I was relatively 'unspoiled' and still knew what happened in the end. I suppose pretty much everyone knows the heartbreaking story of Lennie and George. That has been remedied now, and I'm feeling emotionally drained by it. Well, somehow I've managed to read close to 800 books by now, and none of those had been Of Mice and Men.
And still that did not help the sense of impending doom that was like one prot I just did not know how or why, but figured out those pretty quickly into the book. The Violent Bear it Away - this is another example of a word missing - possibly "took" or "dragged", I expect that's the sort of thing a violent bear would do I’m surprised the publisher did not catch this error. No Name – like A Clockwork Orange this must be where the author couldn’t think of any title so in this case he left it without one, like the Byrds’ album Untitled, or () by Sigur Ros, or several paintings by De Kooning and those other abstract expressionist types but to call a novel No Name is self-defeating, because No Name then becomes its name – epic fail, Mr Collins. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – actually, I rate this as 90% accurate – there are two guys who are named Kavalier and Clay, and they do have adventures, but they aren’t amazing.Ī Clockwork Orange – this must be a metaphor for “I have given up thinking of a title for my novel” The Little Prince according to my system does rate 100% but I still think The Little Faux-naif Idiot would have been better. The Turn of the Screw completely baffled me – I know that “screw” is what inmates call prison officers, so I was expecting a story about a concert put on by the staff of a large correctional institution. Some other titles I would give low ratings to : It’s something I read somewhere and it just stuck in my mind. The Catcher in the Rye, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Flaubert’s Parrot, The Camomile Lawn – sometimes obscure titles can be solved if you understand that the author is referring to Death, so, the Catcher is Death, the Postman is Death, the lawn is Death and the Parrot is Death. Another badly chosen title is Hitler’s Niece - yes, it is 100% accurate, but at first glance it can look like Hitler’s Nice, and surely that is going to put off a lot of potential readers (except for the readers you really don’t want).Īnd what about Call it Sleep? – call what sleep? I can’t be the only reader who was expecting some strong girl on girl action from DH Lawrence but I would have been better off fast-forwarding to the middle part of Mulholland Drive. Another grossly misleading title is Women in Love. And what about The Dharma Bums? I think a Cigarette or You Out is clearly missing from that title. White what? Wallpaper? Hat? Cat? Mouse? Mockingbird? Could be The Crimson Petal and the White Gangsta Granny for all we know. Same thing with The Crimson Petal and the White. Perhaps he completed the book and left the title to the very last minute and died as he was writing it down. And some titles seem to have a word missing, such as Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four. Indeed, to coin a phrase, no mockingbirds were harmed during the making of that book. But you may be poring over the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird for a long fruitless evening to find any mockingbirds coming to any harm at all. You would have to say that such books as The Slap, The Help, The Great Gatsby, Gangsta Granny, Mrs Dalloway and Hamlet have very good titles because they are all about a slap, some help, a Gatsby who was really great, a no good granny, a woman who was married to a guy called Dalloway and a Hamlet. This got me thinking about other novel titles. Mice enthusiasts will come away disappointed. Yes, it’s about men, but there’s little or nothing about mice in these pages. You would have to say that such books as The Slap, The Help, The Great Gatsby, Gangsta Granny, Mrs Dalloway and Hamlet have very good titles because they are all about a slap, some help, a Gatsby who was really great, a no good granny, a woman who was married to The title of this novel is only 50% accurate, a very poor effort.
The title of this novel is only 50% accurate, a very poor effort.