Not everyone has the time, or even the desire, to read entire works of classic literature cover-to-cover. I can't say I necessarily blame them. Some of my favourite books are a little on the impenetrable side, or ramble on longer than they ought to. (Lady Murasaki, I am looking at you.) In the spirit of making some of the works I've enjoyed a bit more accessible, I therefore present...
(There are two works prepared at the moment, but I'll expand the selection if a demand becomes evident.)
Hamlet was probably the second Shakespeare play I ever read. My freshman year English textbook in high school included Julius Caesar. After we finished beating that particular play into the ground, the teacher told us that we would each have to do a term paper on a Shakespeare play- preferably, each person taking a different play. I originally chose Macbeth, but when the teacher said no one else had picked Hamlet yet I changed my selection. I've had a fondness for the play ever since, despite the best efforts of Laurence Olivier to the contrary. (Seriously. His movie version was just- ugggh. Do yourself a favour and watch the Kenneth Branagh version instead, or the BBC version with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart.)
Here's the super-condensed version.
Act I - Scene 1 - Scene 2 - Scene 3 - Scene 4 - Scene 5
Act III - Scene 1 - Scene 2 - Scene 3 - Scene 4
Act IV - Scene 1 - Scene 2 - Scene 3 - Scene 4 - Scene 5 - Scene 6 - Scene 7
For the real thing I humbly suggest visiting http://www.hamlet.org. The whole text of the play is available online, and they've got lots of lovely commentary, too. Note: I have no affiliation with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, although their Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is an absolute joy to behold.
by J. R. R. Tolkien
I've probably read more Tolkien than is good for me. Or for Tolkien, for that matter. When you've read the Silmarillion as many times as I have, you wake up one day and realise that enormous swathes of the book can be summarised by saying, "Ooo, shiny!"
The resulting one-thousand-word summary was originally posted to my Livejournal on 1 April 2004. It caught on from there, becoming quite popular on the Web for a while. It was presented to the Fellowship Festival 2004 in London, where I'm told it got quite a warm reception, a fact which still boggles my mind. I'm glad they liked it, though.
Anyway. I've got three renditions of Professor Tolkien's big honking posthumous opus, depending on your particular needs...
The Long Version - 2060 words long, though it only covers two sections of the Silm (the Ainulindale and the Quenta Silmarillion). This is in the form of a discussion between myself and several friends, who hadn't read the book yet.
The Really Really Really Short Version - 393 words long. This is the version for the truly impatient.
And...
The One Thousand Word Silmarillion - This is the version presented at the Fellowship Festival! The entire thing rendered in 1,000 words- Ainulindale, Valaquenta, Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabeth, and Of The Rings Of Power And The Third Age.
As I said, I've only got the two works so far. Please feel free to contact me if you want to see something else rendered in this fashion. Or if you just want to yell at me for mutilating a work of classic literature. I'm okay with that too.