Seconding the above mentions of Watership Down and World War Z.
Glen Cook’s Black Company
It’s about this band of has-been medieval mercenaries who sell their services to the highest bidder, they don’t really care who. There’s, like, prophecies and ancient wizards and revolutions going on, but the mercs don’t really care about that either - they’re mostly interested in surviving, getting paid, eating and finding ways to deal with the boredom of day-to-day military life. It’s really brilliant.
Any Christopher Moore novel. The Stupidest Angel: A Christmas zombie story. Fluke: An undersea civilization built of living organic goo with cyborg whales and Amelia Earhart…
I love Christopher Moore.
Luke is not in love with h is sister in Star Wars; nor does he want to kill his father.
I’ve never found a reasonable way to tell anybody why they really need to read Infinite Jest, and I’ve tried plenty of times.
What’s it about? Well, some kids play tennis, and a guy’s in rehab, everybody’s sad, and there’s some math, and a Quebecois separatist movement co-opts a piece of entertainment that’s so perfect it kills you, and, um.
Never really thought that Chinatown was easily explained.
[spoiler]“It’s about power politics in the Los Angeles water department!”
“…zzz…”
“Er, it’s about this crazy lady who has a fling with a gumshoe!”
“…zzz…”
“Well, it’s also about a man who impregnated his daughter!”
<wakes up> “… erm, what? He does his own daughter? I’ve gotta see that shit.”[/spoiler]
Avatar: The Last Airbender can come off pretty bad in description. “OK so there are these 4 nations, and they all control an element, but one attacked the three others and now everything is out of balance, that is if it weren’t for the avatar. Oh yeah, the avatar is a kid who hasn’t been seen for 100 years, but now he’s back. Oh, did I mention each nation is tied to a classical element? Wait…no this show is fun for adults too. Come back!”
The good way to do it is the opening narration in each episode.
Trying to describe the set-up to most of my favorite comics…
“* Age of Bronze* is a comprehensive retelling of the Trojan war…”
“So you already know how it ends going in?”
“Elephantmen follows genetically engineered war vets as they’re integrated into a dystopian society…”
“Wait…elephants? Is this a furry book?”
“Chew is about a cop who gets flashes of a detailed history of everything he eats…”
“Dude, ew.”
Mr. Head, meet Mr. Desk.
ETA: Links go to publisher-provided previews and online first issues.
I forget who said it – probably Joss himself – but the title alone tells you it’s a mixture of horror, action and comedy.
The manga After School Nightmare is about a biologically intersex child raised as a boy who experiences his first menstrual period and is afraid that he’s actually a girl; he gets enrolled in a “dream therapy” class where his dream self has to fight the dream selves of other disturbed students for the right to graduate (with much Freudian symbolism and general surrealism), while in the daytime he’s stuck in a love triangle between an emotionally damaged girl who does not like men and likes him because he’s not really a guy, and a guy who sees him as a beautiful girl but can’t commit because
he’s in love with his own sister. Except not really.
It’s half romance and half gory psychological horror. The story is actually an extended metaphor for
pregnancy.
Did I mention that it’s absolutely excellent?
The funny thing is that that description sounds awesome to me.
Stephen King’s novel Gerald’s Game, which is probably one of my all-time favorite works by Stephen King, is really difficult to do justice with the description:
There’s this woman, see, and she ends up being handcuffed alone to a bed in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And the entire book is about the things she thinks about while she’s laying there.
Yeah.
…plus a few bonus thoughts from the dog.
*The Gone Away World. * It’s known for its meandering, so that’s a challenge in itself. Then there’s all the strange bits thrown in together. Romance, martial arts, war, mimes, the apocalypse, monsters, and philosophizing about corporate life.
It’s also impossible to talk meaningfully about The Shape of Things without destroying the experience of watching it. (The experience of watching it, IMHO is of dubious value anyway, but still.)
The Tim Powers novel The Stress of Her Regard is about how Lord Byron, Shelley, and an obstetrician teamed up to fight vampires.
No, really.
Depending on your perspective this is either going to sound pretty dumb, or like a potentially humorous blend of campy horror elements with classic literature (a la the more recent Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). It’s neither. I’ve described it as “Stephen King for English majors”, and I think it is a good supernatural thriller that is also surprisingly well-researched when it comes to the lives of the Romantic poets. Some of Byron and Shelley’s historic actions actually make more sense in this book, where they’re given an invented secret agenda. Powers also managed to tie a lot of myth/legend together and explain how these stories were all based on the same vampiric beings. He even finds a plausible-sounding scientific explanation for many of their powers while still keeping them mysterious enough to be scary.
That sounds…frigging awesome. I just bought it on Amazon, so thanks!
And it’s chock full of factoids about sperm-squeezing and whale foreskins!
I’m happy to see there are several cheap used copies available through Amazon now. I spent YEARS trying to track down a copy of this book that wasn’t ridiculously expensive. I mean, I liked it and wanted to own my own copy, but I’m not paying $75 for a used paperback. I eventually stumbled upon a copy in a local secondhand bookstore.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. 
Someone should start a thread ranting about the ridiculous prices some used booksellers want for paperbacks on Amazon. I’d do it myself but I don’t know how to start threads.
I go thru this nearly all the time on “movie night” with Mrs. FtG. “So let’s see The Hurt Locker.” “What’s it about.” “These guys who defuse bombs in Iraq. But it’s not really a traditional war movie. It’s supposed to be really good.” “Doesn’t sound good to me.”
Later: “Wow, that was really great.”
Happens over and over and over. The worst extreme was probably Juno between her lack of initial interest based on my blurb and her post-viewing response. How can one summarize that movie to make it sound interesting to someone who is more-than-a-few-years from her teenager days?
Of course, sometimes it really does turn out to be a dud.