September 22, 2009

Should Book Titles Warrant Capital Punishment?

In line at the local drug store, I made the perilous mistake of scanning the book shelves next to the tight-lipped cashier and her green fingernails. Poor girl needed to use the bathroom, I think.

Best sellers, apparently. And the titles, oh the titles...sweet mother of Mary, the titles. Enough to make a grown man want to chew his own elbow. All under the auspicious banner of "mass-market fiction", which I quickly looked up online to find even more gems. Let us consider...

1) From Dead to Worse
2) Club Dead
3) Dead as a Doornail
4) Dead Until Dark

I should note, all these come from the same author, all on the bestsellers. Kaching! But I digress...

5) Altogether Dead
6) Definitely Dead

Uh...still same author. I need to get more creative.

7) Heat Seeker (no euphemism there)

Uh oh...

8) Dead to The World (you guessed it...same author as 1-6)

I'll think I'll stop here. I'm feeling a little...

5 comments:

Kate said...

It's the vampire craze taking hold of North America. In defense of Charlaine Harris, author of 1-6 and 8, her series was out years before Twilight and Stephenie Meyer blatantly ripped off everything and profited (profusely) from it. I think Dead Until Dark was first printed in 1999 or 2000... She's only on the best seller list now because of the popularity of HBO's True Blood. I digress. Much like Twilight, if it's making 13 year-old girls read then I'm not going to complain. We can't expect all 13 year-olds to read The Great Gatsby for pleasure.

Axyro said...

The woman is relentless too. After Definitely Dead comes "All Together Dead", "From Dead to Worse" and "Dead and Gone". She also continues the alliteration in her other series "Grave Sight", "Grave Surprise", "An Ice Cold Grave", and "Grave Secret".

Decent books, not the most clever titles.

Harry Tournemille said...

Harris' merits aside, I wonder if she's intentionally being stupid about her book titles. Maybe she's playing up on the whole pulp-fiction sort of schlocky horror thing.

I'm aware of Harris' connection to True Blood...posted on the show awhile back. Decent at times, but plagued with bad acting--mostly by Anna Paquin.

Anonymous said...

On the topic of twilight...i for one cannot wait untill the fad is over...The whole, oh look im an vampire and im all angsty and in love thing just pisses me off. If there has to be vampires, i want the lets go kill and feed on all the living, type.
-Mat

Harry Tournemille said...

You should watch True Blood then, Mat. Though it is not without romance, there are some pretty badass moments.