30 Day Book Challenge: Day 28 – favourite book title

As an English teacher, I spend a lot of time talking about writers’ ideas, uttering questions like ‘what do you think the writer is trying to say here?‘ or ‘why has the writer chosen to use that particular word/phrase/structural device?‘; my pupils spend an even longer time thinking of responses. Sometimes their responses are insightful and exploratory; sometimes they are vague and generic – ‘it makes you want to read on.’ – and sometimes they are suspicious – ‘what if he wasn’t trying to say anything? What if he just liked that word?‘

For the sake of their success in English, I can’t really encourage this third type of response. The mark schemes stipulate that the pupils interpret the writers’ ideas, and the effects their choices have on the reader. ‘He hasn’t got any ideas; he just wanted the room to be red because he liked the colour’ doesn’t really cut it.

However, sometimes (secretly), I do wonder if we’re over-analysing it all.

I’m not sure, sometimes, whether infinite thought does go into every single detail. At least, not the level of thought we’re expecting our pupils to comment on.

Though this might be true of the content, I don’t believe it’s true of book titles. I’m sure that authorial input varies from novel to novel, but, essentially, somewhere along the production process, some people sit down and have a serious think about what to name their book.

They must do, because, along with the cover, it is the first thing a potential reader sees. Now, as a potential reader myself, I know that there are certain titles, and certain covers (pink, sparkly ones for instance), that will put me off: Shopaholic and Baby is a good example. I might like shopping (a lot), but I don’t particularly want to read about it. And I certainly don’t want to read about babies. Therefore, this book is a no-no. And thanks to the informative title, I can make this decision without wasting my money.

Equally, book titles can have the opposite effect.

As I’ve stated previously, I quite like dashing heroes. I am also fairly fond of a bit of supernatural fiction. Therefore, Mr Darcy, Vampyre sounds right up my street: a book about the most dashing of all the dashing heroes in literary fiction? Except…he’s a vampire? Brilliant!

Well, actually, it’s not. It’s probably one of the most awful books I’ve ever read. Certainly top five. L.J.Smith’s The Vampire Diaries series, I would say, pips it to the post, especially when the writer unsubtly tries to smooth over a gap of twenty years between books four and five: ‘shall we use a summoning spell to contact him again?’, ‘nah, we can use this mobile phone I handily just bought,’ (or something along those lines).

But Mr Darcy, Vampyre (the comma is very important, by the way), is still pretty dreadful. It is set post-Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth and Darcy are married, and it all seems to be going well at first, but then he starts getting all distant and suspicious (the point at which, in a modern novel, you would assume he was seeing someone else), and Elizabeth starts writing fretful letters to her sister Jane (who, we assume, is sitting smugly at Netherfield thinking she picked the right friend out of the pair). Meanwhile, a rogue bat is flying around all over the place.

If I’ve made it sound even remotely interesting, then I apologise, because it’s not. It’s ridiculous. And badly written.

BUT, I still think the title is brilliant.

It’s brilliant because, even though the friend I borrowed it from explicitly told me that it was an awful book, I read it (and, if I’m not mistaken, the same scenario had happened when her mother had initially leant it to her). How many other book can boast of that?

I wouldn’t recommend Mr Darcy, Vampyre to anyone. But I would recommend that prospective writers take a leaf out of its author or publisher’s book. Because, if you can come up with a title that will appeal to people against their better judgement, then you really are on to a bit of a winner.

Good title, but Jane Austen would still be turning in her grave.

---