A couple of days ago, I spotted people on Twitter using the hashtag #LessAmbitiousNovels to present joke titles for… well, less ambitious novels. Here are some of my favorites of the ones I came up with:
- 1974
- A Passage to Indiana
- A Shrub Grows in Brooklyn
- A Waiter of Earthsea
- A Wrinkle in Cloth
- Fit Club
- Howl’s Stationary Castle
- I Have a Guess as to Why the Caged Bird Sings
- In Front of the Looking-Glass
- Jonathan Livingston Seashell
- Life of 3.1
- Little Apartment on the Prairie
- Lucifer’s Hamper
- Medic Zhivago
- Middlefebruary
- Murder on the Orient Local
- On Her Majesty’s Postal Service
- Rendezvous with Ramen
- Something Naughty This Way Comes
- The Call of the Tame
- The Cider House Guidelines
- The Dime Machine
- The English Out-Patient
- The Hoarse Whisperer
- The Kite Holder
- The Left Pinkie of Darkness
- The Man Who Folded His Paper
- The Mote in Bob’s Eye
- The Once and Future Squire
- The Only Child Karamazov
- The Pickwick Paper
- The Princess Fiancee
- The Puppy of the Baskervilles
- The Satanic Haiku
- The Spy Who Liked Me as a Friend
- The Time Traveler’s Girlfriend
- The Visible Man
- Tinker, Tailor
- Uncle Tom’s Shed
- Vegetable Farm
- Weeds for Algernon
- Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance
Some of my favorites from other people:
- A Farewell to Wrists (Haas Cross Puns)
- A Game of Chairs (Damien Walter)
- A Polaroid of the Artist as a Young Man (Wakefield Mahon)
- And Then There Were Five (Wakefield Mahon)
- Battlefield Perth (Wakefield Mahon)
- Dinner Comes for the Archbishop (Jennie Goloboy)
- Fahrenheit 98.6 (Stephen M. Harmon)
- Have Space Suit… Will Go Back To Bed (Jamie Todd Rubin)
- Some of the King’s Men (Wakefield Mahon)
- Speaker for the Sick (Bryce Moore)
- The Andromeda Sprain (Carl Stark)
- The Black Gelding (Linda Poitevin)
- The Ending Story (John Stevens)
- The Girl With the Hello Kitty Tattoo (Nick Mamatas)
- The Grapes of Mild Irritation (Stephen M. Harmon)
- The Handmaid’s Towel (Wakefield Mahon)
- The Middle Aged Man and the Pond (Patrick Tracy)
- The Postman Always Rings Once, Then Leaves it With a Neighbour (Kate McHale)
- The Red Badge of Participation (Larry Correia)
- The Right Fielder in the Rye (Bryce Moore)
- The Sign of the Three (Michael Collings)