From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   J.Pascal brought next idea :   
   > On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 1:48:15 AM UTC-6, William Vetter wrote:   
   >> J.Pascal used his keyboard to write :   
   >>> On Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 9:02:02 PM UTC-6, William Vetter wrote:   
   >>>> After serious thinking Bill Swears wrote :   
   >>>>> On 4/22/2015 8:53 PM, Kay Shapero wrote:   
   >>>>>> In article , wswears@gci.net says...   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> On 4/14/2015 11:28 PM, Kay Shapero wrote:   
   >>>>>>>> In article , mdhangton@gmail.com says...   
   >>>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>> What's the worst you can come up with?   
   >>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>> "Book".. though come to think of it there's one of those out there,   
   >>>>>>>> though the title isn't in English, and it seems to be quite popular.   
   >>>>>>>> :)   
   >>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Putnam's Puerile Petunias Proliferated Pointlessly.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Hmm... maybe The Dullest Story Ever Told?   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>> Putnam being the PhD who realized that the zombie plague was inescapable,   
   >>>>> and   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Why does character need a doctorate to know to run from zombies?   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> organized a small group of contagion free and hardy survivors to move   
   >>>>> into  orbit. After many years of strife to get the orbital arcology in   
   >>>>> working  order, and the sociology of the disparate population functioning   
   >>>>> peacefully,  he finally had time to look down, and realized that his home   
   >>>>> was inhabited by  zombies, who puttered by habit through something like   
   >>>>> normal domesticity,  completely ignoring the Petunias blooming in riot,   
   >>>>> having outgrown the beds  his wife had planted those years before. Quite   
   >>>>> poignant, in a zombie laden,  heavy handed way.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>> I'm not quite sure how you mean this synopsis to be taken.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Let me ask another question.  Consider the title   
   >>>>   
   >>>> _Hip-Hop Bitches of Gor_   
   >>>>   
   >>>> This suggests the body of the manuscript will be puerile shit.  (I made   
   >>>> it up.)  Is it a bad title?   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Here is another one:   
   >>>>   
   >>>> _A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, by Frederick Douglas_   
   >>>>   
   >>>> This book is one of the few autobiographies worth reading, but is it a   
   >>>> crappy title?   
   >>>   
   >>> If either title accurately describe the book, they're good titles.   
   >>>   
   >>> If the Hip Hop Gor thing has nothing to do with Gor or Hip Hop, maybe it's   
   >>> about a knitting club in Kansas... then it's a bad title.   
   >>>   
   >> I'm presuming you know what John Norman's Gor series was.  Let us say   
   >> both titles are for books about slavery.   
   >   
   > I'm failing to see your point in any way whatsoever.   
   >   
   My point was that I thought you were of a generation who might not   
   recognize what Gor was.  See below.   
      
   > "About slavery" describes almost nothing.  You could take a 50 Shades and   
   > biography of Margaret Thatcher and say they were both "about being a woman."   
   >   
   > A title is a good title if it helps to sell the book to people who want to   
   > buy the book.   
   >   
   > So... bad title.  "Firefly".  Freaking HORRIBLE title.  I and who knows how   
      
   I agree.  "Serenity," the movie, wasn't much better.   
      
   > many thousands of other people who were the exact audience for that show   
   > never bothered to watch it because what the heck is "Firefly?"  Give me that   
      
   It was given a bad time slot.   
      
   > title and "by the creator of Buffy" and it has not been "sold to the people   
   > who want to buy it."   Now, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is an awesome title of   
   > amazing brilliance.  It describes the movie in four words. Only one less word   
   > than, "Ditzy valley girl fights vampires."   
   >   
   > Going back to your "book about slavery" thing, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and   
   > "Dracula" are both "about Vampires" but the fact they are doesn't make them   
   > interchangeable.   
   >   
   John Norman was a fellow who wrote a long series of books during the   
   60's and 70's similar in setting to Conan's Hyboria (the name of the   
   fictional world was Gor) that was more or less soft-core male dominance   
   pornography in which all women were slaves, without enough explicit sex   
   to prevent them from being sold as paperbacks in chain bookstores.   
   They all had titles in the form _Something Something of Gor_ and a   
   muscular fellow dressed in a loincloth on the cover, with perhaps a   
   scantily-clad woman cowering at this feet.  Or so I was told by the few   
   people who would admit to ever reading any of them (although they sold   
   well enough).  I never witnessed it personally, but I was led to   
   believe that the lines at his autograph tables showed that many of   
   Norman's fans were young women, for some reason.   
      
   _A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, by Frederick Douglas_   
   was something else, and it related only a part of his life as a boy   
   slave during which he learned to read, and not his adult life in which   
   he became a famous Abolitionist.  The pivotal line in the novel, which   
   he overheard his master telling the wife, was "Teach a nigger to read,   
   and you'll ruin the best nigger in the World."  At that moment, Douglas   
   was launched on a quest to ruin himself.  _That_ was what it was about.   
    If the title were linked to that line, it would have been a beautiful   
   title to me, but it would have been unacceptable in 1850.  My opinion,   
   though, in retrospect is that this is a great work with a crappy title.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)