A Daisy by Any Other Identifier
Wanna know a really great way not to get anything done? Just sit around skewing titles of great books to make them sound less interesting. Death of Pie. Or A Trolley Car Named Who Cares? Or Bananas of Wrath. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
A couple days ago, a writer/blogger/tweeter named Nicola Morgan posted a harmless tweet with the hashtag #lessinterestingbooks. In less time than it takes to drive from my house to Disneyland, her hashtag was the number 1 tweet in the UK. A few hours later it was the number one Twitter hashtag in all English-speaking countries. This is exactly how it happened, in her own words:
“I was on Twitter during my coffee break (in answer to my husband, who said, “Why weren’t you working?”) and someone mentioned reading Lord of the Flies. But I briefly misread that as Lord of the Files. And I thought how much less interesting the book would have been if it had been called Lord of the Files. Such is the incredible profundity of this creative mind. Not that I didn’t have a lot more important things to do than becoming No 1 on Twitter, of course. So, I tweeted: Lord of the Files #lessinterestingbooks.”
That’s all it took. Mutant morphisms of beloved and not-so-beloved books began to crowd the Twitter wire and then blogs, including this one, via a post by good friend James Scott Bell. The comments on this blog alone number over 100. Now I can procrastinate as much as the next writer, but I actually did not have the time to read the thousands of lessinterestingbooks on Twitter. But I did read these on Jim Bell’s post. And omigoodness, they are funny. What a way to waste some valuable writing time. Here are my favorites with their creators in parantheses:
- “Boysenberry Finn” (Katherine Hyde)
- “The Girl With the Hello Kitty Tattoo (bjmuntain)
- “That Bourne Guy That Can’t Remember Anything” (John Hagenson)
- “The Sit” (James Scott Bell)
- “Paws” (Joe Moore)
- “In Room Temperature Blood” (Mike Dennis)
- “Ambivalent George” (mine! for the kiddos!)
So how about you? Want to give it a whirl? Think of a favorite book. Mess with the title a bit but definitely make it less interesting. Post it in the comments. I will start with one of my own books.
“Man in a Hurry.”
GO!