There are a couple that I have in mind in real life, but it would be fun to write a couple of parodies.
The first idea was a simple juxtaposition that resulted in better titles.
“Who Moved My Cheese?” and “What Color Is Your Parachute?” became the rather disgusting “What Color Is Your Cheese?” and the distressing “Who Moved My Parachute?” Those two books would make for great business parodies, but would likely be done as a tandem.
Today, I stumbled across another idea for a mashup. Put Malcolm Gladwell
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan” with Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and you get “The Swan’s Long Black Tail, or how swimming in circles can stain your butt.”
What are your ideas for clever business-book title rewrites?
[Black Swan attribution fixed – thanks for pointing out my obvious blunder]
The Chicken Soup You Eat in Heaven?
How ’bout that ever-popular Dale Carnegie favorite How to Alienate Friends and Piss Off People: Blatant Manipulation Techniques Made Easy!
I’m blissfully unaware of business books in general. The only Gladwell I’ve read is “Outliers”, a horrible mishmash of information obtained from others which he used to prove a forgone conclusion, something that the anthropologist in me cringes at, he didn’t write the Black Swan, I don’t think.
I can’t think of another book to place with it though.
Maybe OutLiar’s Poker – a “Outliers” and “Liar’s Poker” mash-up
The monkey who sold his fur rarely.
Ike, @cooper’s right…I should know, because I’m reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book now. 🙂
Ike,
As always your POV is impressive, amusing and spot on!
In my closet I have “The Campaign Manual”, and “Eat That Frog!”. We could have “The Campaign Frog” and “Eat That Manual”.
Or “The campaign Frog That Ate That Manual”