Summarise a Novel in 25 Words

Gravity's Rainbow:

Slothrop gets it on where rockets fall, hops Channel, wanders wasted Europe. Stuff happens. Bleicher launches V-2 complete with sex slave. Good bye Los Angeles?

Ender's Game, by Card

Ender's a vicious little boy, but it's not his fault. Ender learns to make people work together. Ender wins. By the way, Wiggins rule Earth.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The looney bin is better than prison. Everyone should rebel. Electroshock bites, but fishing's cool. Crap, Ratched won. Sometimes death's the only escape from suckage.

Quicksilver, by Neal Stepehenson

Here's some savants. Here's some vagabonds. Look, they're sort of connected! I'll tell you about it later.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami): I can hardly wait, baby, I can hardly wait, 'til we go down to the well, down to the well...

This book is about me. It's not about the history of India at all. Noooo. Not one bit. Did I mention I'm a superhero?

(Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie)

Illywhacker, by Peter Carey
We Australians sure are whacky, aren't we?

Flaubert's Parrot (Julian Barnes):
Hi, I'm English. Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert Flaubert. Also, I killed by wife. Sort of. Fin.

Erm - Twenty-five words exactly:

Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson

Here's some savants. Here's some vagabonds. Look, they're sort of connected! I'll tell you about it after I finish meticulously detailing the entire 17th century.

Infinite Jest (david foster wallace)

I'm fucked up. There are lots of drugs(1) America is addicted to pleasure. Lookout, handicapped(2) quebecois!

(1) ie, meperedine hyrdochloride, Dalmane, Stelazine.
(2) they played with trains.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - by Douglas Adams

Vogon poetry is awful, perspective even worse. Earth is mostly harmless. Don't panic, but remember your towel. The answer to life, universe, and everything? 42.

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Trains are great. Too bad human beings screw them up so bad. Now, you'll have to excuse me while I step on your face. Commie.

Heart of Darkness

Guy wants to go to Africa. Has to fetch this Kurtz fellow. Africa is fucking crazy but not as crazy as Kurtz. Narrator: namesless twit.

The Wizard of Oz

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.

- http://www.jokeemail.com/tv/tv1.htm

Dune:

I will not fear plans within plans to swallow spice worms in a dry throat.

Don Quixote-

(Quixote) - I am a chivalric knight! (Sancho) No, I'm afraid you are delusional. (Quixote) Well, fine. I'll just die.

Moby Dick-

(Ishmael) Where is that damn whale? (everyone else) You're crazy! (Ishmael) Ah, there it is.

Oedipus Rex

You had sex with your Mom.
No, I didn't. Oh, wait...yes I did. Crap.

Of Mice and Men-

(George) Try not to act dumb. (Lennie) Okay. oh, crap. (George) Bam!

Jurassic Park-
(International Genetic Technologies) Look! We made some dinosaurs! (John, Alan, and Ellie) Watch out! They'll kill us all! (International Genetic Technologies) Damn, you're right.

I Am Legend -

Jesus, look at all the vampires on my lawn. I'll just hang out here until they eventually kill me.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-

42.

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller -

Absinthe, whores, fuck, cunt, whores, VD, absinthe, Paris, absinthe, whores, pubic hair, absinthe, what? whores, whores, boredom, let's go fuck some whores, absinthe.

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

I can't seem to finish my next book, but I still teach kids to write anyway. Adultery creates, and eventually solves, all of my problems.

Wheel of Time, all eighty books, Bob Jordan.

Rand's the dragon. Now, here's Lamgwin, Reene, Selande, Carlinya, Wil, Lir, Darlin, Melaine, Gedwin, Renaille, Bela and Else. Are they important? Read and Find Out.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

The colonists' diseases ravaged the natives as those back home annihilated themselves. "Who wants a hot dog?" Where are the Martians, Daddy? In the pool.

Great Expectations, Dickens.

I'm Pip. Who's my benefactor. Is she Havisham? No, the ex-con. I love Estella. She uses me for twisted games. Life's easier when you're poor.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Marley: Boo. Ebenezer: You're bad meat. Marley: You'll see.
Past: You weren't happy. Present: You aren't happy. Future: You're dead. Ebenezer: Sorry, Timmy! Happy Christmas.

The Stand by Stephen King

The flu kills almost everyone but God won't stop there. The antichrist learns the hard way that idiot savants shouldn't run a nuclear weapons program.

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

I'm naked on a cliff. I'm expelled, get a dead end job, rape a woman, become successful. I blow up a building, marry my victim.

Anthem, Ayn Rand

We're from a collective. But we're not part of it now. We mean, I'm not. I? Yes, I. I don't like collectives anymore. Yay, ego!

(and, okay, to finish the other two ayn rands before someone else butchers 'em)

Atlas Shrugged:

Who is John Galt? I don't know. Oh, now I do. He's destroying the world. I will help. Now it's gone. We're very happy together.

We the Living:

Lenin sucks. I love a man. Then I have sex with another man. The first guy is abusive. The second guy dies. I die, too.

Old Yeller

My dog got rabies. Bang.

Shane

I'm innocent. Bang.

Blood Music

Oh look, Nanotech! Big Bang.

Candy, Terry Southern

Bang! Daddy!

Misery

I love your books. Write me one. Trying to leave, huh? Bang.

Infinite Jest:

Boy, this is a good movie. Canadians are scary. Don't do drugs.

Incest is bad, mmmkay? "Born with the tail of a pig" can be a metaphor too. It takes one hundred years to learn this lesson.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Young man moves to the boondocks and finds it nice and quiet. This
discovery has influenced millions around the world. Rather insightful. No
sex.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Vegas ahead. We have drugs. We do them. This race sucks. This town is degenerate. The sixties were cool. Cops are silly. Going home.

Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov:

Three Russian sisters want to go to Moscow. They don't go.

Boy is born, acquires mean stepfather, loses same. Finds nice aunt and felonious redhead. Marries in haste, repents at leisure. Hero of his own life.

(David Copperfield)

Girl is born, loses parents, finds nice man and big house to clean. Watches as red tape strangles youth and beauty.

(Bleak House)

The Man Who Was Thursday (D.K. Chesterton):

There are seven anarchists. Oh, wait, six of them are policemen trying to find the other six. One of them is God.

Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

I'm über-powerful. sex. wed perfection but don't know her. sex. 'misplace' billions. sex. killer where? sex. what’s pain? lets shoots hand. nothing more to live for.

(I’m taking one of the unused words for my quota)

Fight Club (again) --

The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club.

I'm just a little boy at school. Yay, I found whores! Eek, I saw hell! Oh fuck, it's God! Non servium! Turns out, Ireland blows.

(Joyce - Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man)

Musical prodigy receives all sorts of erudite training growing up, becomes leader of civilized world, plays best game ever, retires, imagines other lives, and dies.

And the one I posted at Metafilter:

I'm homeless, I've got one leg, whoops, now both are shit. I'm a detective, I've got a son, whoops, now I don't. Who's writing this?

(Beckett - Molloy)

Hitler got me tenure. Shit, what's that in the sky? Sure, we're all postmodern consumer whores, but the real question is: who's fucking my wife?

(Don DeLillo - White Noise)