I’m reading a JF book “Mothman’s Curse.” Until 1/4 through it, you think the culprit of the strange goings on is a ghost or a man, but since I know the title, I know the Mothman is a suspect before there’s any mention of him. I don’t find this a problem in this case, especially as a book for younger people.
What are some book titles that give away too much? Of course there are books like They Both Die at the End or And Then There Were None, but that is a device used for intrigue. Are there any book titles that perhaps inadvertently spoil the contents? There’s even an entire TV Tropes list about this.
by fullybookedtx
44 Comments
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Return of the King. Total spoiler. I for sure thought Aragorn was going to just go back to the anonymous life of ‘Strider’.
If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin.
I’m not actually sure it gives away too much, but after reading I felt like I should have known, and for some reason I did not vet like I usually do.
None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell – For me personally the title was a major spoiler. Especially if you add into the mix the blurb and how creepy one of the character is right from the beginning, there’s not much mystery left.
The Complete Poems of Carl Sandberg.
I didn’t even have to wonder if it contained the whole of his published works.
FWIW the author probably didn’t pick the title unless it was self-published.
John Dies at the End
There’s only one I can think of. It’s a great book by William Golding, originally published in the UK under the perfectly fine title Pincher Martin.
I don’t want to say more because honestly, you should read it; it’s an amazing piece of writing. But the original American publishers gave it a terrible new title that kind of spoils the whole book.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar.
Still a great book, mind.
The Monster at the End of this Book – Sesame Street
The Death of Ivan Illyich.
I was really pulling for him and the first paragraph really solidified the blow.
‘The Old Man and the Sea’. It leaves nothing to the imagination. Ha!
Now I really want to have lying titles. Just give me ‘he who survived it all’ and have him die somewhere in the middle.
I saw a good example of this earlier today in this blog post: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2023/09/29/aerographite-and-the-interstellar-ark/
Brian Aldis wrote a novel published in the UK as “Non Stop”. It was a study of a society in which it was slowly revealed that they were on a generation ship and had forgotten the fact and the original mission. The title of the book, and the cover, were careful not to ruin this unveiling.
In the US edition, they called the book “Starship”, slapped a space ship on the cover, and so gave away the thing before you even picked up the book.
The only one I can think of is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The title lets you know that the main character has a short life, which means he probably dies in the book. I can’t remember if Yunior mentioned Oscar dying before the end (I read it over ten years ago) but I know that I wouldn’t have expected the main character to die from the summary if not for that title.
“The Last Herald Mage” by Mercedes Lackey. My sister was reading it and was so mad when I pointed out the title, essentially spoiling all the coming character deaths.
Ugh so many Shakespeare plays I want to read. Tragedy of Macbeth, tragedy of othello etc. spoiler much?? Kinda know how it’s gonna end before even opening the book.
“Don’t Create The Torment Nexus” is a classic example.
They both die at the end is soo sad >! It makes you think they will outlive it, but they definitely don’t !<
The Three Body problem. If you’ve ever heard of it before then you’re just sitting around waiting for the characters to figure it out for like half the book.
The Brothers Karamazov
That twist is usually reserved for soap operas (“he’s my brother”) but some marketing genius decided to blow the big reveal
War And Peace! Unbelievable, the entire scope of the book was spoiled by the title.
Tolstoy should’ve gone with the original, much less spoiler-y, War, What Is It Good For?
I think this is getting into the “antispoiler culture” going too far territory, the point of titles is to entice to read. One of the best ways to do that is to put up front what makes the book interesting.
*The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*. Major spoilers.
Well i ain’t reading a single comment. Talk about >!spoilies!<
To Serve Man.
I’m Glad My Mom Died
The Greatest Story Ever Told – plus, it’s not.
The hungry hungry catapillar.
I honestly think that poorly designed covers give away more than titles do. The new Heroes of Olympus covers are pretty egregious of this, especially the one for *Mark of Athena.* Literally gives away the last few Annabeth chapters in the book (plus I think the old covers were way better designed).
Dune.
So many dunes.
“My Sister, The Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Very good book but uhhh yeah 😅
The Long Walk is extremely on the nose.
I scrolled through all the comments, but I am shocked that not a single person posited a Japanese light novel title.
Not the title, but when I was in high school, a copy of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” had the image of an orangutan hanging off of a chimney on its cover.
“If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer” – OJ Simpson
John Dies in the End 😉
The german title of Terry Pratchett‘s book „Monstrous Regiment“ basically gave away the whole plot :-/
Return of the King, that was the publishers idea, Tolkien wanted “War of the Ring”
The Making of the Representative of Planet 8. Quite early in the book I realised how the Representative was going to be made, so how the book would end, and from that point on, reading it was a dreadful bore. (Doris Lessing later said that writing it was as well.)
Not in the title, but any time I read Lovecraft I wish that I didn’t know it was Lovecraft before I started. They all begin so normal and the mysteries at hand have potential earthly solutions, but I know some vast, ancient and otherworldly power will be the real culprit just from knowing the author.
*Awkwardly glances at the entire Isekai genre*
I’ll be fair to the author of the Mothman Prophecies and point out that he was having a psychotic break while writing it, so maybe spoilers weren’t on his mind
On the opposite tack, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is not, in fact, a complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes. At least 1 set of special book only comics is missing, in fact the collection only has the newspaper strips. I know this because yes, I had every last one of the individual books and had read them all enough to realize what was missing back when I first got the complete collection.
There’s a book from france, written in the 1910s, called <<Cirque>>, about a series of killings & mutilation of circus animals. The criminal is a mystery, solved only in the last pages of the book.
It was published in the US with the title “The Zooicidal Clown”