Summarise a Novel in 25 Words

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)

Jewish TV producer lusts after women and single malt whisky, kills best friend, hits on another woman at his wedding. Gets Alzheimer's, dies lonely.

"Barney's Version", Mordecai Richler

In the future, there will be robots. I love you, Decker. Dance for me.

(Phillip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?)

And yes, I have memorized all of the commercials on Wave 103 in GRAND THEFT AUTO: VICE CITY. Kill me now.

Hackworth renegs on deal; girl learns from nanobook; many technologies are explained; Judge Fang, Dr. X help orphan girls; and as war comes, book ends.

You can be my baby, it don't matter if you're black or white. Unfortunately, my ex-husband is psychotic. So we might end up dead.

(Philip Roth - THE HUMAN STAIN)

I'm going to stop now...

Children exercise imagination while hiding in furniture, "remythologizing" the story of Jesus; all the saved animals dance when God wins. Only Professor believes the children.

All the women I know are psychotically out to get me. I'm a little twisted myself and confusing things keep happening to me. What's real?

(a novel by PKDick)

when your being sodomized who cares if its from the "left" or the "right."

Desade- "justine or Good Conduct Well Chastised'

where's your mother, not here today?
i think i'll let myself in to play.
let's play, me and you,
let's see what these Things do!

lennon's dead, husband's dead, the bishop's lover's dead, the bishop died alone in the desert looking for early christians. maybe this retarded boy can help.

Mortars are effective guerilla weapons. I wasn't a great racist revolutionary, but made up my faults via martyrdom operation. Now i am a patriot saint.

Turner Diaries

Curse Of The Bambino by Shank
1918 Ruth sold for cash Snodgrass mad dash Williams fails to mash 67 year of the Yaz Buckner's ball doesn't bounce true Curses foiled again

Shigekune Honda meets Kiyoaki Matsugae's soul every eighteen years: Isao, Chantrapa, Toru, each meeting worse, as Western modernity dilutes the once glorious culture of Japan.

The Sea of Fertility, tetralogy (4 books, sorry), Yukio Mishima

Young man denounces religion; learns the virtues of thought, patience and fasting. The river tells all and in the end, friends are all that matters.

The Things They Carried

Although it seemed terrrible at the time, we survivors, who are still sane and solvent, actually amassed a lot of poignant anecdotes while in Vietnam.

"Hal, please send my manuscript to the printer."
i'm sorry, Dave, i cannot do that
"Come on, Hal!"
i'm sorry, Da -- Dave, don't do tha--

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

neocon junta steals american election, stages false flag op, declares war on everybody, suspends the constitution, people are disappeared -- oh wait, it can happen here.

Paradise Lost - by John Milton

The story of genesis - conjured in dulcet prose. Satan is imbued with such humanity that one is tempted to root for him. I did. Pity.

Oranges are not the Only Fruit:

When one is going to Heaven, one gives not a shit about other people.

The Iliad

Lots of guys fight for 10 years over a girl that isn't theirs. Arrogance is brought to heel.

The Odyssey

Guy takes 10 years to return from fight over girl before he comes home to his wife. She's unusually understanding.

The Aeneid

W3 R0M^NS ARE L33T T00!! AND 0UR B1TCH3S R0CK!!

Hamlet

My family's fucked up. I'll pretend to be crazy, lull them into a false sense of security and kill them.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

You might want to read the ingredients on that package of sausage....

Christine, by Steven King

When automobiles attack....

The Iliad, by Homer

Long boats trips, many battles. Man, the woman had best be awake when I get home.

Bonfire of the Vanities: Rich spoiled man accidentally kills someone, lies, gets caught, loses all, learns humility. Film adapation sucks.

A Simple Plan, by Scott Smith

Three can keep a secret if two are dead. Well, shit, I guess not. Live and learn.

To Have and Have Not, Hemingway

Rum running; more than a job, it's an adventure. If I die, I guess my wife can support herself as a prostitute.

masochist marries codex, blushes at other guy. Doctor marries chit. Having money is as bad as not having money - or is it? Get married!

Middlemarch

Jude the Obscure

Boy goes to school, marries hussy, she throws pig genitals at him, they divorce, he falls in love. Incest babies kill themselves. Sad.

Correction to above's Jude the Obscure:

Boy goes to school, marries hussy, she throws pig genitals at him, they divorce, he falls in love with COUSIN. Incest babies kill themselves. Sad.

Lord of the Flies

Group of kids and a fat kid get stranded. Find a counch. Go crazy and kill a pig. Then killed the fat kid.

"There you have it." (intermission) "There you have it." "Shall we go?". "Yes lets go." (They do not move.)

(Waiting For Godot - alright, its a play not a novel.)

"Going down."
"Lobby. Pagans, Philosophers, The Unlucky."
"Basement. Icky People."
"SubBasement. Really Icky People.
"SubSubBasement. Seriously Icky People."
...
"Bottom. All out. Elevator up over there."

(The Inferno. Dante Alighieri)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

I'm not gay, but I like to kiss women. Some say I hate my life, but in reality I'm just far too melodramatic. (Except Virginia.)

Top five desert island plot points...
1) Guy loses girl
2) Obsesses over girls he's nailed.
3) Listens to records
4) Nails musician
5) Gets out of rut, back with girlfriend.

(High Fidelity - Nick Hornby)
Film adaptation is pretty good, John Cusack is loveable.

Sloth or entropy

I just realized this is an anagram of Tyrone Slothrop.

I would NEVER have noticed. that was brilliant. utterly brilliant.

Big Sur.

I can't think of anything to write, so I'll isolate myself on a beach. No, still can't write. Apart from this waffle.

Thought my boss died. Oh, wait, I did. That explains my car morphing into earlier models, and my face showing up on his dimes!