Condensed Classics of World Literature, Part One.

Mark Twain once said that a classic novel is "a book that everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to".
As an aid to those who just haven't found the time to read these timeless works, I present a brief synopsis, so you will not be at a loss at cocktail parties.

"Moby Dick"---Obsessed Captain Ahab hunts a great white metaphor or symbol or something, that took his leg in a previous confrontation.
Since termites ate his crude prosthetic, he wants the leg back.

Famous lines include:

"Call me Ish Kabibble" and "Hey, let stop over at Starbucks!!"

"A Tale of Two Cities" ---story of a man who loses his head over some dame.

"Madam Bovary"---Desperate Housewife of 19th-century Paris.

"Anna Karenina"---Desperate Housewife of 19th-century Moscow

"Lady Chatterly's Lover"---Desperate housewife of early 20th-century England. Her husband was in wheelchair and the muscular gameskeeper wasn't. Do the math!

"Heart of Darkness"---a search into the darkest Africa to find a man who has reverted to insane barbarism and brutality---Later updated as "My Dinner with Idi Amin"

"Catcher in the Rye"---teenage boy rebels against school and other social strictures---Later updated as the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

War and Peace--- Napoleon invades Russia--- the Russian soldiers and winter defeat Napoleon, just in time, since Tchaikovsky had already finished The 1812 Overture.
Reader must keep track of the stories of dozens of characters, until in exasperation he says, "Anov is Anov!!.

"Crime and Punishment"--A young man kills an old lady by fracturing her skull and then spends 600 pages wondering if maybe he didn't do the right thing.

"The Grapes of Wrath" the Joad family's arduous journey to California at the height of the depression, where they wind up in a John Ford movie.

"The Canterbury Tales"---a group of sojourners tell "hilarious " anecdotes from 14th century life in England---but, really, for most of them , you hadda be there!!