Twenty Favorite One-Word Book Titles
(There’s a difference between my favorite books with one-word titles, and my favorite one-word book titles. While these are all books I appreciate, this is a list of the latter rather than the former: twenty one-word titles I find evocative, playful, and enticing, plus well-suited to the books they adorn. The writer Jeremy Jackson and I have spoken now and then about how difficult it is to devise a good one-word title, so I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I’ve made this list by request—not Jeremy’s—and arranged it in alphabetical order.)
Air by Geoff Ryman
Asunder by Chloe Aridjis
Bliss by Peter Carey
Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra
Calamities by Renee Gladman
Crash by J.G. Ballard
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Fiasco by Stanisław Lem
Fireflies by Luis Sagasti
Goliath by Tom Gauld
It by Stephen King
Moods by Yoel Hoffman
Oh! by Mary Robison
Ornithologies by Joshua Poteat
Palafox by Éric Chevillard
Panics by Barbara Molinard
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute
Typical by Padgett Powell
— Otober 2, 2022