One-Word Titles
Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is One-Word Titles. We can define this however we want and set our own parameters. I took my one-word titles from my TBR on Goodreads. I decided to further narrow the field by only choosing titles that don't have a subtitle. All of my choices truly only have one word in the title. I didn't count "The" or "A" or anything like that. That still left me with 32 titles. After that, I just picked the ones I wanted to. No rhyme or reason there. Here we go, in no particular order, books on my TBR with one-word titles.
Violeta by Isabel Allende - This is a pretty recent addition to my TBR since it just came out this year. This is a story about Violeta, told by Violeta in a letter. She was born in South America in 1920 and saw most of the big historical events of the 20th century.
Trust by Hernan Diaz - Here we have another book that starts in the 1920s. This one stars a wealthy couple at the top of the social food chain and the books about them that tell opposing stories. This was on a bunch of top of the year lists last year.
Columbine by Dave Cullen - This is the only book on my list that is a nonfiction. Typically nonfiction books have a subtitle that fill out the title a little bit. Add some info on what the book is about. I think it's pretty clear from the title what this book is about. Columbine only brings up one idea now.
Betwixt by Darynda Jones - And now for something completely different. Betwixt is a fun story about a woman from Phoenix who inherits a house in Salem, MA from a woman she's never met. She's sure it's a mistake, but she agrees to give it 3 days because she feels at home there. Until people come knocking on her door, thinking she's a witch.
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots - This is another light-hearted one about a woman who is tired of all the mess superheroes leave behind when they go around saving people. She is a master of spreadsheets and she decides to use her power for evil and work for a villain.
Haven by Emma Donoghue - I go back and forth with Donoghue. I hated Room. I liked Astray. I have several of her novels on my to-read list. This one is about a priest and two monks who get in a boat and drift out into the Atlantic (from Ireland) until they wash up on an island which they decide to make their own. Just them and the birds.
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler - Ok. Here's another author I have mixed experience with. I loved We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I hated The Jane Austen Book Club (I know. The movie is great. The book is not.) Anyway, this one is about the family that produced John Wilkes Booth.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - This came out in May and has been blowing up all the book sites. Athena and June were in writing school together. Athena is Asian and June is white. Athena's book burned up the charts. June's didn't. June thinks it is because Athena got more publicity because she's Asian. Athena dies suddenly and June takes her manuscript and makes it her own. Her publisher changes her name to make it sound more Asian and the book sells like hotcakes. The whole thing is told from June's perspective while she justifies this whole situation. Which begs the question, is an Asian woman writing as a white woman (which is R.F. Kuang's situation here) the same as a white woman writing as an Asian woman? I hear it comes up in the book. Yellowface is a nod to the outdated practice of wearing blackface on stage.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - I have had this book on my shelf for 6 years. It is quickly becoming a mashed potato book. It is a family epic about a Korean couple who move to Japan to be missionaries. That's a very pared down version, but that's how it starts.
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow - Here we have another family saga that's not quite as epic as Pachinko. It starts in 1995 and tells the story of a black family in Memphis. It jumps back and forth in time over the course of the family in this house.
Ok. There are 10 books on my TBR with one-word titles. Ones I didn't include: Smoke, Belgravia, Circe, Less, Vicious, Zelda, Outlawed, Intimations, Warbreaker, Dune, Cackle, Thistlefoot, and Homecoming.
What are your favorite books with one-word titles?