Imagining incorrect plots from titles

Does anyone else ever do this? Like picking up A Prayer For Owen Meany and not being able to avoid assuming it's about someone praying for the meanest man in town?

I assumed that The Interrogation by Le Clezio was about an interrogation, not...whatever the hay it's actually about. I don't know, I've never read it, but I've read about it.

A very easy one but, Naked Lunch. With a titled like that, when I first heard it, I thought it had to heavily do with themes with free sexuality with focus put upon feminism and GLBT themes about a group people living together who went in the nude a lot. Heh.

Oh yeah, when I was a kid I was scared of reading The Phantom Tollbooth because I thought it was an all out horror novel.

Don't bash me for bringing Twilight into this, but when I first read it, I was expecting a dark and gloomy Jane Eyre style romance. To be honest, I think everyone was.

I totally though that Twilight was a horror novel.

Nyktos, it is.

That is, it's horrible that something like that got published.

I had a surprisingly definite picture of Jacob Have I Loved as a book about a young girl who was in love with an older boy named Jacob. But she was too young for him to notice her that way, so all she could do was watch while he got into trouble or something, tried to starta union, hence the past tense. I totally missed the Biblical reference. That book, incidentally, would have been far better than what the book actually is.

John Dies at the End, anyone?

As a series name plot...

I was thinking the Inheritance Cycle (Trilogy Creep) might, you know, be about inheritance or, hell, even that it might be a CYCLE.

Yeah, right. Even in the series' name does Paolini's inability to use words correctly make itself apparent.

Before reading it, I used to think Lord Of The Flies was actually (rather than metaphorically?) about Satan himself.

Also, Dean Koontz's (abysmal) Dragon Tears. After finding out it was about a psychopathic Reality Warper villain, and seeing the cover (which had a picture of dragons coiled up in a drop of water... or tears, I guess), I imagined that he would actually create dragons and other beasties from his tears. Instead, turns out that he did far less imaginative villainy, such as stopping time and then ripping people's limbs off, and the title was just a reference to a proverb mentioned by a stereotyped Chinese minor character.

edited 25th Aug '10 9:38:25 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

Do not mention "To Kill A Mockingbird." Do not mention "To Kill A Mockingbird." Do not mention "To Kill A Mockingbird." Do not mention "To Kill A Mockingbird." Do not mention "To Kill A Mockingbird."

This isn't a book but my mum thought "Pulp Fiction" was about a publishing company.

So you want to be a wizard? A manual to being a wizard. I hope I'm not the only one who thought of that.

Well, in-universe there's a book with the same title that is a manual to being a wizard, so...

edited 25th Aug '10 2:25:08 PM by Nyktos

This is a really big problem for me due to liking fantasy novels where even weird things are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd was the most vivid example of me taking things literally.

I'm still not sure what it's actually about as I never finished it.

The first time I heard the title Snow Crash, I imagined it was about some guys who crash their car in the arctic or something.

Sounds like a combination of snowclones and crash blossoms.

Well, I thought Septimus Heap three was psychic and not pyshic (or whatever.) That would have been awesome.

• There once was a great bard who sang a mighty song.
• When it began people were playing with thrones like a game so long
• That soon kings and great clashes arose to find who is strong.
• Then up rose a storm so fierce it rained swords that silenced the throng.
• Those who were left only had a feast for crows to have along.

• The song is still sung and the crowd is worried, "Sing faster!" they yell,
• But he wished them to be silent for he still had a tale to tell.
• There will be a dance so great that even dragons might be fell.
• For last he said there will be north winds so great that maybe only winter can dwell,
• But we may still dream that we may have spring for our bells to knell.

• So remember this my friends, if reading a great series is your desire
• Look no further than George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire.

Sorry for the bad poetry I should really be going to bed, and I was reading this thread and thought about trying to up the ante by making it rhyme. I might have gone from trying to make an incorrect plot to writing about the actual plot somewhere along the line, so Your Mileage May Vary.

Patriot Games - Civil War Re-enactment

The Well of Loneliness - What's that Lassie? Timmy's down the well?

edited 10th Sep '10 4:42:40 AM by wellinever

I thought Slaughterhouse Five was going to be about the meat packing industry....well, no, not really. I knew better.

Catcher in the Rye: Some sick fuck was going around hiding mousetraps in loaves of bread.

Jusding just by the title, there might be a case for assuming "The Lord of the Rings" was a pornographic work.

My father writes nonfiction about biologists. One of his books is called Time, Love, Memory, after three behavioral traits that have been sequenced in the genomes of fruit flies. Every other person who hears the title thinks it's a romance novel.

He was seriously going to call his most recent book Immortal Longings until his publisher talked him out of it.

As a child, I dedicatedly read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time and its sequels, and loved them. When I saw that one of her books was entitled And Both Were Young, I thought it would be another fantasy book, this one about two older people (like, gray hair older) who go on an adventure to save the universe together, and at the end, as a reward for their accomplishment, the angels (or similar) that have watched over them restore them to their youth, hence, "And both were young."

That's not what the book is about at all. But I've determined I'm going to write that book and name it something appropriately L'Engle homagey.

I thought Life of Pi was going to be about pie when I first heard about it.