G.O.A.T Book Titles
Collecting the Greatest Titles of All-Time
[[Great Title Goes Here]]
Book titles (and, relatedly, book covers) are the third rail of publishing—nearly everyone has an opinion about them and rarely is the conversation governed by consensus. By and large with a book title, you either like it or you don’t. It’s a gift as an editor to receive a book that already has its perfect title. Most titles end up in a good place, and they serve their purpose. One-word or the-blank titles are preferred by literary writers for their authority. Witty or even average puns work well for romantic comedies. “A History of X” or “How Y Works” or “Why Z is Matters” are plenty serviceable for many nonfiction titles. These type of titles can be great in their own way, communicating who the book is for perfectly, but it doesn’t mean they are going to stop anyone in their tracks with their greatness.
There are also plenty of good titles that become “great” because they are attached to a amazing books. The Great Gatsby for instance, or East of Eden. Calling these objectively great titles is a little bit 20/20 hindsight. They are good; the quality of the book then makes the title becomes iconic as a result. Fitzgerald originally called his novel Trimalchio in West Egg, which is objectively terrible. So, Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald’s editor, who came up with The Great Gatsby and convinced him to switch it may have made the greatest title improvement of all time.
But we’re not setting out to find the greatest title improvements of all time or the greatest titles post-fact that are attached to iconic books. The following greatest of all time titles are not based at all on the quality of the books or what they have come to mean in culture. Although it’s true that the greatest book titles of all time are correlated with successful books, which should come as no surprise (books are judged by their cover art first, sorry aphorism, and their titles second).
As we gather transcendent titles, we will think of this more like a running hall of fame and less like an ephemeral one-off list. On that note, please feel free to send suggestions of titles that just do it for you.
Let’s induct our inaugural class.
The Inductees
1.How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
It’s important to pave these halls of power with the reality that amazing book titles often just feed our base desires. Many lowest-common-denominator self-help titles came after Carnegie’s classic was published. My personal favorites are in the financial self-help genre, which has such gems as Think and Grow Rich and I Will Teach You to Be Rich. What makes How to Win Friends and Influence People so special is that it is kind of an insane and weird title. Why exactly are we winning friends? This low-grade sociopathy has been speaking to the lizard brains of the world ever since and selling millions of books.
2.My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Shifting drastically from self-help to something contemporary in the fiction space, My Sister, the Serial Killer has the perfect balance of evoking so much while not spelling out what is going on. The implication is that the protagonist already knows her sister is a serial killer; a reader can’t help but be pulled in. Like Gone Girl (not a GOAT title, sorry), My Sister, the Serial Killer set off a whole slew of copycat titles and entire book premises that have some variation of “serial killing runs in the family”. Plus, just say this title out loud, it sounds so pleasing—it rolls off the tongue—while being so sinister.
3.Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
Ok, this one kind of violates the rules a little bit. You have to see the cover, read the subtitle, and maybe know what this book is about to fully get it. Still, it is one of the best titles of the last decade, a brilliant double meaning that is so clever it makes you want to read the book. Like a lot of great titles, it is both entirely intuitive, not inaccessible, but a completely unique formulation. Pure gold. The cover treatment—those flames!—level it up even more.
4. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Some titles tell a story, some allude to the theme or premise of the book. Others just give you a pure feeling. Bring Up the Bodies lets you know that shit is about to go down. It’s an undeniably gangster and yet lyrical and alliterative turn of phrase. Like the neighborhood mafia, you know what it’s about even if you don’t know what’s going on. Once you learn the novel is about one of the greatest fixers in history, you get to appreciate even more that Bring Up the Bodies captures its subject in a way that’s both independent and enhanced by the text it represents.
5. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
If there is a lesson to take away from the first five inductees to the book title hall of fame, it’s that risk taking and strangeness can pay off in a huge way. The images conjured by traveling pants—whatever we assume that means before we know the premise—and sisterhood projects a sort of intriguing and appealing warmness. Sharing a certain kinship, weirdly, with My Sister, the Serial Killer and How to Win Friends and Influence People, it has a gravitational pull that comes from its absurdness, sisterhood of traveling pants means nothing, it means everything. A perfect title.
I always liked the title Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.