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.
