Little Happier: My Favorite Formula for a Great Title

0:02Lemonader.

0:06I'm Gretchen Rubin, and this is A Little Happier.

0:09As a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about titles.

0:13For my own projects, I either know the title of a book immediately or I choose it only after a great struggle.

0:20For instance, the titles The Happiness Project and Outer Order Inner Calm came very easily.

0:27Better Than Before and Life in Five Senses took me months to decide on.

0:33Because I love titles so much, I keep a running list of all my favorite titles.

0:37These go on for pages.

0:40A world lit only by fire.

0:43To the Finland Station.

0:46Spare.

0:48And on and on.

0:50Glancing over these titles the other day, I noticed a pattern.

0:53I realized that, among other things, I really love a title where an industrial term is paired with what might be called a humanities term.