Titles with the last letter missin

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…

34 thoughts on “Titles with the last letter missin

  • February 16, 2014 at 11:44 pm
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    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.

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  • February 16, 2014 at 11:59 pm
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    Oooh, 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!

    – Rachel

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  • February 17, 2014 at 12:26 am
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    I've only come up with Little Me (autobiography of Napoleon?) and Full Moo (Lord Emsworth replaces the Empress with a cow).

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  • February 17, 2014 at 12:53 am
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    Ethan 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!

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  • February 17, 2014 at 12:57 am
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    Return 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 :)

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  • February 17, 2014 at 1:05 am
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    Hmm, this is why you get nothing else done when you start surfing!
    Against 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

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  • February 17, 2014 at 2:49 am
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    fu bu toug! jus wen throug al th book reviewe o m blo, an jus cam u wit: Hervé Tullet, Press Her!

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  • February 17, 2014 at 7:57 am
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    This is fun! The best I've got is: Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Boo!

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  • February 17, 2014 at 7:58 am
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    Henry James: The Golden Bow
    John Galsworthy: The Forsyte Sag
    Virginia Woolf: The Wave(?)

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  • February 17, 2014 at 10:07 am
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    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!)

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  • February 17, 2014 at 10:16 am
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    Dance to the Music of Tim. Capita. The Boot Cam. Business at the Speed of Though. Iceland Sag. Njal's Sag.

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  • February 17, 2014 at 11:23 am
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    Oh how I love Cabin Pressure – sadly I am useless with these sort of games, the suggestions are hilarious though.

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  • February 17, 2014 at 11:48 am
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    The 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?!

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  • February 17, 2014 at 12:50 pm
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    Oh, 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.

    Diary 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?)

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  • February 17, 2014 at 1:03 pm
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    Love it! How about:
    Ale 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.

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  • February 17, 2014 at 1:40 pm
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    I love Cabin Pressure!

    I was feeling very uninspired, but I quite liked
    Gone With the Win – Scarlett does the lottery

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  • February 17, 2014 at 5:13 pm
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    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"

    Sally Tarbox

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  • February 17, 2014 at 8:19 pm
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    I LOVE the Postern of Fat, and the Sound and the Fur (that would have to be about my cat).

    In 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.

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  • February 17, 2014 at 11:51 pm
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    Good game – and difficult! I can offer Charlie and the Chocolate Factor.

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  • February 18, 2014 at 1:36 am
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    One I've read recently: City of Hop.

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  • February 18, 2014 at 2:03 am
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    Here'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!

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  • February 18, 2014 at 4:07 pm
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    Was 'The Thieving Magpie' inspired by Paul Scott's 'The Jewel in the Crow'?
    Sally Tarbox

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  • February 19, 2014 at 12:04 am
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    I like The Velveteen Rabbi is the best. I picture a crime solving Rabbi with luxurious taste in clothing. : )

    I 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.

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  • February 19, 2014 at 1:01 am
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    It's also fun, with the books I don't know, to try & figure out the real title!

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  • February 20, 2014 at 12:01 am
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    I've got a few. Occupied a really dull commute today!

    Here goes:

    Poe: The Rave
    Kazantzakis: The Last Temptation of Chris
    AA Milne (this one's for you, Mr Thomas):
    Now We Are Si

    Janey

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  • February 20, 2014 at 12:06 am
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    Two more!

    A 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

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  • February 20, 2014 at 2:34 am
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    How about Vasily Grossman's classic, Life and Fat ?

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  • February 24, 2014 at 4:03 pm
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    Emma Donoghue's biopic of an AA Milne character: 'Roo' ?
    Sally Tarbox

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