Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Funny Titles

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

PREVIOUS TOP TEN TUESDAY TOPICS:

• February 2: Books Written Before I Was Born
• February 9: Valentine’s Day / Love Freebie
• February 16: Purple, Yellow and Green Covers (to celebrate Mardi Gras)
• February 23: Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud
• March 2: Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had (Lawyers in Literature)
• March 9: Spring Cleaning Freebie
• March 16: Books On My Spring TBR

Never judge a book by its cover – nor by its title on occasion. It is easy to pick on titles which have become funny because of language change and semantic slippage,and just bad taste at times. Animal names for sexual body parts is just too easy and cheap!

And some titles are just beyond words. There is such a thing a dinosaur erotica on Amazon – please don’t Google this – with titles like Taken By The Pterodactyl which is just so bad and so unimaginative, it becomes funny.

I did like some of the literary puns that popped up when I searched. I mean, who doesn’t love a good pun? If punning on collier – choler – collar and sole – sole – soul are good enough for Shakespeare, let’s celebrate them! They do seem to be a favourite of romance and cozy crime novels for some reason.

However, let’s have a look at some of the books and series that I have actually read or at least own! So here we have a number of strange combinations of ideas or puns – oh so any puns in the Kim Newman! – the unexpected and perhaps in the first example, sheer length.

No comment this week due to timing and pressure from work – but also because, with a topic like this one, the titles should talk for themselves.

The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket, John Boyne

Teatime for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith

Sleep of Death, Philip Gooden

My Life As A Rat, Joyce Carol Oates

Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde

New Ways to Kill Your Mother, Colm Toibin

Moriarty, The Hound of the D’Urbervilles, Kim Newman

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson

The House With Chicken Legs, Sophie Anderson

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, Tarquin Hall

Arsenic for Tea, Robin Stevens

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And as a bonus a whole series of books which feel a little pointed! Gill Sims’

Why Mummy Drinks

Why Mummy Swears,

Why Mummy Doesn’t give a F@*k

Why Mummy’s Sloshed

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I am currently so behind with my reviews: about half a dozen are stacked up to go. This is down to a combination fo two things:

1. a boost to my reading rate by finding a pair of headphones I can use whilst running – when plodding along for 13km at a stretch, you can get a fair way through an audiobook!
2. the sudden expectation that Year 11 have a full folder of evidence of grades in the remaining weeks of their school career which seems to have resulted in teachers – not trained as exam markers – essentially exam marking. For free.

But the Easter holidays are coming and a chance to catch up!

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• March 30: Places In Books I’d Love to Live
• April 6: Books I’d Gladly Throw Into the Ocean (submitted by Beauty & Her Books)
• April 13: Book Titles That Sound Like They Could Be Crayola Crayon Colors (Take a moment and Google some of the crazy Crayola crayon colors that exist. Can you think of any book titles that sound like they could also be a crayon color? It might be fun to include a description of the kind of color you’re picturing.)
• April 20: Colorful Book Covers
• April 27: Animals from Books (these could be mythical, real, main characters, sidekicks, companions/pets, shifters, etc.) (Submitted by Paige @paigesquared and Jennifer Y. @ Never Too Many to Read)
• May 4: My Ten Most Recent Reads (maybe share a one-sentence review to go with?)