But sometimes a really good book has a title that slightly misses the mark or just doesn't grab you. One bookseller designed a "trust fall" promotion to promote a debut novel that they thought a lot of people would love, but probably would overlook because of the title and cover art. That book turned out to be Andy Weir's The Martian, which went on to be a New York Times bestseller (and soon, a film starring Matt Damon).
On that theme, here are a few other novels that are good reads that you might pass up because of a less-than-enticing title:
This brilliant satire opens at a 15-year high school reunion, surely one of the more brutal places to reflect on success. "Handsome Eddie" Hartley had a minor TV acting career, but never became a star and is now stuck teaching at the same prep school he graduated from. Worse, his former girlfriend Martha is now the beloved star of a popular TV drama. His marriage is happy, but childless, and strained from the debt incurred by failed IVF treatments.
So when a high school buddy suggests that there's money to be made from any exclusive video he might have from the old days, Eddie unearths and sells a sex tape featuring Martha. The scandal that follows unfolds with dizzying speed; his now-pregnant wife leaves and denounces him in interviews, becoming a sudden reality TV star in the process. This novel is an amusing and thoughtful look at America's 24-hour news cycle and thirst for celebrity.
In the near future, legal and illicit pharmaceuticals can be made at home with a chemjet printer and instructions from the internet. Lyda Rose is a former biochemist, now in a mental hospital due to permanent hallucinations caused by an overdose of Numinous, a drug she developed and unwittingly ingested at the afterparty celebrating its synthesis. When a homeless girl arrives in the hospital claiming to have received a "sacrament" from an underground church that allows her to see and converse with God, Lyda immediately recognizes the drug as Numinous.
Lyda thought that her company had destroyed the research and the recipe for the drug, but it has obviously resurfaced. She must escape the hospital and track down the other three survivors of the afterparty, while also avoiding a drug-dealing gang and an assassin who would like to get a hold of the drug for their own agendas. Comparisons to William Gibson are inevitable, but this SF/thriller will especially appeal to those intrigued by the intersection of science and religion and how the brain experiences the world.
Flanagan is a music industry veteran using his experience to frame a fictional but believable story about the business of A&R (artists and repertoire), the folks who sign musicians to a label and shape their careers. Anyone interested in the way the big labels operated before the explosion of file-sharing, iTunes and the decline of the bricks and mortar record store will enjoy this tale of Jim Cantone, an A&R man who faces the ugliest parts of the record business when he joins a conglomerate called WorldWide Records.
Since this is a perfectly appropriate title for a novel about the music industry, why classify it as a meh title? Simply because most databases consider "A" (like "An" and "The") to be an unsearchable "stop word". Likewise, "and" (or "&") is a Boolean operator, not a searchable term. If you don't know the author's name or forget to use a more advanced search like placing "A&R" in quotation marks, many databases will translate a search for this book into "R", which is likely to return every word with the letter R in it! I often wonder if this book would have been a bigger hit if was called "Artists and Repertoire: a novel" instead. Old-school indie-rock fans will love this book (once they find it in the catalog!).
Have a nomination for great book, meh title? Please leave a comment!
