Can you judge a book by the title?

We all know you can’t judge a book by its cover. Although, I’ll say the cover to the very first edition of The Lord of the Rings I ever read is pretty awesome – but I digress.

The point here is, can you judge a book by the title? I’d still say no, but I really like the following titles (from the 350 GreatestNovels). Some I’ve liked, some I’ve disliked, some I’ve yet to read, but all have wonderfully appealing titles.

The Sound and the Fury
Blood Meridian
Gone with the Wind
Pale Fire
The Call of the Wild
The Sheltering Sky
Atlas shrugged
A Dance to the Music of Time
Of Mice and Men
The Power and the Glory
Jude the Obscure
The Way of All Flesh
Tender is the Night
At the Mountains of Madness
The Age of Innocence
Something Wicked this Way Comes
A Confederacy of Dunces
The House of Mirth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
An Artist of the Floating World
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Man Without Qualities

But the easy winner is If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. It’s romantic, and mysterious, and has three powerfully evocative words. And to top it off, the author has a magnificent name – Italo Calvino. He must have to beat the women off with a stick.

So happens, I’ve read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. It’s quite unusual, and very good. I’ll get around to a reread, and posting a review eventually.