Nested Book Titles: List-Building
Loading up the canon.
The submissions for The Journal of Wordplay are starting to pick up nicely…got some more material from Word Ways mainstays like Don Hauptman and Darryl Francis.
I also stumbled a bit with my writeup a couple of days ago, but I figure that little slip is actually an opportunity to explore a new subject and lay out the sort of methodology I appreciate in Journal articles.
In the writeup, I posed the question of “nested” book titles, a famous book with its title contained—unbroken—inside the title of a second famous book. Off the cuff, the only example I could think of was On THE ROAD. (The larger title On The Road contains The Road, rendered in all caps in the combined form.) Tyler M promptly schooled me with five more:
THE JUNGLE Book
THE PRINCE and the Pauper
Sister CARRIE
Cry, the BELOVED Country
Something WICKED This Way Comes
I must admit that I hadn’t even heard of Sister Carrie until now, but it’s a century-old classic that’s been called “the greatest of all urban novels” by Donald L. Miller, a guy who knows what he’s about.
So, clearly, my approach was lacking. Trusting my own memory wasn’t going to get the job done. Instead, I’d have to build a long list of potential candidates and work from there.
The definition of a “famous book” is always a little woolly, and there’s plenty of discussion about changing the literary canon that’ll probably affect the listings in years to come. But I’m including books that meet any of the following criteria:
Featured on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Featured in Wikipedia’s list of best-selling books
Featured in TheGreatestBooks.org, a site that acts like a Rotten Tomatoes for “best books” lists.
Has more than a certain number of ratings on GoodReads. This is more valuable than a high average rating in terms of seeing how many people discuss the book, though I’m undecided about where to cut that off.
Placed on the New York Times bestseller list.
That should cover a lot. I’ll start sorting out the results in a couple of days, but tomorrow…it’ll be time for a puzzle!
My first thought was CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century.