World Literature For Dummies

Not everyone has time to read so here it is, a summary of the best books of all times.
Next time you see your intellectual friends you’ll have something to say.

William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Two crazy-in-the-head teenagers fall in love, but their families don’t approve of the relationship. The two clans fight and argue, a lot of people get hurt. Then, a SOB priest has a f-ing crazy idea and the two youngsters die after drinking poison thinking they were drinking herbal tea to make them sleep.
The End
********
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
778 pages
A bored housewife cheats on her husband screwing the baker, the milkman, the postman, the bar owner, the market owner and the neighbor who’s loaded. Then she gets depressed, drinks poison and dies. (Poison again?)
The End
*********
Leon Tolstoi
War and Peace
Paris, Ed.Chartreuse
1.200 pages
A lad doesn’t want to go to war because he’s in love so Napoleon invades Moscow. The heroin marries another guy.
The End
*********
Marcel Proust
À La recherche du temps perdu.
(The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Remembrance of Things Past)

Paris, Gallimard. 1922
1.600 pages
A young man suffering from asthma has insomnia because his mom neither kisses him good-night nor tucks him in bed. The next day (page 486 – Vol. I), he eats a cake and writes a book. That same night (page 1344, Vol.VI) he has another asthma attack because his girlfriend (or was it his boyfriend?) also refuses to kiss him. It all ends in a grand ball (Vol. VII) when they are all very old – that’s all.
The End
********
Luís de Camões
The Lusiads
A poet, suffering from insomnia (again?), decides to test the king’s patience and tells him about some sailors who, after a few problems (soon squared away by a really cool goddess), find the good life on an island full of sexy women.
The End
*********
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
(This is tough!)
A prince suffering from insomnia (yes, again!), wanders between the walls of the castle when the ghost of his father tells him he was murdered by his uncle, who sleeps with the mother, whose man he relies on is the father of the girlfriend who, then, commits suicide when she learns that the prince killed her father to get revenge from the uncle who had murdered the father of her boyfriend and slept with the mother. The prince kills the uncle who sleeps with the mother after talking to a skull and is murdered by the brother of his girlfriend, the same one who was cuckoo and had committed suicide. (Confused? Me too. Flowchart to follow)
The End
*********
Sophocles
Oedipus Rex
Knuckledhead makes fun of and doesn’t listen to a blind guy and ends up killing his father, screws his mom and pokes his eyes out. That’s why, centuries later, psychoanalysis was born. The shrinks, while telling you you’re also headed his way, makes you poke your eyes out with his fees. Crazy stuff, man!
The End.
*********
William Shakespeare
Othelo
Once upon a time there was a stupid king, a real idiot. He has a fake friend who tries to fool him. Since he can’t get a cushy job in the kingdom he decides to get revenge on the king convincing him his wife is cheating on him. The loser falls for the lie and kills the queen. Then he finds out she wasn’t cheating on him, he was just very stupid to have listened to the traitor. The king arrests the fake friend and cries like a baby.
The End
*********
That’s it!
You went through at least 7.000 pages of books or 21.000 screens on an e-reader. Now go and get your PlayBoy magazines!
*Disclaimer: I got this somewhere from someone, I don’t remember when or how. I would add the credit/copyright of who wrote it in this post if I knew it.

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