# are CliffsNotes still a thing?  still sold in every bookstore?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cliffsnotes-still-a-thing-still-sold-in-every-bookstore/791868>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 22, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cliffsnotes-still-a-thing-still-sold-in-every-bookstore/791868 "2017-07-22T05:52:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cliffsnotes-still-a-thing-still-sold-in-every-bookstore/791868/21 "2017-07-24T19:22:58Z")

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They are useful as a supplement to literature, especially if the copy of the book you’re reading is a bare bones editions without any footnotes. They’re useful for a historical background and keeping track of characters in novels which have a lot of them, and some books have more than one name for each character to add to the confusion.

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**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cliffsnotes-still-a-thing-still-sold-in-every-bookstore/791868/22 "2017-07-24T23:08:09Z")

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In my local bookstores it looks like SparkNotes has taken over. Same general idea - plot summary plus some commentary. I can’t remember the last time I saw a hard copy of a CliffsNotes in the wild.

> [@Miss\_Mapp](#):
>
> There’s also watching the movie version, but you have to be careful. I remember an 8th-grade classmate giving an oral report on _Pygmalion_ but it was obvious that she’d seen and was describing scenes from _My Fair Lady_ not in Shaw’s play.

I was amused a few years ago to see the reverse happen. My son’s 2nd grade class had a project to put together an issue of the school newspaper. Students volunteered for their article topics. One kid did a movie review of the then current Percy Jackson movie. Now, the movie diverged quite a bit from the book. It was obvious the kid just recycled a book report and dropped in the names of the actors from imdb. He even mentioned characters and events that weren’t in the movie.

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