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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Titles

All the good titles are taken. Seriously! All good titles for books have all been used. Not for movies, though, as movies use strange titles. Example: "Magnolia". We expected a southerly scent, a slow moving romance. The experience was shockingly misnamed. Totally mistitled. It should have been titled, "Shit Happens". We would then know!

Back to book titles. I like perusing shelves of new fiction, picking up a book and examining the front, the back, the reviews, looking for something that tells me what it is that I am buying.

And most titles are not the original title thought up by the writer. Most titles are word-shopped, tossed around in some kind of universe where clever twenty-something smack their lips and connect with their peers with text-subtexts-and ramble away, searching for deep trivia=connectivities.

Book titles have come up the same path as lipstick colors. Can I just buy a berry red, or do I need to know all the different shades of berries, and which season they mature to be engaged in the experience of selection? Help. Adjectives Overload.

What happened to plain American speak?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is even worse choosing movies on DVD based on the box descriptions. We just watched 2 "hilarious comedies" that were anything but funny. At least with a book one can peek at a few pages before taking it home! It is all sell, sell, sell and nothing about honesty. I doubt the folks who write on covers and disk boxes ever view the material.