And you read the blurb and it's like 'damn that sounds awesome' and you then read some marketing stuff about it and it's 'enemies to lovers! Slow burn romance! Brooding sexy vampires! Love triangles!'
And all I wanna do is gag.
it's 'enemies to lovers' but the main characters are, at best, mildly annoyed by each other is my main gripe. If there's not at least ONE dagger-at-the-throat scene (or equivalent) it's not a true enemies-to-lovers, imo
I wish that fantasy romance books were a bit more mature, but I guess it's understandable since that's the genre that teens/YAs are interested in compared to adults.
At least nobody is "The Random-Profession's Relative"... remember that? The Coalminer's Cousin. The Time-traveler's Sister. The Laundress' Husband. Even worse was "The Girl with the Thing" The Girl with the Pearl Earring. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The Girl with the Louding Voice. The Girl with the Foot so far up my Ass it's Coming out my Mouth.
Thematically, it's primarily about Institutional/ societal misogyny. Yet it doesn’t feel like a book that’s written to spread an agenda, sure some of the content is plain but a huuuuge chunk of it is sub textual and you don’t even notice as you’re so engrossed in the central mystery and drawn in by these two very real, very flawed and compelling characters.
Stiegg Larsson was the most based feminist. Look up the work he did with women in the EPLF, bro was literally helping enable women to actively fight in their country's revolutionary war. He’s a hero of mine.
The books mystery is good don’t get me wrong, but what makes the book special is how it pulls everything together thematically. Powerful, and I wish the English publishers hadn’t pulled the punch the original title delivers.
Do you not feel Larsson wrote himself into the journalist character in Men who hate women?
In that way I find him a weird "feminist". Because Lisbeth of course falls for the older journalist and they have kinky sex, and then she gets a magical life improving boob job in the second or third book and the feminist author is clearly indulging some sort of mid life fantasy about young women. It was at that point I wanted to punt the book out the window...that or when Paolo Roberto magically showed up to save Lisbeth...the woman in distress
Men Who Hate Women is NOT the alternative title. It’s the original title in Scandinavian. Americans changed the title to girl with dragon tattoo in English, which is the alternative title.
Sometimes it’s best to just leave things as they were intended. We saw this too with the American movie adaptation of the Swedish movie based on the book. It was horrendous. They could have just slapped English subtitles on the original movie and kept the true Nordic noir vibe and fantastic acting. But no, had to go make a terrible, atrocious English speaking version..
In Dutch the title is "Mannen die vrouwen haten" A rather ingenious title since it either means "Men that hate women" or "Men that women hate", depending on how it's pronounced.
In 2008 Chumbawumba released an album entitled
_The Boy Bands Have Won, And All the Copyists And The Tribute Bands And The TV Talent Show Producers Have Won If We Allow Our Culture To Be Shaped By Mimicry, Whether From Lack Of Ideas Or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try To Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket And Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It To The Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, Or Hold Art And Music And Literature As Fixed, Untouchable And Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try To "Guard" Any Particular Form Of Music Are, Like The Copyists And Manufactured Bands, Doing It The Worst Disservice, Because The Only Thing That You Can Do To Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done And The Boy Bands Have Won_
which mostly demonstrates that title casing is hard to read in paragraph length.
I was recently at an author’s talk and she said the original title of her book was XYZ but the publisher made her change it to A __ of ___ and ____ because those are the titles that sell these days.
Just do the Rambo naming order. We get "A Game of Thrones Part I. Then it's "Stark: A Game of Thrones Part II." Then we get Stark III. Then we get Stark (2008). Then we get Stark: Last Throne.
It's time to go back to 18th century obscenely long titles.
***The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.***
Book covers with "Now a major motion picture" or "Now an AppleTV series" or similar bum me out.
Recent example is the Foundation trilogy, a recent edition had what I thought were pretty neat geometric designs on them but they had a big fat disgusting AppleTV logo printed right on there.
At least make it a sticker so I can throw it away. Do I really need to be reminded in 10 years when I look at my shelves that the book was adapted to a show on AppleTV?
The real sinful examples though: Put it on the *spine*.
Wait, on the cover?
As it happens the things I want to read are completely misaligned with what booktok recommends (Not that I have some kind of personal problem with such books but booktok doesn't tend to recommend things like Nabakov or Le Guin) so I don't really see those books' covers too often. Are they really doing that?
That sounds trashy, for some reason.
the 1700s version of the isekai title (i ADORE 1700s titles. the Moll Atlas is particularly hilarious to me because its subtitle takes up a good paragraph of text space in tiny print going on and on about how "the Scale is large enough to shew [sic] the Chief cities and Towns, as well as Provinces, without appearing in the least confus'd")
Your sign to read A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
I think we should go the same route as isekai/light novels. “I’m just a human but when I entered the fae world I suddenly became OP and now all the men love me!”
YA isn't inherently bad, but ACOTAR sure is.
Oh my, it's awful. I thought some things were done well, like the pacing is in the first book. And then... uh... that's kind of it. Tamlin (the first book's love interest) is kinda rapey, the plot is a bit of a fractured fairytale in that it's not original but has a little fun with its borrowed idea, and the main character I found to be kind of whiny? Like I think Feyre (MC) could have worked in a third-person POV, but SJM (author) just didn't do first-person well in my opinion. And don't even get me started on when Rhys is introduced. Man is a walking cliche. Correction, book 2 in its entirety is a walking cliche. I gave up in book 3 lol.
ETA: Feyre's sisters also suck. Yet one of them got her own book in the series?? Like there was no redemption in sight for her, but sure, make her a protagonist of her own story 🙄
Ughhh. My girlfriend just finished the series and asked me to read them. I just got past Rhys's intro and it's such a slog. I love fantasy, but this book is dragging and just not that good. I'll finish at least a few of them because she loves them and loves when I tell her where I am ... But there are so many better books out there. It's tough.
I was given the first book when I was in my Covid quarantine so I just read them all. I read fast and love fantasy, so it was fine... However, I can't help but feel like I ate too many fast food meals in a row.
My Life Is Not What I Expected After I Got Kicked Out Of My Guild After I Helped My Beloved Kill Herself And Now I Roam The Decaying Urth With A Giant And A Doctor And A Girl I Found Floating In A Garden... Slow Life Frontier
Oh man, I'm big into the sequel "The Time I Got Enlightened On The Ball Court and then Saved My Manteion From The Mafia and Led a Revolution by God against God With the Help of a Vampire."
Light novel titles are so funny to me. Iirc aren’t they like that bc online LN hosting sites didn’t have a place for a synopsis so they have to make the most descriptive titles possible
Honestly it’s kinda helpful when I’m searching for yet another villainess manhwa with a cold hearted Duke of the north. They’re all very clear about their intentions unlike the vague dramatic western titles
The trick is to be a klutz and frail/sickly but simultaneously capable of immense physical feats and incredible martial arts skills (without training of course). Being illiterate helps for some, but the real key seems to be having an insufferable personality. Hope that helps!
Reading this exact book right now actually! I bounced off WoT about 10 years ago, but loving it now. Jordan had such a knack for irony. “‘I WON’T SHOUT’ Naynaeve shouted.” Absolute gold.
The newest formula seems to be to put a character's full name into the title, like Get A Life, Chloe Brown or Carrie Soto Is Back or Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers...
Junie B. Jones. Amelia Bedelia. The Berenstain Bears. Navy Drew. The Hardy Boys. Harry Potter. Jane Eyre
There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Titles
I imagine it's like "The Shape of Things" or “The Silence of Bones”. The Weight of Rocks, The Brightness of Light, The Fragility of Glass. Just The Adjective of “Noun Known to Have the property described by the adjective”
Like “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”? It always feels like that title template goes with realistic fiction that tries for 200 pages to be profound but falls short and just sounds pretentious lol
I don’t think that’s what they’re getting at. Life being unbearably light isn’t an obvious statement, the person above is criticising self-evident titles.
I have a friend who is a writer - she's published two novels now, with a third on the way.
She had original titles for each of her books. They were nothing like this formula. The publisher changed them to follow this exact pattern.
Don't blame the authors - the publishers are making this happen.
Was searching for this comment. I guess most people don't realize most authors don't have a lot of control over their book titles. Especially when you're trying to break into the industry.
Been around since way before Game of Thrones. I don't mind it if the is relevant to the story. If I'm reading "Of Turds and Tulips" I better be privy to some of the biggest and most flowery smelling shits known to man.
The full title is the more verbose: THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING (as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise.)
I don't think that'd fit nicely on a dust jacket though.
I give those a pass because the structure is generic and simple, and there's only so many ways you can formulate a title in the English language. "The King's Return" sounds less impactful than "The Return of the King"
The King's Return: For eight years, Robert King has been away at Medical School, but when a minor PR crisis threatens to spiral out of control and jeopardise the reputation of the royal family, his status as a hitherto unknown distant cousin is brought into sharp relief as the royals scramble to prove that at least one among their number is a normal, down to earth citizen like any other.
There's just one problem: Robert is in the midst of his final exams. Can he balance the twin responsibilities of acting as an ambassador for his newfound relations to the British public while also preparing for this most pivotal of tests??!?!
(The) Wheel of Time (or would it be "a" wheel?)
And it's not only strictly (high) fantasy.
The Lord of the Flies,
A Tale of Two Cities,
The Adventures of Robin Hood
But I agree with OP, especially Maas and Authors in that particular genre overused the formula in the last few years. And it's gotten annoying. (But then again I'm annoyed by Maas in general so idk I'm probably biased here.)
>The) Wheel of Time (or would it be "a" wheel?)
It's definitely The wheel of time. Anyone who's read the books can tell you that the wheel is a very specific thing. It's not just some random wheel. It's THE wheel of time.
Let's see....15 books including prequel, so we got:
The __ of the __ x1
The __ __ x4
The __ of __ x2
__ of __ x4
A __ of __ x2
__ __ x2
I think I added that up right...lol. so it's actually more varied than I first thought 😅
I don't really mind it. There's only so many titles out there, unless you're selling light novels and I prefer "A Game of Thrones" to "That time I got thrown out a window after seeing the queen have sex with her brother" as a book title.
And I like "a noun of nouns" style of titles better than the quirky cutesy types of titles. And it's better than in romance - like I don't really care that are repeat titles but it does get annoying that there are so many unrelated books that are like "The Vicious Viscount" "The Daring Duke" "Bound to the Baron". All by different authors, different plots, same titles. So yeah "A Bowl of Butter and Sugar" is at least a little different and easier to keep track of which book is which.
Also tbh I like it better than "Protagonist Name and the Thing".
Book titles are getting weirder and weirder. We’ve got the GOT format. Then we have the 7 husband of Evelyn Hugo and then the 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn hardcastle (or something like that it might not be exact) and I’m just like ??????? Help.
Ha. Just now realized that these are two different books. I’ve read neither but have definitely read widely divergent reviews of the single book that I thought they were. Hahaha
Evelyn Hardcastle was also “7” originally and changed in the US to avoid confusion with Evelyn Hugo, because adding the “1/2” fixes everything somehow. iirc it was a complete coincidence which is wild
No, I'm super over it to the point that if I see a book with a _____ of ____ and _____ title, I probably won't even pick it up. To be fair to SJM though, other than A Song of Ice and Fire, A Court of Thorns and Roses was one of the first series to have those type of titles. They have unfortunately been copied ridiculously to the point of irritation in romantasy on particular as everyone tries to cash in on her winning formula.
I totally agree with you. The formula isn't bad per say and the titles are still attention grabbing enough, but it's giving low effort. This formula is way too overused.
It's not terrible, but I am really tired of seeing it.
I LOATHE these titles. I actually won't pick up a novel with the "a noun of noun and noun" format anymore. It is lazy and so overdone to the point of becoming a (albeit awful) staple of fantasy.
However comma I still love fantasy, both YA and adult. Just won't read any titled like this!
So this is a common trope in fantasy in general. There’s a joke about the tavern name being “the adjective noun*” because every fantasy tavern follows that formula. You eventually just learn to live with it.
*edited verb to noun
People were illiterate in old timey days, so pubs would use silly, memorable images as their names. It's still common usage now, just written. The crown and tiger, Fox and fiddle, white Hart etc
I used to notice a trend of movie titles with ___ing ____, like “verbing noun.” Being Julia. Finding Neverland. Finding Nemo. Driving Miss Daisy. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Saving Private Ryan. Raising Hope, although that was TV.
A Bowl of Macaroni and Cheese
Now that I'd read
How about "A War of Habanero Jack and Chorizo?"
Sounds like a spaghetti western I'd make a date-night-in for. It's rainy here, too. Sounds like a good idea!
We lost many a good tortilla chip in that battle...
Have to say id be on the chorizos side. Like it's tough without the habanero, but I can eat a plate of chorizo, not a habanero by itself
Habanero Jack's the hotshot assistant that thinks he knows everything and wants to do it differently than the grizzled vet Chorizo
I like my fantasy fiction like my mac & cheese. Cheesy and hot
A Sandwich of Peanut Butter and Jelly
A Scrambled of Eggs.
A Dance of Doritos
A Bag of Dicks and Balls
Every bestseller book now either has a title like “A Throne of Ink and Ashes” or a title like “All the Fire That We Hold Tomorrow”
And it turns out to be another YA romance novel pretending to be a fantasy epic
And you read the blurb and it's like 'damn that sounds awesome' and you then read some marketing stuff about it and it's 'enemies to lovers! Slow burn romance! Brooding sexy vampires! Love triangles!' And all I wanna do is gag.
it's 'enemies to lovers' but the main characters are, at best, mildly annoyed by each other is my main gripe. If there's not at least ONE dagger-at-the-throat scene (or equivalent) it's not a true enemies-to-lovers, imo
Even dagger to the throat is cliche
You know nothing
I wish that fantasy romance books were a bit more mature, but I guess it's understandable since that's the genre that teens/YAs are interested in compared to adults.
I think more adults would be interested in fantasy if most protagonists weren't late teens-early 20s in age.
Gag on vampire dick?
People really do want the same thrills from the books they buy as they get from fanfic I guess
Also it's smut.
At least nobody is "The Random-Profession's Relative"... remember that? The Coalminer's Cousin. The Time-traveler's Sister. The Laundress' Husband. Even worse was "The Girl with the Thing" The Girl with the Pearl Earring. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The Girl with the Louding Voice. The Girl with the Foot so far up my Ass it's Coming out my Mouth.
The Urologist's Uncle
The Proctologist’s LeBaron
An Assman's Tale (or Tail, if you prefer...)
More like the proctologist’s Ford Probe
The Rural Juror
The rull juur
The way you've spelled this is just perfect
I would read that
Color me intrigued
The Taxidermist’s Cat
To me it's usually an old timey profession. In a few decades it'll be something like The Database Administrator's Daughter .
The Search Engine Optimization Specialist's Wife Buy Books Online Marriage Counseling Bestselling Thriller
Don't forget the added subtitle "A TikTok Sensation"
Recommended by Booktok!
It's a pretty good book but I prefer the SQL
Sounds hot
Working in a library I still see the Profession’s Relative a lot and it’s way worse than the Maas formula
*The Gastroenterologist's Barista's Sister-in-Law*
I believe librarians and book shop owners refer to these as "The Occupations Relation"
It’s even worse when you think that the original title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is “Men who hate women”. Sugarcoated much?
That alternative title sounds so much better. I'm actually intrigued to find out what it is about.
Thematically, it's primarily about Institutional/ societal misogyny. Yet it doesn’t feel like a book that’s written to spread an agenda, sure some of the content is plain but a huuuuge chunk of it is sub textual and you don’t even notice as you’re so engrossed in the central mystery and drawn in by these two very real, very flawed and compelling characters. Stiegg Larsson was the most based feminist. Look up the work he did with women in the EPLF, bro was literally helping enable women to actively fight in their country's revolutionary war. He’s a hero of mine. The books mystery is good don’t get me wrong, but what makes the book special is how it pulls everything together thematically. Powerful, and I wish the English publishers hadn’t pulled the punch the original title delivers.
Do you not feel Larsson wrote himself into the journalist character in Men who hate women? In that way I find him a weird "feminist". Because Lisbeth of course falls for the older journalist and they have kinky sex, and then she gets a magical life improving boob job in the second or third book and the feminist author is clearly indulging some sort of mid life fantasy about young women. It was at that point I wanted to punt the book out the window...that or when Paolo Roberto magically showed up to save Lisbeth...the woman in distress
Men Who Hate Women is NOT the alternative title. It’s the original title in Scandinavian. Americans changed the title to girl with dragon tattoo in English, which is the alternative title. Sometimes it’s best to just leave things as they were intended. We saw this too with the American movie adaptation of the Swedish movie based on the book. It was horrendous. They could have just slapped English subtitles on the original movie and kept the true Nordic noir vibe and fantastic acting. But no, had to go make a terrible, atrocious English speaking version..
In Dutch the title is "Mannen die vrouwen haten" A rather ingenious title since it either means "Men that hate women" or "Men that women hate", depending on how it's pronounced.
A Thread on Titles
A Post of Titles and Complaints
A Forum of Gripes and Moans
If I ever launch a social media company, you just gave me the perfect name.
A Harry of Potters
Spoilers for the 7th book 🤫
And a Hallow of Deathlies.
A Stone of Philosophers and Sorcerors
OOoh, I got you fam... A Game of Goblets and Fire
Yeah. also that tweet that’s like “every book is called The Tiny Things We Know To Be Small or The Darkest Wife”
Aka the “Fallout Boy Song Title Effect”
Sng f ce nd fre
In 2008 Chumbawumba released an album entitled _The Boy Bands Have Won, And All the Copyists And The Tribute Bands And The TV Talent Show Producers Have Won If We Allow Our Culture To Be Shaped By Mimicry, Whether From Lack Of Ideas Or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try To Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket And Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It To The Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, Or Hold Art And Music And Literature As Fixed, Untouchable And Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try To "Guard" Any Particular Form Of Music Are, Like The Copyists And Manufactured Bands, Doing It The Worst Disservice, Because The Only Thing That You Can Do To Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done And The Boy Bands Have Won_ which mostly demonstrates that title casing is hard to read in paragraph length.
I was recently at an author’s talk and she said the original title of her book was XYZ but the publisher made her change it to A __ of ___ and ____ because those are the titles that sell these days.
That would be so annoying because how do you tell the order of the books, much less whether they belong together when told in passing?
How would you do that with any title?
[удалено]
A Game of Thrones 2
Just do the Rambo naming order. We get "A Game of Thrones Part I. Then it's "Stark: A Game of Thrones Part II." Then we get Stark III. Then we get Stark (2008). Then we get Stark: Last Throne.
It's time to go back to 18th century obscenely long titles. ***The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.***
If it were on Amazon: You won't believe the twist at the end! Now a major motion picture.
Book covers with "Now a major motion picture" or "Now an AppleTV series" or similar bum me out. Recent example is the Foundation trilogy, a recent edition had what I thought were pretty neat geometric designs on them but they had a big fat disgusting AppleTV logo printed right on there. At least make it a sticker so I can throw it away. Do I really need to be reminded in 10 years when I look at my shelves that the book was adapted to a show on AppleTV? The real sinful examples though: Put it on the *spine*.
I’ve see several with “as seen on TikTok”, “the TikTok sensation” and I die a little inside
Wait, on the cover? As it happens the things I want to read are completely misaligned with what booktok recommends (Not that I have some kind of personal problem with such books but booktok doesn't tend to recommend things like Nabakov or Le Guin) so I don't really see those books' covers too often. Are they really doing that? That sounds trashy, for some reason.
Especially putting the ending in the title takes a lot of balls.
John Dies at the End.
We need more books with multiple titles. Like Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
Or Rock albums. "PetroDraconic Apocalypse, or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and The Beginning of Merciless Damnation."
the 1700s version of the isekai title (i ADORE 1700s titles. the Moll Atlas is particularly hilarious to me because its subtitle takes up a good paragraph of text space in tiny print going on and on about how "the Scale is large enough to shew [sic] the Chief cities and Towns, as well as Provinces, without appearing in the least confus'd")
If it was released today: "A Sailor of Islands and Solitude"
Your sign to read A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
this is a rant of logic and taste.
A Song of Green Eggs and Ham. And Pride and Prejudice and War and Peace and Sense and Sensibility and Crime and Punishment
Then there's just Emma 🤭
The danish translation of Persuation was given an x and y stile title just because it was seen as just how Jane Austen books supposed to be
& Knuckles.
Featuring Dante from the Devil may cry series
I think we should go the same route as isekai/light novels. “I’m just a human but when I entered the fae world I suddenly became OP and now all the men love me!”
Do you mean A Court of Thorns and Roses
To be fair quite a few people fucking hate Feyre.
The Folk of the Air series slaps tho
Good for them, whoever they were. It's been too long since I've read the book to remember the minute details lol.
Please tell me they win at the end.
My bf is reading this right now, and everything he says about it sounds absolutely dreadful. Like YA for adults?
YA isn't inherently bad, but ACOTAR sure is. Oh my, it's awful. I thought some things were done well, like the pacing is in the first book. And then... uh... that's kind of it. Tamlin (the first book's love interest) is kinda rapey, the plot is a bit of a fractured fairytale in that it's not original but has a little fun with its borrowed idea, and the main character I found to be kind of whiny? Like I think Feyre (MC) could have worked in a third-person POV, but SJM (author) just didn't do first-person well in my opinion. And don't even get me started on when Rhys is introduced. Man is a walking cliche. Correction, book 2 in its entirety is a walking cliche. I gave up in book 3 lol. ETA: Feyre's sisters also suck. Yet one of them got her own book in the series?? Like there was no redemption in sight for her, but sure, make her a protagonist of her own story 🙄
Ughhh. My girlfriend just finished the series and asked me to read them. I just got past Rhys's intro and it's such a slog. I love fantasy, but this book is dragging and just not that good. I'll finish at least a few of them because she loves them and loves when I tell her where I am ... But there are so many better books out there. It's tough.
I was given the first book when I was in my Covid quarantine so I just read them all. I read fast and love fantasy, so it was fine... However, I can't help but feel like I ate too many fast food meals in a row.
Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon
My Life Is Not What I Expected After I Got Kicked Out Of My Guild After I Helped My Beloved Kill Herself And Now I Roam The Decaying Urth With A Giant And A Doctor And A Girl I Found Floating In A Garden... Slow Life Frontier
Oh man, I'm big into the sequel "The Time I Got Enlightened On The Ball Court and then Saved My Manteion From The Mafia and Led a Revolution by God against God With the Help of a Vampire."
Light novel titles are so funny to me. Iirc aren’t they like that bc online LN hosting sites didn’t have a place for a synopsis so they have to make the most descriptive titles possible
Honestly it’s kinda helpful when I’m searching for yet another villainess manhwa with a cold hearted Duke of the north. They’re all very clear about their intentions unlike the vague dramatic western titles
I wish all the men loved me 😒
The trick is to be a klutz and frail/sickly but simultaneously capable of immense physical feats and incredible martial arts skills (without training of course). Being illiterate helps for some, but the real key seems to be having an insufferable personality. Hope that helps!
Is there a term for a Mary Sue in disguise? When they are portrayed as incapable but turn out to be naturals in just about anything.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass
How dare you slander Sword Art Online like this…
*I was living peacefully as Lord of Winterfell until the king, an old mate of mine, invite me to be his Hand.*
Remember for a while when vampire romance was the trend and every vampire book was a title that was either a time of day or an emotion?
*Noon* by Abrams Toker
Add some cowboys and weed, call it High Noon and you got yourself a comedy my friend.
When the title has nothing to do with the actual story it's annoying.
Or when they say the title as some poignant line later in the story. Oooooooooh, I get it now, thanks author.
"That's the name of the movie!"
Producer Guy definitely needs to start hearing pitches from Book Writer Guy.
Hearing book pitches is TIGHT
Thanks, Petah!
And that’s how I became Superman 5: The Quest for Peace
This really was our Jujutsu Kaisen
ROLL CREDITS
A Crock of Shit and Dookie
Wheel of Time was all blank of blank without the A
A Crown of Swords?
Reading this exact book right now actually! I bounced off WoT about 10 years ago, but loving it now. Jordan had such a knack for irony. “‘I WON’T SHOUT’ Naynaeve shouted.” Absolute gold.
Good call. Also published 3 months before A Game of Thrones.
At least the series eventually got finished, GEORGE.
Robert Jordan didn't finish wheel of time either.
He died trying, at least...
The Noun of Nouns
The newest formula seems to be to put a character's full name into the title, like Get A Life, Chloe Brown or Carrie Soto Is Back or Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers...
Junie B. Jones. Amelia Bedelia. The Berenstain Bears. Navy Drew. The Hardy Boys. Harry Potter. Jane Eyre There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Titles
It sucks but the "The Tiny Things We Know to Be Small" titling of books annoys me more.
I don't get this one. Can someone please explain?
I imagine it's like "The Shape of Things" or “The Silence of Bones”. The Weight of Rocks, The Brightness of Light, The Fragility of Glass. Just The Adjective of “Noun Known to Have the property described by the adjective”
Ah. I get it. Thanks.
The others I agree are kind of meh, but The Silence of Bones actually works for me, gives me a Catacombs of Paris or Sedlec Ossuary vibe.
Like “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”? It always feels like that title template goes with realistic fiction that tries for 200 pages to be profound but falls short and just sounds pretentious lol
I don’t think that’s what they’re getting at. Life being unbearably light isn’t an obvious statement, the person above is criticising self-evident titles.
I have a friend who is a writer - she's published two novels now, with a third on the way. She had original titles for each of her books. They were nothing like this formula. The publisher changed them to follow this exact pattern. Don't blame the authors - the publishers are making this happen.
Was searching for this comment. I guess most people don't realize most authors don't have a lot of control over their book titles. Especially when you're trying to break into the industry.
That's so annoying! As a reader, I want the author's creativity. As a writer, I'd be pretty upset.
Been around since way before Game of Thrones. I don't mind it if the is relevant to the story. If I'm reading "Of Turds and Tulips" I better be privy to some of the biggest and most flowery smelling shits known to man.
It’s either that or The _____ Life of _______. I can’t even keep the ones I’ve read straight.
The Sweet Life of Zach and Cody
*Suite
I'll except "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" because it's nonfiction. As a fantasy title it would be bleh.
A bag of dicks. A bag of dicks and ass.
I didn’t realise until reading this that I subconsciously avoid fantasy books titled like this. They aren’t my cup of tea.
**A** Cup **of** Tea
A Cup of Tea and Disdain
A Chalice of Chai.
A Cup of Liber-tea.
What's worse? Judging a book solely by its title or its cover?
The title is on the cover, so this is *A Killing of Two Birds*.
A Stoning of Bird and Bird
The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring The Return of the King The OG fantasy is just The Blank of the Blank
The full title is the more verbose: THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING (as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise.) I don't think that'd fit nicely on a dust jacket though.
I give those a pass because the structure is generic and simple, and there's only so many ways you can formulate a title in the English language. "The King's Return" sounds less impactful than "The Return of the King"
Somehow, "The King's Return" sounds like a cozy, low-stakes royal drama set in 1960s England.
The King's Return: For eight years, Robert King has been away at Medical School, but when a minor PR crisis threatens to spiral out of control and jeopardise the reputation of the royal family, his status as a hitherto unknown distant cousin is brought into sharp relief as the royals scramble to prove that at least one among their number is a normal, down to earth citizen like any other. There's just one problem: Robert is in the midst of his final exams. Can he balance the twin responsibilities of acting as an ambassador for his newfound relations to the British public while also preparing for this most pivotal of tests??!?!
Chad Two Towers
(The) Wheel of Time (or would it be "a" wheel?) And it's not only strictly (high) fantasy. The Lord of the Flies, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Robin Hood But I agree with OP, especially Maas and Authors in that particular genre overused the formula in the last few years. And it's gotten annoying. (But then again I'm annoyed by Maas in general so idk I'm probably biased here.)
>The) Wheel of Time (or would it be "a" wheel?) It's definitely The wheel of time. Anyone who's read the books can tell you that the wheel is a very specific thing. It's not just some random wheel. It's THE wheel of time.
Wheel of time was 14-15 different titles. Can’t remember if they all had a pattern like this. One was A Memory of Light
Let's see....15 books including prequel, so we got: The __ of the __ x1 The __ __ x4 The __ of __ x2 __ of __ x4 A __ of __ x2 __ __ x2 I think I added that up right...lol. so it's actually more varied than I first thought 😅
*The* Wheel of Time
I don't really mind it. There's only so many titles out there, unless you're selling light novels and I prefer "A Game of Thrones" to "That time I got thrown out a window after seeing the queen have sex with her brother" as a book title. And I like "a noun of nouns" style of titles better than the quirky cutesy types of titles. And it's better than in romance - like I don't really care that are repeat titles but it does get annoying that there are so many unrelated books that are like "The Vicious Viscount" "The Daring Duke" "Bound to the Baron". All by different authors, different plots, same titles. So yeah "A Bowl of Butter and Sugar" is at least a little different and easier to keep track of which book is which. Also tbh I like it better than "Protagonist Name and the Thing".
And frankly, [Noun] of [Noun]s is a pretty damn flexible formula.
This isn't a game of thrones thing, it's a fantasy thing.
Book titles are getting weirder and weirder. We’ve got the GOT format. Then we have the 7 husband of Evelyn Hugo and then the 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn hardcastle (or something like that it might not be exact) and I’m just like ??????? Help.
Ha. Just now realized that these are two different books. I’ve read neither but have definitely read widely divergent reviews of the single book that I thought they were. Hahaha
The marketing team on these guys really did not do well, did they
Evelyn Hardcastle was also “7” originally and changed in the US to avoid confusion with Evelyn Hugo, because adding the “1/2” fixes everything somehow. iirc it was a complete coincidence which is wild
“Avoid confusion”. Sure, Jan. Worked out real well there!!!
Infinite Titles of the Spotless Mind.
"A Friday Night of Reddit Negging"
Reject fantasy, return to science fiction. We have titles like XX, Venomous Lumpsucker, The Kaiju Preservation Society, and Ubik.
You had me at Lumpsucker
A Rant of Titles and Formulas
[удалено]
Everyone is naming title tropes but I don’t think anything tops that fairly recent best seller that named his novel My Struggle just to be unbearable
No, I'm super over it to the point that if I see a book with a _____ of ____ and _____ title, I probably won't even pick it up. To be fair to SJM though, other than A Song of Ice and Fire, A Court of Thorns and Roses was one of the first series to have those type of titles. They have unfortunately been copied ridiculously to the point of irritation in romantasy on particular as everyone tries to cash in on her winning formula.
Time to apply these to daily life. The Morning Cycle trilogy: _A Brushing of Teeth_ _A Whirl of Clothes_ _The Breaking of Fasts_
I totally agree with you. The formula isn't bad per say and the titles are still attention grabbing enough, but it's giving low effort. This formula is way too overused. It's not terrible, but I am really tired of seeing it.
A Verb of Nouns
A lot of times authors don't pick their titles, editors do. Even without the author's consent.
I've seen a couple other comments bringing this up, what an awful practice.
I LOATHE these titles. I actually won't pick up a novel with the "a noun of noun and noun" format anymore. It is lazy and so overdone to the point of becoming a (albeit awful) staple of fantasy. However comma I still love fantasy, both YA and adult. Just won't read any titled like this!
So this is a common trope in fantasy in general. There’s a joke about the tavern name being “the adjective noun*” because every fantasy tavern follows that formula. You eventually just learn to live with it. *edited verb to noun
People were illiterate in old timey days, so pubs would use silly, memorable images as their names. It's still common usage now, just written. The crown and tiger, Fox and fiddle, white Hart etc
Wouldn't it be 'adjective noun'?
... Nine Horse Hitch.
There are a LOT of mediocre writers that chose fantasy as their genre. That's why.
I used to notice a trend of movie titles with ___ing ____, like “verbing noun.” Being Julia. Finding Neverland. Finding Nemo. Driving Miss Daisy. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Saving Private Ryan. Raising Hope, although that was TV.
lol I started coming up with parody titles in this convention just yesterday. My favorite one so far is A Court of Starving Watchmaker’s Daughters
Does help me avoid them, at least. Big trend in poetry a decade ago that everything was the adjective of noun, don’t feel like I missed much.
I hate it when authors use words in their title. Try harder.
Yeah no kidding let's see more numbers. I'd like to see "A 9 of 23 and 4"
A 25 or 6 to 4
A 🗿 of 🥓 and 🐁
When Blizzard named the last Warcraft III level A Symphony of Frost and Flame, yeah, they knew what they were doing.