Summarise a Novel in 25 Words

Crash by JG Ballard

Own a Prizm? Onanism!

really awful Independent article:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/story.jsp?story=502722

AKA-

Bourgeois 80s fad limps towards death. Runs low on cash, sacks journalists and ends up being written by anonymising webcrawler. Andreas Whittam Smith Ha ha

The Story of O

Nameless French girl surrenders in taxi, chateau, Paris Apartment. Loses clothes but gains a piercing. The pleasures of a simple life...

Wogan mentions I Love Books site. People with comfortable sweaters add their penny's worth. David Gray plays in the background.

Consider Phelbas - Iain M Banks

God is bad, Science is good as are superintelligent ships and giant ring worlds. Pirates and agent seek sentient computer on dead world. Unhappy ending.

Man cheats on woman. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" Woman takes revenge on lover, killing children. Chorus of Corinthian Women chant relentlessly throughout.

Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance:

Guy rides motorcycle while gazing at own navel (wouldn't he crash?)

The Shipping News, Annie Proulx.

Pussy whipped cuckold cries a lot on the way to Newfoundland. Takes some photos of car wrecks and drags house across island, thus redeeming himself. Aaaah.

Running Windows NT

"Shift happens!"

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas:

Impossibly angelic sailor gets shafted. Gets rich, alienated and bitter. Gets revenge. Realises it's all just fate. Movie directors unamimously ignore irrelevant sojourn in Rome.

Lost Nation by Jeffrey Lent:

Adulterous whore-loving widower walks north with girl-child to pimp in tow. He thought he raped his daughter. Not so. Still he gets slaughtered.

Jim Thomson- The Killer Inside Me

I used to be crazy and I killed someone, but this is Texas so I am sheriff. You know, I’m feeling a bit crazy again.

A Rebours (Against Nature) by J K Huysmans

Decadent aesthete thinks that if he creates the ultimate escapist fantasy he can fight "against Nature". He's wrong.

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

People made no effort to remember their history, now no-one's sure whether any of it happened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/19/nbooks19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/19/ixhome.

Daily Telegraph coverage of this thread

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Man declares war on money. Man gets neurotic about money. Man gives up, gets a proper job and settles down. The end.

the telegraph one is easily better than the independant. whoever wrote the independant one is trying to be clever when in actual fact hes not getting the jist of the story across just "clever" wordplay, whereas the telegraph one says all that needs to be said then quotes some of the better ones. just my 2 cents.

Dante The Divine Comedy.

Dynamics duo's three steps to heaven

" Black Beauty " by Anna Sewell.

A horse tells everything a field of horses does , but is too polite and victorian to mention they shit,piss and fuck.

Al Q'oran by Mohamedd

An epileptic nut case Hasheesheen dreams about blowing up/ exterminating Jews and Christians, then leaving his four wives and having 77 virgins.

Notes. "hasheesheen" is arabic for a Hashish eater or taker, whence derives (via French) the English word " Assassin ". Hashish was/is used to alleviate epilepsy and eliminate fear in warriors of the Jihad.

" The Harbringer of the Storm " by Alexei Maximovich Gorky

How to take the piss out of Lenin , Stalin and communism/ fascism/ socialism and get away with it, having a City named after you, too !

Note. Only an ornithologist would understand this !In this short poem he does it better than Orwell's "Animal Farm"

" Puddenheaded Wilson " by Mark Twain

How to take the piss out of slavery, racism and being "sold down de ribber " then get called a racist for doing so!Best detective yarn ever !

"The Man Who Laughed" by Victor Hugo

Kidnapped child disfigured by gypsies, becomes ever-smiling carnival freak, Gwynplaine; saved by Ursus. Revealed to be English Lord. People laugh. Lover dies, he commits suicide.

"Anne of Green Gables"

Absent-minded, hair-obsessed orphan disrupts life of old people.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Hideous, self-obsessed yuppie can't get a man, because she thinks she's too good for everyone. Gets a man. He's hideous too.

Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland

Girl falls asleep for ages. Wakes up really thin, mysteriously causing everyone else to fall asleep.

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

Boy goes to football with his Dad, then goes to football on his own, then thinks about football a lot, then Arsenal win the league.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

Fin.

Ha ha. Maybe we should have a thread summarising books in one word.

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Long before the Open University, blue collar lad’s faith in upward mobility via education is brutally crushed by combined forces of religion and conventional morality.

Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsythe

Sniper misses, eventually.

" My Husband ; a Life." By
Ethelfreda Batthingthwaite-Winterbotham of Little Peover, Cheshire, as told to Peter Tatchell and Peter Hain , MP.

Quote from the Quarterly Magazine of the Preston Guild of Master and Journeymen Toothbrush Handle Hole Borers & Ancillary Trades :-
This is in three Volumes with an Appendix of 1,282,419 references. Almost half the pages in each volume are made up of references. Volume one is entitled:-
" Toothbrush Handle Hole Boring from the Iron Age to the 20th Century"
Chapter 1 " Iron Age Toothbrush Handle Hole Boring Sites and Artefacts" argues that the 2,180 sites where artefact such as discarded bow-drills and partly bored toothbrush handles made of ivory and walrus tusks shows Toothbrush Hole Boring was the major industry and trade of the British Isles in this period, and exported as far away as Gwalior where the Gwaikor of Gwalior had gold toothbrush handles sent to the British Isles to have their holes bored; the Chinese Wo-shan Wun ( Marsh lands of the Yiang ‘se Kiang) where the tooth brush handles were smuggled in exchange for Chia or Green Tea, pre-packed Chow Mien and Number 14 with Egg Noodles in a Pak Choi Sauce; and Easter Island, where most of the mysterious giant statues are meant to be holding toothbrushes.
Chapter 2. " Attila the Toothbrush Handle Hole Borer." This chapter discusses the derivation of the word " Hun" from a phrase in Germanic language , meaning United Tribes of Toothbrush Handle Hole Borers; and claims Attila the Toothbrush Handle Hole Borer was right to attack and sack Rome, because the Senate had imposed huge duties on imported toothbrush handles, to protect the failing toothbrush handle hole boring industry of Tuscany. The Praetorian Guard and other Roman Legions had been decimated because a shortage of toothbrushes had lead to an outbreak of toothache and gum diseases; an early example of a rich and despotic lifestyle without proper dental hygene resulting in catastrophe.
(to be continued )

Hamlet

There's much clever scheming, a lot of people die, quite a few go mad, and the basic storyline manages to become Shakespeare's longest play - wow!

25 word

"The Man who Would be King" by Rudyard Kipling.

"You went to Afghanistan?!? F**k me! WHY???"

Lord of the Flies

Stranded Pork-loving kids kill chubby chatterbox shell-collector.
Descent into savagery and pork worship until hero recued by responsible adults.

"The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie

Man writes a book which causes him to go into hiding ... from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's lawyers.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Yes It Is About A Dog.

"Tarzan", by Edgar Rice Burroughs

"A Tiger? In Africa???"

"Malleus Mallefiscarum" ("Hammer of the Witches") by Sprenger & Kramer

"Blimey! I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!"

"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", by Edward Gibbon

"But what have the Romans ever done for us?"

"Kes" (aka "A Kestrel For A Knave") by Barry Hines

"It has shuffled off this mortal coil, and joined the choir invisible" etc etc etc

Irvine Welsh's...

Trainspotting
Scottish kids take drugs, kick drugs, have sex, rob each other and swear a lot.

Glue
Other Scottish kids take drugs, have sex, fight, catch AIDS and swear a lot.

Porno
All the Scottish kids, now grown up, take drugs, have sex on camera, rob each other and swear a lot.

The Pyrates - George McDonald Fraser:

Add some zombies and this'd make a really good Johnny Depp movie, in 20 years time.

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer - Jennifer Lynch.

Dad. Stop it. Aargh.

Chambers Dictionary

All the words are there but it doesn't seem to make sense.
Perhaps I will just have to wait for the film to come out.

It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet - James Herriot

Young impressionable man happens upon idyllic area in an imaginary country called "England" - keeps putting his arm up cows' bums. Police disinterested because of "vet" defence.

1984

Bloke having mid life crisis discovers politics and shagging; but then learns to settle down and become a normal, respectable, member of society

Some analysis of this thread from Today's Guardian

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1177601,00.html

That is the nicest bit of coverage ILx has ever had. What a nice man.