Titles that don't Quite Work

This blogpost is inspired by the excerpt below from Salmon Rushdie.

From Vanity Fair February 2012, by Salman Rushdie

"Hitch-22 was a title born of the silly word games we played, one of which was Titles That Don’t Quite Make It, among which were A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, To Kill a Hummingbird, The Catcher in the Wheat, Mr. Zhivago, and Toby-Dick, a.k.a. Moby-Cock. And, as the not-quite version of Joseph Heller’s comic masterpiece, Hitch-22. Christopher rescued this last title from the slush pile of our catechism of failures and redeemed it by giving it to the text which now stands as his best memorial."

After reading about this idea from Rushdie, I came up with a few of my own:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest            > One Flew Over the Wasp’s Nest

The Great Gatsby                                    > The Totally Awesome Gatsby

The Picture of Dorian Gray                      > The Avatar of Dorian Gray

The Hounds of Baskerville                       > The Mutts of Baskerville

Brave New World                                    > Gutsy New World

Gulliver’s Travels                                    > Gulliver’s Backpacking Trek

One Hundred Years of Solitude                 > One Hundred Years of Chillin’

The Lord of the Rings                               > The Lord of the Brooches

The Grapes of Wrath                                > The Cantaloupes of Wrath

The Wind in the Willows                           > The Wind in the Ragweed

Ooops, picked the wrong title... XXX! Oh No!

I had a very hard time choosing the title for the third Sasha Jackson Mystery.  I encouraged input from other people (via Facebook, this blog, Twitter, etc.)

I was fond of "X Marks the Plot".  Others liked "Crash and Burn" or "Cuff Me Tender."  I wanted something that had a bit of a pun or a twist on words to it (as the two previous books had).  And, I wanted to reflect something of the plot in the title.  Eventually, I settled on "The Lies Have It".

As with the other books, I Googled the title to see what was already out there that was the same or similar to it.  Nothing came up (or at least nothing significant).

Naturally, I have set up "Google Alerts" for all of my book titles (sometimes this is the only way I learn of reviews!)  I set up the Google Alert for "The Lies Have It" a few months before the release since I began online promotion for it a while ago.

Well, the alert sends me pretty much everything with whatever key terms I flag.  Lo and behold, about two weeks ago, I got an alert (and another one this week) for "The Lies Have It". 

These two alerts have nothing to do with my books, but they do indeed match the book title.  But this version of "The Lies Have It" is for a blog... filled with porn!!!!  I'm not a prude, but as soon as I went to the link, there were a number of very naughty pictures that took me by surprise. 

I wonder how many people have gone to that blog thinking that it had some association with me????

For the record, I have nothing to do with the XXX blog.  Sasha's edgy, but not THAT edgy!  Here's a link to my "Lies".

Title for Sasha Jackson Mystery #4

I've decided to go with Frisky Business as the title for the fourth book in the Sasha Jackson Mysteries series.  It suits my preference for shorter titles (two or three words is ideal, in my humble opinion).  As well, it's in line with the pun-styled titles I've used with the other three books in the Sasha Jackson Mysteries series.  Finally, it matches the story line, which focuses this time on the world of adult entertainment, i.e. XXX movies.

So, now that I've sorted that out, it's time to see what my Jennifer comes up with for the cover design.  And then I guess I should finish writing the rest of the book.  Right now, it's about 1/3 done.

Books and Donuts! The story behind the barbs...

I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

We have a déclassé, loudmouth boor of a mayor named Rob Ford.  His brother Doug Ford is a city councillor. 

(For the record, the brothers are generally likeminded when it comes to policies.)   

Doug Ford recently complained (erroneously) that his area of the city has too many libraries and not enough Tim Hortons (for the non-Canadians reading this, Tim Hortons is a donut and coffee shop, and it's basically a Canadian institution named after - and co-founded by - the late hockey player Tim Horton). 

I cannot for the life of me conceive of a world in which there is such a thing as "too many libraries"...  As in too much learning? too much love of literature? too much intellectual curiosity?  It's kind of like saying the air is too fresh or the water is too clean.

Anyhow, I was sufficiently irked by this nonsense that I decided to rant about it on Twitter. I wanted to try to push the issue there to see if the Twittersphere would help drum up some support for libraries and books and reading. 

So, I sent out several tweets with the hashtag #BooksNotDonutsForFord with the intention that people add a book title (preferably food related) to the tweet.  I gave suggestions like "Tortilla Flats" and "Like Water For Chocolate" and "Green Eggs and Ham".  Soon after my tweet, someone - a librarian, of course - responded with "A Clockwork Orange".  Kudos for that one.   

Then, two things happened... First of all, the #hashtag trended for a while on Wednesday afternoon.  That's kind of cool - I made a topic trend!

Second, people responding to the trend put their own spin on the book title suggestions and ended up referring familiar books ... but with a (food) twist on the title.  Some of the suggestions were actually quite clever:

• Anne of Green Bagels
• Grape Expectations
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Strudel
• A Tale of Two Timbits (for the Americans, Timbits are what you call donut holes, I think)
• Love in the Time of Walnut Crunch

And, my personal favourites:

• One Hundred Years of Solid Food

and

• The Hounds of Baskinrobbinsville
• A Fridge too Far

A few humourless and ignorant people kvetched that it was not nice to pick on Ford, assuming that the #hashtag was in reference to Rob in general, and to his size in particular (which he himself describes as 300 pounds of fun). 

I guess I shouldn't be suprised that people rant in the cybersphere before they know what they are talking about.

And I still think #BooksNotDonutsForFord   A Fridge Too Far is pretty darn funny.

Post Script (added Friday 6:41 am): Apparently the #hashtag got people talking... The Toronto Star mentioned it, as did Toronto Life.