From his wildly popular Tumblr page, Dan Wilbur offers his delightfully cruel summary of the books you were forced to read in high school—with all that resentment and angst loaded into a punchy re-title. From the “classics” (the books you’ve lied about reading) and "actual Classics" (Greek and Latin books people don’t even pretend to have read), to contemporary fiction (those books people talk about at parties that you’ve "definitely heard of” but never bothered to pick up), children’s (books that say the most with the fewest number of words, i.e. “The Best Books”) and reference (those books that were around before Google), there’s something here for every reader.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar gets the retitle "Eat Until You Feel Pretty"; an American classic,The Great Gatsby is switched to "Drink Responsibly", and Gone Girl is retitled "A Tale of Two Shitty People".
About the Author
Dan Wilbur is a stand-up comedian, former Brooklyn bookseller, and the former Ecards Editor at Someecards.com. His writing has been featured on Collegehumor.com, McSweeney's, the Onion News Network in IFC, Reader's Digest, and Huffington Post. He was an "Adjunct Scholar" for the Comedy issue of Lapham's Quarterly. He has also appeared in sketches for IFC, MTV, College Humor, and Funny or Die. Dan is the creator and editor of Better Book Titles, which has been featured on nearly every web site that covers literary subjects from BuzzFeed to The New Yorker.
Industry Reviews
"Inspired really, the web site: Better Book Titles." (Linton Weeks, NPR)
"NewsFeed has a confession: This is probably our favorite Tumblr of the Week of all time." (Megan Gibson, Time)
"These hilariously honest titles for classic books will make you LOL."
(BuzzFeed)
"One of our favorite online locales is Better Book Titles..." (Chris Hardwick, @Midnight on Comedy Central)
"Stand-up comedian Dan Wilbur's new book...assigns laughable titles to classic books that, well, take some digging into." (Kelsey Kloss, Elle Decor)
"Comedian gives honest book titles to classic literature, results are hilarious." (Sophia Hyder, DesignTAXI)
"...this guy is super qualified to bash classics, and that's exactly what he's done in his latest book..." (Bill Ott, Booklist Back Page)