You ever have days when you feel like every title you’ve seen recently has the same 
word in it, repeated over and over, in endless variations?
I felt like that a few months ago. Not that I did anything about it. Well, I started a post, but never finished writing it. But I am writing it now.
It’s seems to me that many, many titles this past year had the word red in it. (I have only read one of these.)
- Written In Red
- Red Sparrow
- Red Sky in Morning
- Red Hill
- The Red Queen
- The Red Knight
- Red Country
- Redshirts
Does that strike anyone else as odd? It strikes me as strange. Are there normally so many books with the word red in the title published in a single year?
I went to the Fantastic Fiction website and did a search for red. It returned 2245 titles.
Granted, some of them seem to be in series with the red in it, such as: Red Stone Security. But they mostly look like they have titles with the word red in it somewhere.
The first book with the word red in its title appeared in 1846 (called The Red Rover). The second one shows up in 1846 (called The Red-Skins). The third appears in 1860 (called Elfrida, the Red Rover’s daughter).
I never realized there were so many titles that involve red in some way. I am quite amazed. And this doesn’t even include other words for red colors: crimson, scarlet, vermilion, etc.
Story Treasury 
That’s interesting Sonia – I can’t say I’ve noticed but I bet you now I’ve read (or should that be red? ^_^ ) your post I’ll see it all the time now.
Tell me if you do!
That’s really odd. I noticed there were several seasonal titles this year that played off “The Twelve Days of Christmas” theme.
Thanks for visiting The Book Connection.
I saw a few of those, too, maybe 3 or 4.
I would never have noticed this but now I can think of several!
Which ones?
From my desk I can see “The Redbreast” by Jo Nesbo on my shelves, and I’ve previously reviewed “A Red Herring Without Mustard” (Alan Bradley) and “The Red Queen” (Philippa Gregory).
The Red Queen is the only one I was aware of!
That is interesting, so I googled book titles with blue in them. The list I found only listed 188 books with blue in the title. The book I am reading this week is “Undressing Mr. Darcy” and the girl on the bookcover is wearing a ‘red’ dress.
Fantastic fiction shows 2409!
I have never noticed how many titles have the same work during a year. I guess if one is successful more publishers join the bandwagon.
I guess so. If the readers don’t notice, it is not repetitive?
What an interesting post! I don’t think I read many books with colorful titles.
They can be interesting!
Have you read My Name is Red? It’s a strange book. Anyway, maybe it has something to do with most searched keywords? So, at least, you know your book will come up if it has a popular word…
Never heard of it! Never heard of that way to pick a book title. Guess it makes some type of sense.
No, that’s not what I meant. What I was trying to say was that suppose you search for a book you know and want to read. In the meantime, you see a few other books pop up in the search because they have similar words. Even if you don’t buy them, you might read their blurbs and decide to read them at some point. Make sense? I believe it’s all part of this new-fangled thing called SEO (Seach Engine Optimisation)
Oh. Yeah, it works like that sometimes. Me, I discovered Black Sun’s Daughter when I was looking for Black Sun Rising.