First, to warm you readers up, here are some really bad titles:

The Mixquiahuala Letters by Ana Castillo. I dare you to try to pronounce this when ordering it at the bookstore.

Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. Man, does this title sound harsh or what? I know that's the point, but still.

The Quickie by James Patterson. This has to be the fault of the marketing department. It manages to sound both trivial and sleazy.

Now, let's move on to my current list of favorite titles.

Apocalypse Now. I have loved this title since the controversial Vietnam War movie first blew our minds back in 1979. First, it sounds good when spoken aloud: a hybrid of harsh and sibilant sounds (a-POC-a-lypsssse) followed by the assertive "NOW!" Second, it's short yet rich with meaning. To get so many strange connotations into a two-word phrase is brilliant: you think of catastrophes, the Bible, the end of the world. Yet there's both a mocking irony and an urgency to the title that undercuts the epic feeling: now. It's happening right now.

Neuromancer. I mentioned the William Gibson novel in my last article, How to Write a Great Title. This short, intriguing word bursts with images of the brain, sorcery, necromancy, and neurosurgery. It sounds cool, and manages to combine the medieval and the futuristic.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I've touched on this one before as well. What a haunting and suggestive title. Descendents of a lunar prison-colony, irrevocably shaped by their dangerous environment, start a revolution against the government of Earth. Would you believe that Robert Heinlein published it way back in 1966?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick. You can't beat Phillip K. Dick for great titles. Unfortunately Hollywood dumbed it down to Blade Runner for the movie.

I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman. What a beautiful phrase, especially when spoken. Whitman was way ahead of his time. It made a perfect title for Ray Bradbury to borrow for his science-fiction short-story collection.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. This title comes from one of the scariest poems in western literature, "Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. The poem opens with the bone-chilling lines:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

and closes with the unforgettable

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Joan Didion was the first to turn the phrase into a title, using it for her scathing masterpiece on 1960s California. Since then, everybody and his or her grandmother have used variations on it for their titles, diluting its impact to nothing.

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke. (See my review here.) It's a long title, but colorful. It manages to put a strange and funky New Orleans-type twist upon antebellum images of the War Between the States. The contradiction is striking.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Another fabulous two-word title that tells you everything you need to know about the novel and its theme while suggesting an unforgettable image of the huge and overworked Greek god dropping our planet (and all the drones he has been carrying) from his shoulders. The word "shrugged" sounds implacable and indifferent: you slackers will now get what's coming to you.

Other Good Titles:

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone. The title of this outstanding thriller conveys cynicism, weariness (e.g., dog tired), and disillusionment. Stone's novel, which thoroughly deserved its National Book Award, is one of the few books ever to get a halfway decent title when made into a movie: Who Will Stop the Rain from the great Creedence Clearwater Revival song which also protested the Vietnam War.

The Deep Blue Alibi by Paul Levine. This is the second installment in the comic mystery series about lawyer lovebirds Solomon and Lord (see my review of Trial & Error). I haven't read it yet, but I love the title. The vowels give it a pretty sound when spoken aloud. Deep Blue suggests the sea and the series' wonderful Miami location while Alibi tags the book as a mystery.

The Lost Get-Back Boogie by James Lee Burke. I don't know what this means but I'd like to find out.

The Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. Before this author became known for her cozy mysteries featuring talking cats, she wrote this ground-breaking lesbian coming-of-age story. The enigmatic yet poetic-sounding title refers to a certain part of female anatomy. Is this marvelously subversive or what?

A great title is rare and wonderful thing. If the marketing departments in publishing firms everywhere would just leave it up to the authors, we might get even more like the ones I've quoted above.

The two books whose covers are pictured can be located on Amazon through these links: Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way and In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead