Top Ten Tuesday: Funny Book Titles

For That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday:

March 23: Funny Book Titles

1. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss- Because saying a panda “eats shoots and leaves” is very different from saying he “eats, shoots and leaves” Commas can save lives! I actually used to use the kids edition of this book with my class, and they always got a kick out of it.

2. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: The Facts of Daily Life in 19th Century England by Daniel Pool– I used this in college when I wrote a pseudo-Victorian novel for my senior project. It’s actually really good about explaining the minutia of daily life at the time: little things that you don’t often think about. That’s why the title makes me laugh too. I don’t often think about Jane Austen eating (but I know she must’ve done so!)

3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith -I always think of this one in the same breathe as the the equally funny titled IMO, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I suppose the titles strike me as funny because I think of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility as being about very proper, mannered, British gentry. Throwing zombies and sea monsters makes it bizarre and funny.

4. The Ear, The Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer– I actually really like this book and think it deserves to be better known. But the first time it was recommended to me, I heard the title and thought “WTF?” It’s takes place in Zimbabwe in the year 2174. It’s about three kids who escape their parents heavily guarded home to explore the dangerous world outside. They’re pursued by the detectives their parents have hired to find them: the ear, the eye and the arm. I always get a mental picture of an ear, an eye, and an arm, all walking around on little legs when I hear it!

5. Going Bovine by Libba Bray– I think the title is meant to sound like “going nuts” or “going crazy.” But it’s about a kid who gets mad cow disease, so he’s “going bovine” instead. It’s a totally wild book, that’s like a mash up of Don Quixote, Norse mythology, and The Phantom Tollbooth. I think the title suits it.

6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night- Time by Mark Haddon– I like this title because it sounds like the title of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The main character of this book is an autistic teen who sets out to solve the mystery of the death of his neighbor’s dog, as Sherlock Holmes would. So I think for that reason the title is witty. Not “ha-ha” funny really, but witty.

7. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman– She’s not though. And I think the title sort of lets us know she’s not, right off. It sounds sort of defensive. When I first looked at the cover, and saw the woman with her arms crossed protectively in front of her, I thought: “Methinks she doth protest too much.” And I was right. Again, it’s not really LOL funny, but it strikes me as having a sense of humor about itself. Also the name “Eleanor Oliphant” makes me chuckle a bit, because if you mashed together the beginning of the first name and the end of the last name. it turns into “elephant.”

8. The Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis– This is the third Narnia book and I always smile a bit when I see/hear the title. I think it’s the inversion of the expected “The Boy and His Horse” that does it. We naturally expect the emphasis to be on the boy rather than the horse.

9. To Say Nothing of the Dog: Or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump At Last by Connie Willis Firstly, this title strikes me as funny simply because it’s a mouthful! It’s also a reference to the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. Plus, the subtitle about the Bishop’s Bird Stump sounds funny too.

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