This blog post is pretty much a repackaging of old goods. I've written about the magic of titles before, and I've given lists of my favourite titles before. Recently I decided I'm going to keep an ongoing list of these, just as I keep an ongoing list of lesser-known Irishisms.
I don't know why I seem to care about titles more than anybody. It's a subject I stop myself from talking about in polite company as I realize nobody cares. I talk about boring things instead. Well, this is my blog and I can indulge myself.
It's hard to describe just how much an evocative title means to me. It haunts me. It lingers in my imagination. It awakes the sort "sehensuche" that C.S. Lewis has described so vividly, a desire for something, we know not what, where the desire itself is intensely pleasurable.
The titles I love usually appeal to me for one of several reasons. They express immense wistfulness or yearning; they evoke the magic of time and place in a way that captures my imagination; or they romanticize life (or some part of life) in a particularly vivid way.
I don't like titles that are simply quirky for its own sake, and I've become more fastidious about this.
Anyway, here's the beginning of my list. The titles in bold are the ones I've actually read, watched, or listened to-- at least, to some degree. I've also provided links to obscure or lesser-known works.
BOOKS AND PLAYS
A Year in Provence.
The Winter's Tale.
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Goodybe to All That.
Tuesdays with Morrie.
The Loved Body's Corruption: Archaeoogical Contributions to the Study of Human Mortality.
Boys and Girls Forever: Chidlren's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter.
Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film.
Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies.
Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Francis Cabrini.
A Page Falls Open: Stories and Poems from Irish Writers.
The Haunted Screen: Ghosts in Literature and Film.
Echoes Down the Corridor: Irish Theatre-- Past, Present, and Future.
ALBUMS
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.
Dark Side of the Moon
SONGS
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.
FILMS
Ice Cold in Alex.
Alice Doesn't LIve Here Anymore.
Never Say Never Again.
A Man for All Seasons.
Life with Father.
Seven Years in TIbet.
Dead of Night.
A Night to Remember.
TV SHOWS
It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
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