Three Little Words

By Cornelia

Louise Ure's post at Murderati last week has stuck with me ever since. She started out with E.B. White's essay "Irtnog," a satirical history of digest publications:

Someone conceived the idea of digesting the digests. He brought out a little publication called Pith, no bigger than your thumb. It was a digest of Reader’s Digest, Time, Concise Spicy Tales, and the daily News Summary of the New York Herald Tribune. Everything was so extremely condensed that a reader could absorb everything that was being published in the world in about forty-five minutes.

Then challenged readers to come up with a "three-words-or-less summary of any book you want," starting the game with:

Example: A Tale of Two Cities "Off with têtes."

Among my favorite entries, Sharon Wheeler offered, "Any Dick Francis: Horsy chap suffers"


Janine jumped in with, "The Scarlet Letter ~ red suits you"

Alex Sokoloff did Rosemary's Baby: Happy Birthday, Satan.

Rob Gregory Brown did one in TWO words-- Children of the Corn: Kids Stalk

I got completely carried away and listed a few, which I've been adding to all week, starting with"

Anna Karenina: Slut vs. train.

The Great Gatsby: Nouveau laid low.

The Fountainhead: Mammon-gram

Atlas Shrugged: Dude, WTF Galt?

All Creatures Great and Small: Bully for ewe.

The Year of Magical Thinking: Dunne's one undone.

The Crucible: Hicks nix tricks.

Flowers for Algernon: Whither mouse goest...

Hannibal: What's up, Doc?

The Maltese Falcon: Bye bye birdy

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: Yeah, I'm guilty.


Memoirs of Casanova: Quicker picker-upper


Anybody else wanna play?