by Erica Rhodes. Her father, who had MS, late in life undertook to read and synopsize the classics. Here is one part of that effort.
1. Moby Dick — Melville: All things whale.
2. Old Man and the Sea — Hemingway: Not an intergenerational catch and release story.
3. Dead Souls — Gogol: Serf-scamming in Russia.
4. David Copperfield — Dickens: It’s all about David.
5. Return of the Native — Hardy: Soap opera on the heath.
6. Great Gatsby — Fitzgerald: Money doesn’t buy happiness.
7. Crime and Punishment — Dostoevsky: Russian decay among peasants, rags, alcohol, and ax murdering.
8. Middlemarch — George Eliot: Trembling lips, quivering chins, agonized sobbing.
9. Father Goriot — Balzac: Sordid tale of lodging decay, spoiled daughters, a crime boss, the seeking of wealth and romance, and a father (Goriot) in Paris.
10. The Bostonians — Henry James: Ambivalent sexuality in a sea of commas and semicolons.
11. A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce: A young writer grapples with definitions of Hell.
12. Anna Karenina — Tolstoy: Be careful what you wish-iberatskya for-ilovitch.
13. Babbit — Sinclair Lewis: Blustering banality and Boosterism lead to moral corruption.
14. Of Human Bondage — Maugham: Human potential diverted by girls, the stock market, girls, poor career-planning, girls, and a club foot.
15. Don Quixote — Cervantes: Employer-employee relationship tested by adventures.
16. Madame Bovary — Flaubert: Wimpy doctor husband and botched club-foot operation lead to adultery.
17. Age of Innocence — Wharton: Upper-crust New York soap opera and then back to the future.
18. Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte: Love thy Neighbor not taught at church; just hate or marry thy neighbor.
19. The Red and the Black — Stendhal: Teaching Latin leads to wealth, romance, and headlessness.
20. House of Seven Gables — Hawthorne: Should be refurbished as funeral home to conveniently handle gabled house demises.
21. Tristram Shandy — Sterne: Noses, breeches, fortificiations, digressions, and philosophick opinions.
22. Vanity Fair — Thackeray: Deadbeat grifters, love-sick galoot, vapid love interest, overweight prig.
23. The Path to Rome — Hilaire Belloc: The author walks to Rome while describing every rock, river, and tree on the trip.
24. The Decameron — Boccaccio: Squatters tell sex stories in abandoned palaces during plague.
25. Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Stowe: The power of the pen leads to abolition and a Civil War.
26. Woman in White — Wilkie Collins: No answer to over-long mystery of which detergent is used to keep woman’s clothes white.
27. Germinal — Zola: 19th Century French coal mining misery and Marxism.
28. The Betrothed — Manzoni: Hoped- for heavenly marital bliss preceded by betrothal from Hell.
29. O Pioneers — Cather: O plowing and O planting on the O prairie.
30. The Good Soldier — Ford: The good soldier didn’t do much soldiering and wasn’t very good.
31. Candide — Voltaire: Appears to be modeled on Don Quixote with more focus on buttocks.
32. Metamorphosis — Kafka: Parents finally get to move grown son out of house and into roach motel.
** The Deerslayer — James Fenimore Cooper: Stopped at 35% — cartoon dialogue, implausible action, juvenile; good tree and rock description.
33. The Prime Minister — Trollope: Girl grieves for no-good dead husband, grieves over grief she caused her family by marrying no-good guy, and grieves over grief she’s causing by her never-ending grieving.
34. Count of Monte Cristo — Dumas: Count’s accounting for revenge aCounts for Countless Countenances.
35. Magnificent Ambersons — Tarkington: Money doesn’t buy happiness, especially if you lose it all.
36. War of the Worlds — H.G. Wells: After interstellar strategic planning, Mars tries to conquer world by invading the island of England.
37. Moll Flanders — Daniel Defoe: Years of thievery and whoredom and almost executed… but, at heart, a good girl.
38. Hunchback of Notre Dame — Hugo: Don’t bring enchanted goats that can count to 15th century Paris.
39. The Financier — Dreiser: Stylistically drab writing seemingly written by, well, a financier.
40. Pride and Prejudice — Austen: Too bad no glass ceilings for Elizabeth to break.
41. Bel Ami — de Maupassant: Marrying mistresses and their daughters leads to wealth and power.
42. Two Years Before the Mast — R.H. Dana: Plenty of jibs, halyards and sail furling, no plank walking or timber shivering, and a little flogging.
43. Ivanhoe — Sir Walter Scott: Knights save distressed damsel before stake burning.
44. Cousin Betty — Balzac: Betty is bad news.
45. Martin Eden — London: Roustabout learns everything, writes bestsellers, debates, attains wealth, hates everybody.
46. Treasure Island — Stevenson: Beware of peg-legged parrot-petting pirates.
47. The Fat and the Thin — Zola: Some people interaction, with plenty of newly slaughtered meat, fish, fowl, cabbages and turnips.
48. Red Badge of Courage — Crane: Coming of age among muskets, and the fog of war.
49. Room with a View — Forster: Hotel-complaining leads to marriage.
50. Sons and Lovers — D.H. Lawrence: Sons, lovers and lousy literature.
51. History of Tom Jones — Fielding: Virtuous mono-syllabic Tom beset by problems instigated by multisyllabic Thwackum, Fitzpatrick, Partridge, Blifil, Western.
52. Bouvard and Pecuchet — Flaubert: Odd couple fail at frock-coated farming and philosophizing.
53. Huckleberry Finn — Twain: River rafting, visiting with pseudo-royalty, boys will be boys.
54. Lord Jim — Conrad: Lord, Jim isn’t helping me understand this book- is it groundbreaking, overly inventive, or just poorly written?
55. Three Musketeers — Dumas- Musketeer crew comprises boozer, gold-digging womanizer, religion-seeking swordster, lovesick hothead.
56. Washington Square — James: Dad loves ugly dumb daughter, but gold-digging fiancé bolts after father threatens disinheritance.
57. Gulliver’s Travels — Swift: Despite persistent shipwrecks, Gulliver still goes sailing but passengers quickly disembark.
58. The Pickwick Papers — Dickens: While banal and bespectacled, Pickwick’s principles earn Pickwickian plaudits.
59. The Picture of Dorian Gray — Wilde: A picture is worth 1000, er, 1500, um 3000 words.
60. The Brothers Karamazov — Dostoevsky: Drunks, death, and decay — typical Russian novel fare.
61. House of Mirth — Wharton: There’s absolutely no mirth in this house.
62. Tess of the d’Urbervilles — Hardy: Tess never learned the two B’s: Boys are Bad.
63. Charterhouse of Parma — Stendhal: Parma might be worth visiting; this book is not.
64. Portrait of a Lady — James: Unaccomplished wealthy villa-hopping travelers endlessly speak and think about themselves.
65. Silas Marner — George Eliot: Weaver is double-crossed, robbed, adopts toddler, waits, recovers money and robber skeleton.
66. The Way of all Flesh — Butler: Drab writing marked by no descriptions of sun-dappled rocks, trees and flowers.
67. Fortune of the Rougons — Zola: Struggling family struggles during political crisis while struggling with mediocre writing.
68. Daisy Miller — James: Henry James lite.
69. Frankenstein — Shelley: Monster fails to manage decomposition odor.
70. Heart of Darkness — Conrad: Hell distress compounded by Conrad narration technique.
71. Far from the Madding Crowd — Hardy: Typical 19th century English sheep & cow literature.
72. Lost Illusions — Balzac: Dissolution of delusion leads to lost illusion.
73. The Possessed — Dostoevsky: Title indecision and incoherent storyline imply that author had vodka problem.
74. Ethan Frome — Wharton: Lucky guy spends decades with complaining sickly wife and mentally incapacitated love interest.
75. My Antonia — Cather: Oh my, Antonia, very unsettling story about wolves eating newlyweds in Russia.
76. Barry Lyndon — Thackeray: Wealth, fame, charm, and smarts lead to debtor’s prison, family hatred and gout.
77. Dracula — Bram Stoker: Vampire advantage — immortality; disadvantage — limited liquid diet.
78. Sense and Sensibility — Austen: The reader should have the sense and sensibility to avoid reading this inferior Austen work.
79. L’ Assommoir — Zola: Russian novels don’t have a monopoly on drunks.
80. Oblomov — Goncharov: After writing about sleeping away one’s life, the author, never seen again, probably became a mattress salesman.
81. Typee — Melville: Two ship deserters try to avoid meal with local cannibals.
82. Jane Eyre — C. Bronte: Two guys fall in love with principled Jane.
83. Bleak House — Dickens: Law school attendance soars after book publication.
** The Idiot — Dostoevsky: The title refers to any reader who finishes the book.
84. Winesburg, Ohio — S. Anderson: Big city life more attractive than local banker’s daughter.
85. Mill on the Floss — G. Eliot: Beware of floating flotsam in flooded Floss.
86. Oliver Twist — Dickens: Pickpocketing and purse snatching pumps up prison population.
** The Nether World- Gissing: After reading 20%, it’s obvious why no one has heard of this author.
87. Fathers and Sons — Turgenev: Unlike other Russian novels, no drunks.
** Doctor Pascal — Zola- 20% read — a book about his other books and sheep brain medical experiments.
88. Little Women — Alcott: Little Women become Little Mothers who soon will be Little Grandmothers.
89. What Maisie Knew — James: What Maisie didn’t know was when this book would ever end.
90. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea — Verne: Genius loner misfit builds submarine to go deep sea fishing.
91. Great Expectations — Dickens: Certainly, great expectations aren’t expected for people with a name like Pip.
92. The Gambler — Dostoevsky: You can lose just as much, gambling dollars, francs or rubles.
93. The Scarlet Letter — Hawthorne: Author rejected polka-dotted, turquoise letter color.
94. Mansfield Park — Austen: Well-off do nothings discuss wealth, clothes, and matrimonial prospects.
** War and Peace — Tolstoy: War, peace, and 1,000 pages.
95. Main Street — Lewis: Side streets might be worth visiting.
96. Tom Sawyer — Twain: Fence white-washing employment prospects explode.
97. Martin Chuzzlewit — Dickens: Don’t nuzzle a Chuzzlewit.
98. Song of the Lark — Cather: Too bad the lark didn’t fly away before it sang this mediocre song.
99. Under Western Eyes — Conrad- Some critics think the book should be underneath Eastern, Southern, and Northern eyes.
100. The Mayor of Casterbridge — Hardy: Mayor didn’t do a single day of work for the city.
101. The Old Curiosity Shop- Dickens: Though curious, I never learned what was in the shop.
102. Dodsworth — Lewis: Cars and cuckoldry.
103. Daniel Deronda — Eliot: By George, I’m done reading Eliot books.
104. Pendennis — Thackeray: Title character marries sister (or cousin).
105. Nicholas Nickleby — Dickens: Nicholas wasn’t Santa, but he truly was a Saint.
106. The Woodlanders — Hardy: An apple a day doesn’t keep the doctor away.
** Swann’s Way — Proust: So many words, so little to say.
107. Princess Casamassima — James: Bookbinder leads slum tours for princess — yeah, right.
108. Howard’s End — Forster: The book is about neither a Howard nor his anatomy.
109. Mrs. Dalloway — Woolf: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa and there are books that make sense.
110. Little Dorrit — Dickens: Friendly-children policy at debtors’ prison doesn’t lead to student debt forgiveness.
111. Death in Venice — Mann: Writer ruminates about art, beauty, young boys and gondolas.
112. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life — Balzac: Money, mistresses and mobsters in nineteenth-century Paris.
113. Roughing It — Twain: Spoiler alert: The story about the tree-climbing buffalo isn’t true.
114. Robinson Crusoe — Daniel Defoe: Don’t travel with this guy. Or with Gulliver.
115. The Scarlet Pimpernel — Emma Orczy: Pimpernel keeps his head to save French heads.
116. A Tale of Two Cities — Dickens: Hero heads off to date with Madame Guillotine.
117. The Sorrows of Young Werther — Goethe: Whiner shares sorrows with readers.
** Wings of the Dove — James: Even doves don’t finish this book
**Romola — Eliot: George should stay in England.
118. The Way We Live Now — Trollope: The way we try to read books that never end…now.
119. Death Comes for the Archbishop — Cather: Pueblos, mesas, and priests.
120. Taras Bulba — Gogol: Cossack lifestyle: old pal’s head is salted, put in cask and sent to Constantinople.
121. The Duel — Chekhov: If duel happened at beginning, readers would be saved a lot of time.
122. Jude the Obscure — Hardy: Readers would benefit if this novel were more obscure.
123. Billy Budd — Melville: Billy, we hardly knew ye.
124. Persuasion — Austen: I’m persuaded that Austen has written better books.
125. Innocents Abroad — Twain- Innocents got on board, innocents went abroad, and occasionally, innocents were bored.
126. Les Miserables — Hugo: Every character is cold, hungry and, well, miserable.
127. Benito Cereno — Melville: Don’t read this book on a ship.
128. Bartleby the Scrivener — Melville: This is what happens when they “scriven” too much.
129. The Confidence Man — Melville: Reading this caused me to lose a bit of confidence in Herman.
130. Short Stories — Gogol: Stories about witches, devils, melons, and a nose.
131. Virgin Soil — Turgenev: Typical love story: Boy meets girls, they fall in love, they become revolutionaries.
132. One of Ours — Cather: Farmer deals with failed marriage and WWII and also manages cow and pig problems.
133. A Passage to India — E.M. Forster: India was so hot that even the Kindle was sweating.
** Mysteries of Paris — Sue: Could be another chapter of Les Miserables.
134. Kim — Kipling: Street-savvy Irish-Indian kid seeks river with old man.
135. The Master and Margarita- Bulgakov: There’s a reason no one’s heard of this author.
136. Tender is the Night — Fitzgerald: Ethically challenged psychiatrist has affair with actress star of “Daddy’s Girl”/ marries mental patient who had incestuous relationship as Daddy’s girl.
137. Our Mutual Friend — Dickens: Finding dead bodies in the river, with cash in their pockets, is a good job if you can get it.
138. The House of Gentlefolk — Turgenev: They had gentle extramarital affairs.
139. Kidnapped — Stevenson: Don’t trust anyone named Ebenezer.
140. On the Eve — Turgenev- If writing a book, to ensure its success, add a mysterious Bulgarian character.
141. Agnes Grey — Anne Bronte: Governess educates worst of brats — in Germany these kids are known as “bratwurst.”
** A Sentimental Education — Flaubert: Another painter falls in love… ZZZZZ.
** Siddhartha — Hesse: Book for college freshmen seeking spiritual guidance.
142. A Connecticut Yankee — Twain: For a comedy, there sure are a lot of corpses.
143. Erewhon — Samuel Butler: It’s either a utopian dystopia or a dystopian utopia.
144. Sister Carrie — Dreiser: Sister Carrie was no nun.
145. Note from the Underground — Dostoevsky: The author of this book drank too much vodka.
146. Pudd’n head Wilson — Twain: The proof was in the pudding.
147. The Time Machine — Wells: The author doesn’t tell us how the machine works, but we know it contains nickel, bronze, and crystal.
148. House of the Dead — Dostoevsky: Free flogging amenities don’t attract customers.
149. The Gilded Age — Twain: This book suffers from “neverendingitis.”
** Emma- Austen: Sorry, Jane, but Emma, her friends and the dialogue are an absolute bore.
150. The Prince and the Pauper — Twain: While writing the book, Twain collaborated with Dickens and Shakespeare.
151. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde — Stevenson: Apparently, a split personality requires separate wardrobes.
152. Short Stories and Novellas — Dostoevsky: Be sure not to miss the alligator exhibit.
153. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Vol. II — Poe: Every time the narrator buries a victim behind the wall or under the floor of his house, he gets caught.
154. Cesar Birotteaux — Balzac: Yet another French novel suffering from never-endingitis.
155. The Blithedale Romance — Hawthorne: The high point of this book was having a character named Zenobia.
156. Tono Bungay — H.G. Wells: Quack medicine Tono Bungay alleviates many imaginary ailments.
157. Down and Out in Paris & London — Orwell: French cook’s spit enhances high-end restaurant soup.
158. The Marble Faun — Hawthorne: Only marble readers would enjoy this book.
159. Keep the Aspidistra Flying — Orwell: You won’t learn how or why the aspidistra flew.
160. Animal Farm — Orwell: Eat bacon at your own risk.
161. Letters from Two Young Wives — Balzac: Should be required reading for all newlyweds.
162. Habji Mourad — Tolstoy: Romance ends after decapitation.
163. Cousin Pons — Balzac: Art collector collects scam artists.
** Clarissa — S. Richardson
164. The Clergyman’s Daughter — Orwell: George should stick to farm animal books.
165. Cannery Row — Steinbeck: Bon appetit! Sardines and whiskey on the menu.
** Nineteen Eighty-Four — Orwell
** Look Homeward, Angel — Thomas Wolf
166. Dombey and Son — Dickens: Daughter pines for loveless father while countless guys pine for daughter; reader pines for book’s end.
167. Miss Marjoribanks — Oliphant: Smart socializer has deficient husband-picking skills
168. Hard Times — Dickens: Dickens must have had a hard time writing this.
1. The Tempest: Following a government overthrow, don’t get on a boat with dukes and kings, after a wedding.
2. The Winter’s Tale: While chiseling, sculptor surprised by marble statue’s cry of pain.
3. Cymbeline: King pleased that daughter, dressed as a guy, is a girl, and that son-in-law, is actually a Brit.
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Fairy mismanagement leads to complications.
5. King Richard II: Ya gotta know your Dukes.
6. Hamlet: Spoiler alert — We never learn whether to be or not to be.
7. Twelfth Night: Cross-gartered yellow stockings used to woo servant’s lady boss.
8. King Lear: Employers cancel Take Your Daughter to Work Day after a production of Lear.
9. As You Like It: Matchmaker utilizes cross-dressing to facilitate services.
10. Macbeth: Witches try to sell soup with eye of newt and toe of frog but consumers show little interest.
11. Julius Caesar: Caesar ignores Ides of March warning, because no one understands what “Ides” means.
12. Antony and Cleopatra: Beware of figs, snakes, and queens.
13. King Henry V: Great motivational speaker, but should cut down on the massacres.
14. King Henry IV pt.1: The Welsh live on the same island but seem to be from another planet.
15. King Henry IV pt.2: King happy that son’s not a bum.
16. Troilus and Cressida: Deformed foul-mouthed slave calls it like it is.
17. Coriolanus: The guy should attend a public relations seminar.
18. Othello: Since handkerchieves play such a prominent role, it’s lucky that no one had a cold.
19. The Taming of the Shrew: Gold-digger brainwashes shrieking shrew.
20. Romeo and Juliet: Don’t go out for drinks with a friar.
21. The Merchant of Venice: Restaurant patron orders pound of flesh, but hold the blood.
22. Measure for Measure: Comedy about unwed mother’s problem’s being solved by executing fathers.
23. Comedy of Errors: Twin sons + slaves = Comedy of Errors.
24. Love’s Labour’s Lost: Love’s Labours were not Really Lost.
25. Much Ado About Nothing: Actually, it was much ado about something.
26. All’s Well That Ends Well: All isn’t well, because the protagonist married a bum.
27. King Richard III: All is not well, and nothing ends well when Richard’s around.
28. King John: Everyone has mother-in-law problems.
29. Pericles: I think his clerk wrote this play.
30. Timon of Athens: Timon should consult with Polonius.
31. Titus Andronicus: Heads, arms and a tongue are lopped off but only the heads are baked in a pie.
32. Two Noble Kinsmen: Noble cousins fight over girl who picks flowers, but one cousin is crushed by a horse.
33. Two Gentlemen of Verona: One gentleman was quite ungentlemanly.
34. King Henry VIII: The king’s newborn son will be trouble in future plays.
35. King Henry VI pts 1, 2, 3: Prithee, can’t we all just getteth along?
36. Merry Wives of Windsor: The husbands weren’t that merry.
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