Non-Noun Titles

If you think about it, most book titles are names (Huckleberry Finn, Tobacco Road), nouns (The Octopus), or nominal phrases (A High Wind in Jamaica). Given this overwhelming convention, we find it surprising to encounter titles that defy this convention.

Sentence Titles:

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe.
Malone Dies, Samuel Beckett.
More Die of Heartbreak, Saul Bellow.
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain.
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather.
This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz.
Thank You For Your Service, David Finkel.
Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A Heinlein.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway.
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey.
We Were Liars, E Lockhart.
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers.
Those Guys Have All the Fun, Andrew Miller, Tom Shales.
We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, Harold Moore, Joseph Galloway.
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray.
We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates.
My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk.
My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque.
I Married a Communist, Philip Roth.
I'll Be Right There, Kyung-Sook Shin.
He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope.
The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck.
Bech is Back, John Updike.
Rabbit is Rich, John Updike.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson.

Question Titles:

Can You Forgive Her?, Anthony Trollope.
It Happened in Boston?, Russell Greenan.
Why Are We in Vietnam?, Norman Mailer.
What Makes Sammy Run?, Budd Schulberg.
What Is to Be Done?, Leo Tolstoy.
Is He Popenjoy?, Anthony Trollope.

Imperative Titles:

Dare Me, Megan Abbott.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin.
Seize the Day, Saul Bellow.
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel.
Look at the Harlequins!, Vladimir Nabokov.
Exit Ghost, Philip Roth.
Marry Me, John Updike.
Seek My Face, John Updike.
Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward.
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe.

Prepositional Phrase Titles:

In the Heat of the Night, John Ball.
On Immunity, Eula Bliss.
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen.
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans.
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner.
Under the Greenwood Tree, Thomas Hardy.
From Here to Eternity, James Jones.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
At the Mountains of Madness, H P Lovecraft.
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry.
Up At the Villa, W Somerset Maugham.
After the Fall, Arthur Miller.
In the Cut, Susanna Moore.
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch.
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien.
Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver.
When She Was Good, Philip Roth.
On the Beach, Nevil Shute.
From the Earth to the Moon/i>, Jules Verne.

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf.

Gerund Titles:

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett.

Waiting for the Barbarians, J M Coetzee.

Killing Mr Watson, Peter Matthiessen.

Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan.

Waiting for the Mahatma, R K Narayan.

Letting Go, Philip Roth.

Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith.

Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry.

Going Clear, Lawrence Wright.

Other Titles:

How Music Works, David Byrne.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino.

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather.

Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner.

Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy.

Slow Getting Up, Nate Jackson.

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.

Of Human Bondage, W Somerset Maugham.

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell.

In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust.

Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth.

Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon.

Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Kept in the Dark, Anthony Trollope.

Toward the End of Time, John Updike.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu.

Last modified on 01 January 2016.