Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Six of the best books with three word titles

Deborah Batterman is the author of the short story collection, Shoes Hair Nails.

At Flashlight Worthy, she came up with a list of quality books with three word titles. Her pitch for these titles:
Book titles that cut to the chase with three simple words are easy to remember, not just for their brevity; they have an archetypal undercurrent reminding us of beginning, middle end; dawn, noon, and dusk; the three phases of the moon.
The first book on Batterman's list:
Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life
by Karen Maezen Miller

A yoga teacher of mine once made the point that the body is a house, not a temple. A house is someplace you live — you trash it, you clean it up — whereas a temple implies worship and sanctification.

Karen Maezen Miller, in a way, extends that metaphor with her utterly elegant book that is so filled with the light of everyday wisdom you almost forget the beginning of her story, the dark days before her spiritual awakening . "A true teacher is likely to be the most ordinary person you'll ever meet," she writes. Maybe it takes a Zen Buddhist priest who also happens to be a woman ever mindful of her role as mother and wife to make a metaphor of laundry as a starting place for loving the life we wake up to.
Read about another book on Batterman's list.

Writers Read: Karen Maezen Miller.

--Marshal Zeringue