I suppose there’s a camp of authors and editors who would have it that chapter titles are passe and they only want the horribly humdrum and boring schema of ‘chapter 1, chapter 2,’ and so forth. Fortunately, being an independent writer with an editorial team who understand my quirks, I prefer to title my chapters and am left unmolested to do so. For one thing, if the story cooperates, the titles give another layer of meaning to the reader paying attention. For another, they amuse me, and making my work fun is part of why I do this to begin with.

This comes up because I’m about halfway into the novel in progress, and I’m titling each chapter from the books I have on the meaning of flowers. Not necessarily the Victorian Language of Flowers… I should explain.

When I started writing this novel, I thought up that first chapter title, it’s something that runs through my head every time I see pansies, which is often as I love them and plant them carefully where they will thrive far longer into the Texas summer than most would think (North side of the house, as much shade as you can give them, and water them regularly). By the time I realized I wanted to do floral meanings for every chapter, I pulled my copy of The Language of Flowers off the shelf and was disappointed to realize that it is… limited. Not nearly all the subtleties of meaning I was looking for. However, I have a slim volume, and you don’t have to suggest twice to me that perhaps book shopping is in order for the day. Surely there are fatter books with more flowers out there? Yes. Yes there are!

I hopped on Amazon, as I do, because in searching for these things, I tend to start there and then look elsewhere if I’m buying used. There are a lot of books on floral and plant meanings. I was a little surprised, then started to look outside of the book buying sites for reviews, to see if there were books that might be better than others. Now, keep in mind that I’m looking for something fun for pairing with the meaning of a chapter’s events, not historically accurate. I have no idea if either of these is that. I wound up getting a raft of books through Kindle Unlimited to sample, and I bought two that fitted my needs, returning the others to the lending library. I suspect I’ll come up with future uses for the books I bought, as well, because it’s been a lot of fun browsing through to see what’s in them.

Flowerpaedia by Cheralyn Darcey contains 1000 flowers and their meanings. It is not illustrated, which I prefer since I am mostly very familiar with the plants, and can look it up if I am not. For the chapter titles I’m trying to stick with plants that are going to be more generally known, so my readers can clearly see my intent. I will likely add an illustration for each plant used in the book I’m writing, because I can.

Flowerpaedia is organized first with a meaning, connected to the various plants that convey such, then there is a list of the plants with meanings attached to each. The final section of the book, Resources, tells you flowers that are associated with days of the week, nations, states, anniversaries, and so forth, which would be useful in building floral arrangements in fiction and in life, as well as coded messages… Using the book in a Kindle reader means I can easily search for a word and find it to look up what I want. There is an index but it will only be useful for a print edition.

The other book I bought and am referring to while writing is The Complete Language of Flowers by Theresa Dietz, and it lays claim to 1001 plants with their meanings. This book is organized by the flower’s name, and each entry is far more detailed that the brief Flowerpaedia listing. It is illustrated, although the illustrations vary wildly in quality, and in looking for art credits, I see that they are almost all from Shutterstock. I haven’t seen any yet that are not what they are labeled, so far as plants paired with images, but given they are stock photos that’s entirely possible so double-check if you are in doubt.

Now, this may not be useful to most of you, but the language of flowers is interesting, has possibilities for secret messages sent as it did in Victorian times, and the Dietz book included the folklore which I enjoyed finding. I would not use either book for anything that requires historical accuracy.

My specific madness of chapter titling aside, what about you? Do you enjoy seeing a title when you are reading a book and begin a new chapter? Or do you simply turn pages paying no attention to those arbitrary breaks the author has so casually dotted the book with, as you read the story ignoring such interruptions?