wordy num num

I was reminded by seeing Freedom juxtaposed with its immediate predecessor Candide that I'd done a post a while back about one-word book tiles. Here it is, and at the time (i.e. in early 2018) there had been 54 one-word book titles in this list; Freedom takes the current running total to 84. You may also recall (or just get off your arse and go and read the post now) that I also mentioned that the run of three consecutive one-word titles was unique; well, so it was, and so was the eventual run of four (Stick, Matter, Exposure, Nausea). I can tell you, without giving too much away, that the current run will end at two, so that record will stand for a while yet. 

Here's a more general survey of book title length over the lifetime of this blog:

• 84 one-word titles as described above;
• 114 two-word titles, most recently Feersum Endjinn;
• 91 three-word titles, most recently The Devil's Star;
• 53 four-word titles, most recently Strange Fits Of Passion;
• 42 five-word titles, most recently The Tiger In The Smoke;
• 12 six-word titles, most recently The Bridge Of San Luis Rey back in May 2017;
• 3 seven-word titles, most recently The Folks That Live On The Hill in February 2020;
• 2 eight-word titles, most recently One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich way back in November 2008;
• finally, a single solitary nine-word title, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea in January 2019.

Some way to go to crack the world record for greatest number of words in a book title, though, as this apparently stands at 4,558. Maybe next year.