your Parachute?"
(I can never remember his name, but this is the best job hunting book I've ever been privileged to read. It has to be on my list of books that have helped me get myself up by the bootstraps and start up the hill again. The style is just right for the very large audience it's had. Some people might call it simplistic and touchy feely and silly but they've never needed that kind of thing before!)

The Voice on the Radio, by Caroline B. Cooney.

This thread reminds me of my poor daughter. When she was about 9 I took her to visit a single girl friend of mine. After we left , the friend called me , giggling. She had found, in the Toilet, her copy of "Sex and the Single Girl"inside another less suggestive titled book. What a disappointment it must have been, to someone thirsting after that sort of knowledge!

How to Eat Fried Worms. I read this a few years ago and recently found that it's won several teen fiction awards

Some fun titles and some light hearted reads:

"It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It"-Robert Fulgham
"The Book of Guys"-Garrison Keillor
"We Are Still Married"-Garrison Keillor
"Motherhood, the World's Second Oldest Profession" Irma Bombeck

Titles I found intriguing were:

Angels in A Harsh World (it made me wonder how angels could live in such a world and what type of world was it?

Across the Nightingale Floor (a great book with a great title and hardback cover to go along with it - Australian Hodder edition)

Comes to mind:

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by Lynne Truss. Not at all what you would think it's about.

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams (yep, the Hitchhiker guy)

I always loved the title of a Heinlein short story: And He Built A Crooked House. (About "unfolding" a tessaract and building a house out of it.)

Also love the title The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. When I was about 7 I was digging in a box of my mothers books, and came across this silver-covered book with a boy and a "watch" dog on it. The title was so wonderful, I sat down and started reading right there in the garage. I've read it again and again, even as an adult, because it is so wonderful. I highly recommend it.

I also love, of course, A Wrinkle In Time, but then almost all of L'Engle's titles are captivating. The Arm of the Starfish, which references the regenerative abilities of even pieces of starfish... The Moon By Night, The Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Dragons in the Waters and A Ring of Endless Light are all books that easily live up to their enchanting titles.

Without marking myself as too much of a sci-fi geek (though I think it only understandable that sci-fi might have some of the most fascinating titles), I also want to throw Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon into the mix. I just love that title.

More obscure titles springs to mind now. By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, A Mote in God's Eye and its sequel, The Gripping Hand, both excellent books! And when you read the first, the title of the second becomes clear.

Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden. I read it when I was a freshman in hs. It was really good; I remember liking it.

This thread was fun to see again. My addition to the list:

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons...but Kurt Vonnegut wrote it so I guess that mostly explains the unexplainable title!

edited for spelling

Here's one I came across at work this week:

"Laughter, Sex, Vegetables and Fish" by Dr John Tickell.

It was a book on healthy lifestyles.