interesting summaries
May. 29th, 2013 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I'm looking at some lists along the type of "100 books everyone should read" and this one has some...interesting summaries. They're not necessarily inaccurate, just unexpected. (Note: I haven't read all of the following books.
One Thousand and One Nights Anon
A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A meddling teacher is betrayed by a favourite pupil who becomes a nun.
(My reaction: You just gave away the damn book, you idiots!)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue.
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Epistolary adventure whose heroine’s bodice is savagely unlaced by the brothel-keeping Robert Lovelace.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.
1984 by George Orwell
In which Big Brother is even more sinister than the TV series it inspired.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he storms off.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.
One Thousand and One Nights Anon
A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A meddling teacher is betrayed by a favourite pupil who becomes a nun.
(My reaction: You just gave away the damn book, you idiots!)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue.
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Epistolary adventure whose heroine’s bodice is savagely unlaced by the brothel-keeping Robert Lovelace.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.
1984 by George Orwell
In which Big Brother is even more sinister than the TV series it inspired.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he storms off.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.