I've recently got into Cabin Pressure, the Radio 4 drama set in a tiny airline - my lovely boss Malie has been casually mentioning it for a year, and I capitulated a few weeks ago, and am already halfway through series 3, eking out the remaining episodes. It's very funny, and cleverly scripted.
There is a bookish connection. Because in one of the episodes they try to come up with book titles which are amusing (and still make sense) with the last letter removed. Their examples include Of Mice and Me, Three Men in a Boa etc. And of course, I wanted to think of some of my own...
It's harder than it sounds. I've only come up Five Children and I (E. Nesbit) and Injury Tim (Beryl Bainbridge). And The Winds of Heave (Monica Dickens), which isn't very pretty.
Over to you! Try to think of them without simply scrolling through a list of books, for maximum mental torment. Let me know your answers in the comment section...
Brilliant - I think the word games are the best part of Cabin Pressure. Very I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, too. Here are two: Diary of a Provincial Lad (well, hardly hilarious but would certainly be quite a different book!) and Out of the Silent Plane. On the children's shelf: Goodnight Moo.
ReplyDeleteOooh, this IS tricky. The Silver Chai? Romeo and Julie? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fir is quite an image. Anna's suggestion of Diary of a Provincial Lad is wonderful though - I snorted on reading that!
ReplyDelete- Rachel
I've only come up with Little Me (autobiography of Napoleon?) and Full Moo (Lord Emsworth replaces the Empress with a cow).
ReplyDeleteEthan From is the first one that springs to mind, but it isn't that good. My mental prowess is pretty sad tonight, as it's Sunday. I'm going to cheat and look at my bookshelves!
ReplyDeleteReturn of the Kin, The Woman in Whit, The Sign of Fou, King Lea, Catching Fir, The Sound and the Fur, Hunchback of Notre Dam, Fahrenheit 45, The Give, At the Back of the North Win, Animal Far, A Wrinkle in Tim, Green Eggs and Ha, The Velveteen Rabbi, Our Tow... Sorry, kind of went overboard. :P :)
ReplyDeleteHmm, this is why you get nothing else done when you start surfing!
ReplyDeleteAgainst the Da - Tom Pynchon's family saga
Slow Ma - Coetzee's family saga
Fur - Salman Rushdie's support for animal skins as clothes gets him in trouble again.
The Ground Beneath Her Fee - Salman Rushdie - Lawyers in love
Under the Ski - Michael Faber - Sort of like Upstairs Downstairs on the piste
fu bu toug! jus wen throug al th book reviewe o m blo, an jus cam u wit: Hervé Tullet, Press Her!
ReplyDeleteHa, very funny! How about Agatha Christie's Postern of Fat, or Winnie The Poo!
ReplyDeleteThis is fun! The best I've got is: Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Boo!
ReplyDeleteHenry James: The Golden Bow
ReplyDeleteJohn Galsworthy: The Forsyte Sag
Virginia Woolf: The Wave(?)
Gone with the Win, Animal Far, White Fan (Georgette Heyer in the Wild West?).... Curzon here: I have signed in but the site refers to me as Anon!)
ReplyDeleteDance to the Music of Tim. Capita. The Boot Cam. Business at the Speed of Though. Iceland Sag. Njal's Sag.
ReplyDeleteOh how I love Cabin Pressure - sadly I am useless with these sort of games, the suggestions are hilarious though.
ReplyDeleteThe Winds of Heave sounds just like every time I get on a boat... ;-) Hmmm. This is fun. Lynne Reid Banks gets an Aussie twist with The L-Shaped Roo. And I worry about Dorothy B Hughes' The Expendable Ma. What will she do without her?!
ReplyDeleteOh, too much fun. For a very special treat (because it's a stat holiday here in Ontario) I made tea and came back to bed with laptop. And soon realised I couldn't drink the tea while reading these comments.
ReplyDeleteDiary of a Provincial Lad. Anna, that's priceless. And Samara... The Velventeen Rabbi. Excellent.
First up, I'll offer something I recall from a similar contest a million years ago (titles changed by typos) Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wet (a treatise on the crying need for more public washrooms).
More CanLIt:
The Year of the Floo
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Tow (though I wish it could be Toe :^()
Life of P
Alligator Pi (Yann Martel's next book?)
Love it! How about:
ReplyDeleteAle by Pierre Lemaitre - much nicer than Alex
The Family Fan(g) - Kevin Wilson
The Fast Die - for those who lose too much weight through less 't'
The Novel in the Viol - too big to fit in a viola.
I love Cabin Pressure!
ReplyDeleteI was feeling very uninspired, but I quite liked
Gone With the Win - Scarlett does the lottery
Lloyd Jones' "Mr Pi" (prequel to "The Life of Pi"?); Zola's scary sounding "The Beast in Ma" (actually the original was quite violent!); and Solzhenitsyn's tale of fighting illness "Cancer War"
ReplyDeleteSally Tarbox
I LOVE the Postern of Fat, and the Sound and the Fur (that would have to be about my cat).
ReplyDeleteIn the spirit of The Graveyard Boo (which is very funny!), I can offer Djuna Barnes' Nightwoo. And Elizabeth Taylor's novel Ange, which doesn't have quite the same ring as Angel. And Stefan Zweig's Beware of Pit, which is always good advice.
Good game - and difficult! I can offer Charlie and the Chocolate Factor.
ReplyDeleteI like! :)
DeleteOne I've read recently: City of Hop.
ReplyDeleteHere's another one, as I was looking at my Sir Walter Scott books: The Fair Maid of Pert! I think you've started something Simon....I keep looking at titles now...I may be back!
ReplyDeleteAs I read this post, the book sitting next to me on the couch is Eva Ibbotson's The Dragonfly Pool. Heeheeheehee.
ReplyDeleteEuw! That is VERY good!
DeleteWas 'The Thieving Magpie' inspired by Paul Scott's 'The Jewel in the Crow'?
ReplyDeleteSally Tarbox
I like The Velveteen Rabbi is the best. I picture a crime solving Rabbi with luxurious taste in clothing. : )
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading a Dorothy Whipple that works: “The Prior”, about an ex-con trying to go straight but society won’t let him forget his crime.
It's also fun, with the books I don't know, to try & figure out the real title!
ReplyDeleteI've got a few. Occupied a really dull commute today!
ReplyDeleteHere goes:
Poe: The Rave
Kazantzakis: The Last Temptation of Chris
AA Milne (this one's for you, Mr Thomas):
Now We Are Si
Janey
Two more!
ReplyDeleteA quiet classic, Rider Haggard's Sh
And Faulkner's mighty masterwork, The Sound and the Fur
Thanks for cheering up an otherwise dull day!
Janey
How about Vasily Grossman's classic, Life and Fat ?
ReplyDeleteEdward St Aubyn goes dancing, 'Some Hop.'
ReplyDeleteEmma Donoghue's biopic of an AA Milne character: 'Roo' ?
ReplyDeleteSally Tarbox
These are all so brilliant, everyone!
ReplyDelete