6 types of book titles that get noticed – and picked up

While a cover has to grab your eye, it’s the title that has to make you pick up the book. So what makes a book title grab your attention?

On Goodreads, the social media site for readers, 1,052 people voted on the book titles they thought were the most eye-catching or unique. I’ve taken the top 100 titles and organized them by what makes them unique (many would fit in multiple categories, and some of the categories are just a shade different from one another, but I’ve arranged them in the interest of clarity and space).

If you can write a title that fits into two or more of these categories and is readable at a glance – you probably have a winner.

Surprising

These you pick up either to see what the heck they’re talking about, or to find out what crazy thing they’ll say next. This category is so popular, I broke it into subcategories!

– Words you’re surprised to see together

• The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
• The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
• Still Life with Psychotic Squirrel
• TheGuernseyLiterary and Potato Peel Society
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
• When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
• The Devil Wears Prada
• The Baby Jesus Butt Plug
• So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• Hitler the Cat Goes West
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
• Go-Go Girls of the Apocolypse
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Practical Demonkeeping
• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
• You Suck (A Love Story)

– A surprising play on a common saying/well-known title

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Women are from Venus, Men Are From Hell
• How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
• English as a Second F***ing Language: How to Swear Effectively… (place)

 – Breaks rules…surprisingly

Some are unapologetically direct, some grammatically incorrect, some give away the ending, and some are just crass (a cheap trick I wouldn’t recommend).

• Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: A Slightly-Tarnished Southern Belle’s Words of Wisdom
• Me Talk Pretty One Day
• I Am America (And So Can You!)
• Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off
• Another Bull**** Night in Suck City
• How To S*** In the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
• John Dies at the End
• This is Not a Novel
• F*** This Book
• On Bull****
• The Haunted Vagina
• Dude, You’re a F**: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
• Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining: America’s Toughest Family Court Judge Speaks Out

Funny/Clever

If the title alone makes you chuckle, you’re likely to pick up the book.

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
• I Was Told There’d Be Cake
• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
• If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?
• I Still Miss My Man but My Aim is Getting Better
• I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
• In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash
• Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters got Eyes
• Since You’re Leaving Anyway, Take out the Trash
• Even God is Single (So Stop Giving Me a Hard Time)
• I Gave You My Heart, but You Sold It Online

Poetic

Just plain beautiful, but with a deeper meaning.

• Something Wicked this Way Comes
• Midnight in theGarden of Good and Evil
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
• Where the Wild Things Are
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• A Thousand Splendid Suns
• Neverwhere
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• The Man Who Was Thursday
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
• The Sound and the Fury
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• I Capture the Castle
• All Quiet on the Western Front

Makes You Think

A unique way to look at things. Atlas Shrugged is a prime example – Atlas being the Greek god who holds up the world heavens (or holds the heavens and the earth apart, depending on which tradition you follow).

• Atlas Shrugged
• Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
• She Got up off the Couch; and Other Heroic acts from Mooreland,Indiana
• A Wrinkle in Time

Intriguing

Specifies or implies something irresistibly interesting or thought-provoking. You have to know more.

• The Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England: A Novel
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower
• What to Say When You Talk to Yourself
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Whimsical

It simply sounds fun.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales
• Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed
• The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cave
• There’s a Wocket in My Pocket
• Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
• Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

I can’t figure out why these are interesting (if you can, tell us in the comments)

• Brave New World
• Table 21
• Reading Lolita in Tehran
• To Live and Drink in L.A.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: a Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

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What are your favorite titles? Tell us in the comments!

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P.S. My calendar next week looks like it got sneezed on by the Deadline Monster, so I can tell you right now I won’t be able to write about the D in AIDA until the week after. But stay tuned! We may do a little review of the I in AIDA.