Six-word book descriptions

[cos]

Alice posted this elsewhere:
"Describe your favorite book in exactly six words. And we can guess which it is!
mine: a dude hates a big whale."

I can't pick one favorite book, but I wrote six-word summaries of several of my favorites:

1. Bear leads king's rise and fall


2. Layered loops of logic form thought


3. War distraction to sneakily destroy ring


4. Wildlife links mountain strangers' love lives


5. Europeans' militarism escalates far beyond expectations


6. Doors lead to adventure under London


7. Warning: Factory cuts trees animals need


8. Injured brains work in bizarre ways!


9. Teens transported to sinister Escheresque place

What's your favorite book in six words?

Comments

[irina ostrovskaya (from livejournal.com)]

what are the books?????????

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

We're supposed to guess! I have some guesses...

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

3. Return of the King
6. Neverwhere
7. The Lorax

[cos]

Right on all three

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

2. Godel, Escher, Bach ?
8. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ?

[cos]

Yes and yes.

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

Smoothly horrifying, alienated dystopia: the original

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Four siblings come to lion-Jesus.

[cos]

Narnia!

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Angry teen becomes mystery solving heiress.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Not the one I was thinking of, but totally valid. I liked that one too.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm even happier to be wrong :-) Hm!

[cos]

Oh huh I have not read this.

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

1) Brave little girl has vivid dream

2) Starfaring dolphins hide from Aliens.

3) I'm embarrassed I still love this

[cos]

You have stumped me.

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

Alice in Wonderland (specifically "Alice's Adventures Underground")

Startide Rising by David Brin

And lastly this is a subjective description: it pretty much describes how I feel about most of the early Valdemar novels. (I always feel like I am reading the fantasy novel version of a 40 oz malt beverage)

[cos]

Ohhh. I waffled back and forth between whether your 3rd one was a meta-comment or a description of a book, and finally settled on it's probably a description of a book. But sounds like it really was a meta-comment?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Mine is "Girl observes town's civil rights struggles."

[cos]

To Kill a Mockingbird?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Yes

[42itous.livejournal.com]

majordomo's: "assistant pig-keeper saves the world."

[cos]

That series about Taran and Eilonwy

[42itous.livejournal.com]

and yes!

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Dying children need emperor's exotic root.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

The Bridge of Birds

[tylik.livejournal.com]

1. Shardik
9. House of Stairs

[cos]

Yup!

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Recreating people is more than cloning.

[feuervogel]

Cyteen?

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[metaphortunate.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[estheruth.livejournal.com]

Couple has five decade relationship gap.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

#5 basically describes an entire genre of books! Several genres, in fact -- it could as easily apply to "A Clash of Kings" as to "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". But I'm gonna go with "All Quiet on the Western Front".

[cos]

I disagree. For example, that is very much not a description of "All Quiet on the Western Front", even though the context in which that book is set does match the description. And indeed, it is referring to WWI - where the scale of things really caught most people by surprise by orders of magnitude, far far more so than WWII. But not all books set in WWI would be described that way - most of them are about something else, and this sentence is just an aspect of their setting, not a description of what the book is about. But if you think of *the* book that presents both what European militarism was like at that time, and just exactly how it flared up in this way and surprised everyone, that's the book.

As for "A Clash of Kings" - which I just recently finished BTW :) - writing a description like this for it would be much too metaphorical, as well as being a bit of an exaggeration, considering the warring happening in that book doesn't sound that much greater in scale than the warring that has happened on previous occasions in living memory of many of the characters.

[awhyzip.livejournal.com]

6 Neverwhere

[cos]

Yup!