Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: Does the title of a book make or break your choice to read it?
I would like to say "not usually", but given that we are affected by advertising (and book titles are functionally advertising) in ways that we are not usually consciously aware of, this is unlikely. One reason I try to not be too affected by book titles is that I know that, at least in the science fiction world, authors usually don't have a lot of input when it comes to titles, especially of pieces of short fiction. I know of some cases in which an editor changed the title of a piece of short fiction without even telling the author he was doing it. So the connection between a title and the contents of a story or book seems to me to be kind of tenuous at best.
On the other hand, I do love some titles that are evocative. Poul Anderson's No Truce With Kings is one of my favorite titles. Isaac Asimov's The Star, Like Dust, and Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket, Like Grains of Sand have always struck me as being particularly beautiful. Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are fantastic titles. And so on and so forth. I don't know if a great title inspires me to pick a particular book to read, but I'm reasonably certain that it doesn't hurt.
Previous Book Blogger Hop: "The 100" Is a Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Kass Morgan That Was Made into a Television Series
Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: "One Hundred and Two" Is a Song by the Judds
Book Blogger Hop Home
Titles pull me in, but the cover pulls me in more. :)
ReplyDeleteI hope you have a wonderful reading week.
Happy Hopping!!
Elizabeth
Silver's Reviews
My Blog Hop Answer
@Elizabeth: Given the amount of time and effort publishers put into covers and titles, I think they agree with you. What makes the fact that so many people base their reading decisions on these factors so interesting is that most authors have little or no input into them. Authors usually have very little control over the title of their book, and almost universally have zero control over the cover. And yet people choose to buy and read books based upon these elements.
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