Friday, February 01, 2008

Books I Have Not Read (or Books of Wives and Daughters)

The Time Traveler's Wife
The Pilot's Wife
The Kitchen God's Wife
The Zookeeper's Wife
The Mapmaker's Wife
The Senator's Wife
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
The Piano Man's Daughter
The Optimist's Daughter
The Bonesetter's Daughter
The Gravedigger's Daughter
The Florist's Daughter

If you have read them, could you please reveal some of the title characters' names in the comments?

I never made a decision not to read the above books. I was discussing books with a friend and noticed that I always confused the first two in my head. Then I had to assuage my curiosity and see how many other "wife" and "daughter" titles I recognized but never read.

I have however, read:
The Firework-Maker's Daughter (Philip Pullman picture book)
The Meaning of Wife (Anne Kingston essays on the "Wedding Industrial Complex")
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks, non-fiction)

If you do a search on Amazon, though, you find a lot of "The [adjective] Son", as opposed to "The [noun's] son. Do you think the current titling of [so and so]'s daughters is just a trend, a way to market a story as taking place in the past? Or is there an element of (misguided) nostalgia in the titles? Or am I reading too much into it?

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