Plot summaries for prize winning books (or even those nominated)

[Hopman]

I recently heard on the radio the definition of drama as being the exciting bits of life. This prompted a reply from an author that Booker prize works were "life with the drama taken out".

 

This set me thinking, and having completed an odyssey through one so nominated book (in less than ten years, since you ask), I have compiled a short list of what I term as bookers as follow:

 

Typical Prize Winner – Nothing happens for five hundred pages and on page 503 a door opens.

 

Anton Chekov – Nothing happens for five hundred pages and on page 503 someone shoots himself.

 

Samuel Beckett - Nothing happens for five hundred pages and on page 503 there is no door.

 

Alfred Hitchcock – I don’t know if anything happens because there’s a fat man in the way.

 

Ken Follett - Nothing happens for two pages and on page 503 you realise the significance of something on page one.

 

Dick Francis - Nothing seems to happen because things are very stable.

 

Does anyone wish to add other authors to this list?

[Mantaspook]

My top five.

 

Bret Easton Ellis Wade through 500 pages of stream of consciousness, realise death by drowning is preferable after page 10.

 

J.R.R Tolkein "What a load of hobbits."

 

William. S. Burroughs Lots of things happen in the first 500 pages, but in no discernable order…Did the publisher drop the unnumbered manuscript or were they on drugs too?

 

Dan Brown Nothing happens for 500 pages, then I shoot myself for reading such drivel, coroner says cause of death is 'justifiable suicide.'

 

Salman Rushdie Very strange books...The only author with a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Khomeni & W.H. Smith, allegedly.

 

 

What was the epic 'Booker' that you read Hopman?

 

Incidentally, I really liked 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel.

[Hopman]

It was The Northern Clemency.

[Jessica23]

 

The Victorian novel, summarised:

 

Charles Dickens: Lots of things happen over 500 pages, but they're all unreadably trite and sentimental.

 

Thomas Hardy: Lots of unpleasant things happen over 500 pages, then children commit suicide.

 

George Eliot: Not much happens over 700 pages, then the reader commits suicide.

 

Charlotte Bronte: Things happen, over many pages, then she marries him.

 

Emily Bronte: Things happen, over slightly fewer pages, but no one can follow it because everyone's got the same name.

 

Ann Bronte: No one cares what happens, or over how many pages, because her sisters were better.

 

etc.