[This reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/17pg1kf/comment/k85pt2n/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) made me think of the books that get bought solely on the basis of the title. Have you done this? Was the book any good?
I was given *I Married a Communist* by Phillip Roth basically because the giver new the title would amuse me. Unfortunately, the book is dull.
(Well of course I read it. It had like, words, printed on a page. Wasn’t turning that down)
by TabbyOverlord
18 Comments
Lois Lowry did an AMA here in /r/books [you might want to check it out](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/3ab3fz/hi_reddit_i_am_lois_lowry_author_of_the_giver_ama/?) 🙂 . [Here’s a full list of our upcoming AMAs](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/amafullschedule)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/books) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*A Burglar’s Guide to the City” by Geoff Manaugh
It was fine. It felt more like a series of loosely interconnected essays, which was fine, but the transitions were a bit tough and it impacted my interest a little bit.
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore. Whoo boy. Now I own everything he’s written!
The Book Thief, it just sounded rad. Page 1 Death is the narrator. Not what I was expecting at all, but a fantastic book!
The Feather Thief
Ruth Ozeki – A tale for the time being. Turns out I had to read the title completely different. Loved the book.
Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota interested me on the premise, but the first novel’s tittle sealed the deal for me: Too like The Lightning.
Also, after reading The Book of the New Sun, realizing Ada Palmer wrote her story in the same vein made me like it even more.
Got ‘Tender is the flesh’ recently but haven’t gotten to it yet.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
I mean it was gaiman so I knew it’d be good, but the title had me curious, I had to know what it meant. Absolute treat when you need a short read
The Adderall Diaries. Can’t remember if it was an actual memoir or just written that way but I loved it. I picked it up cuz the title was catchy and I loved the drug when I was young.
If someone says “you complete me” RUN – Whoopi Goldberg.
Picked up eight bears at the library. Who doesn’t love bears! It walks through the global bear species and the threats facing them. It was ok.
Green Fried Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafè: VERY good. I always recommemd it to everyone
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow: meh. Nice premise, but then it went sci-fi all of a sudden and without much warning. I usually like sci-fi, but here I was expecting just a thriller. Felt like cheating.
We Always Lived In The Castle: very good. Freaking disturbing. But still very good.
”The Intelligence of Flowers”
Maurice Maeterlinck’s writing is beautiful…but the mans was wrong about flowers.
The book was basically beautiful poetic unscientific garbage about the purpose of flowers in our world.
I enjoyed it !
More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven Landsburg. Still my favorite economics book and I’ll read anything Landsburg writes.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander. I don’t read a lot of books where “identity” is any kind of theme. The author is very Jewish. The character is very Jewish. And Anne Frank is hiding in his attic. This is one of the funniest and surprisingly good books I’ve ever read. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned by Kinky Friedman. Friedman has a way with words unmatched by no other author I’ve read. His books are almost always ⭐⭐⭐ (though this isn’t necessarily the best introduction to him.)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It was. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. His may be a cheat, because the cute little upside-down dog cut out may have also had something to do with it. But this came out just as I was starting to read and helped me branch out beyond crime novels (and if we were losing books bought purely because of the cover, I may as well just copy my entire list.) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry. Not good. ⭐⭐
The Nymphos of Rocky Flats by Mario Acevedo. Even worse. DNF
Oh. And let’s not forget the four or five Tom Robbins books I bought. I still haven’t managed to finish one, though I’ve started many of them…multiple times.
Never bought these, but read based solely on their titles:
How to Live Safely in A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. There was probably more to it than that…I think this may have been back when I had a subscription to Bookmarks magazine. I do not read science fiction, so I wouldn’t normally even read the review. Great title. It’s been forever since I’ve read it, but I gave it ⭐⭐⭐⭐. And I’m fairly stingy with my stars.
Another Bullshit Night In Suck City by Nick Flynn. I also generally don’t read memoirs, but how can you not with that title? It was also incredible. Absolute poetry. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Man With the $100,000 Breasts by Michael Konik. Another memoir. This one was nothing special, but the title story was at the very least interesting. ⭐⭐⭐
The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter. Also a fun and funny pleasure to read. Worth it for the shopping cart poem alone. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Turned out to be a fun murder mystery.
**2028…And Australia Has Gone To Hell In A Handbasket**
weird, fun book
And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks – Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
Perhaps my favourite title of a novel ever. And the story of how they settled on the title is great too:
“That was [from] a radio broadcast that came over when we were writing the book. There had been a circus fire and I remember this phrase came through on the radio: ‘And the hippos were boiled in their tanks!’ So we used that as the title.”