In case you hadn’t already guessed, dear readers, I was a huge nerd back in the day as I shuffled through the Charlottesville City Public Schools. I blame my parents in part for this distinction—they who did not let me watch TV (except for PBS, natch), scoffed at cartoons and made me read books that had nothing to do with Sweet Valley High over summer
vacations. Like all teens with a coolness complex, I would make the occasional pathetic attempt to thumb my nose at authority. Inevitably this involved reading CliffsNotes on one or two occasions.
These days I’m all grown up with no school marms holding my hand through the classics. (Clearly, I have more important things to do…like purchasing a different kind of classic off iTunes: “Rollin’ down the street smokin’ endo, sippin’ on gin and juice…”) Plus, looking back on it, CliffsNotes are, like, so passé. That’s where Book-a-Minute Classics comes in. You know those Shakespeare-in-a-minute plays where Hamlet and Ophelia live, go crazy, yadda yadda yadda, and then die in the course of a minute? Well, this site is the same thing, only for all those books you are supposed to read over the course of your life but probably skimmed in school and won’t get around to on your own. For detail whores, English literature majors and those who still have faith in good writing, these summaries are not. However, for basic plot summary you can’t get much better.
For example, Jane Eyre, which Book-a-Minute summarizes thusly as a one-scene, one-act play: (People are MEAN to Jane Eyre.) Edward Rochester: I have a dark secret. Will you stay with me no matter what? Jane Eyre: Yes. Edward Rochester: My secret is that I have a lunatic wife. Jane Eyre: Bye. (Jane Eyre leaves. Somebody dies. Jane Eyre returns.) Being a huge nerd who read Jane Eyre for fun maybe six times over the course of my seventh grade year, I can attest to the fact that these nine sentences just about sum things up. Apparently, I have wasted a lot of time in my life.