And not in some huge, honkin long Proustian pages long paragraph either. Go easy on the eyes.
Now first up is “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers”. Everyone was yapping about that a while ago. What’s up with that.
And… ummm “The Shipping News”. That was supposed to be pretty good but I was umm… busy. S’plain me.
Anyone have other books they want explained in one paragraph feel free to add on.
OK, how about Finnegan’s Wake?
Sorry I haven’t read either of those books, but this is a great idea.
How about:
1984 by George Orwell: the somber tale of a totalitarian society so rigidly controlled that it must program its own dissidents to give the Secret Police something to do.
Ooookayyy…
Heartbreaking Work:
Well written debut, knowingly half-fictionalised account of young man who’s parents die in quick succession, leaving him to look after his much younger brother. Honest, sweet and sometimes funny.
Finnegan’s Wake:
All but unreadable. What James Joyce did next, basically. Experiment in language far beyond the call of duty.
His Dark Materials:
Laughingly referred to as a children’s book. A very grown up, yet simply told tale of morality and responsibility, love and friendship, and above all growing up. A celebration of the loss of innocence, not a mourning for it. The evil twin of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia tales.
Ringworld by Larry Niven:
People go to visit the Ringworld and have some adventures there.
Ok, it’s been a while, but here goes (Spoilers ahead, as if you didn’t know):
A boys father has died, and his mother is dying. He finds a way to flip between our world and a similar, magic world. Some people in our world have “twinners” in the other world (the Territories), some don’t. His mother is dying because her twinner (a queen) is being poisoned(?) by the twinner of his late father’s friend/business partner (who also killed the boy’s father and his twinner). The boy goes on a quest across America and the Territories to save his mother and the queen.
Obviously I’ve glossed over alot, but that’s the gist of it.
Bah, just rent the movie with Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, and Judi Dench. It’s amazing!
Shipping News - remember little but for the passage describing the trucker who enjoyed knitting while driving. He was so involved in his work that he did not see the police car’s flashing lights in his rear view mirror. So the cop pulled up alongside him and shouted “Pull over.” The trucker, somewhat confused, replied, “No sir, it’s a cardigan!”
Shipping News: A real miquetoast, ugly typesetter finds himself in for a big change when his bitch of a wife (whom he loved beyond all sensibility) dies. His aunt comes to straighten him out and tells him to come back to his homeland, in Newfoundland. He, the aunt, and his two daughters move into their ancestral home on a rocky cliff near a dinky little Newfie town. He gets work at the local newspaper and begins to learn how to really live from the quirky, practical, accepting townfolk. He finds himself, and learns about his family roots, which aren’t anything noble. Also, he gets laid.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
A guy kills a woman. Then he turns himself in.
War and Peace? (I really would like to know, but I have other things to do–like eat, sleep, watch Buffy)
For those of you who don’t have time to read the classics, or frankly, don’t want to be bothered and you do want not appear as an ignorant ape, I cannot recommend enough Great American Bathroom Book Series which summarizes not only the classics that you vaguely remember from required reading, but best sellers and management and biographies as well.
It had made me appear smurter. (insert redneck smilie)
Check out this:
Moby Dick:
Man meets whale.
Man loses whale.
Man finds whale again.
The End.
By the way, call me Ishmael.
Being one of the few people on this board, nay, this planet, that has not read Lord of the Rings and the subsequent books
I would like to see them summarized to save me the time.
FairyDust
That was GREAT!
I loved Hamlet:
Hamlet
Whine whine whine…To be or not to be…I’m dead.
THE END
Shouldn’t that be … everybody’s dead?
You got it.
http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/tolkien.fellowship.shtml
How about “The Grapes of Wrath?”