Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 25, 2012

Rat summarizes The Odyssey: Man goes on trip. Comes home.

HAHAHA,,,pearls always makes me laugh :)

This reminds me of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”. He spends a long time catching a stupid fish, then he loses the fish. Boring! At least the Odyssey had some adventure in it.

Also like Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” Boy has a pirate in his inn, finds treasure map, meets up with more pirates, finds treasure.

Reminds me of the Fox Trot bit about Cliff Notes Cliff Notes, for instance: Hamlet. “Danish Prince. Dies.”

And now, the Quick Notes Digest version of Alice in Wonderland:A girl takes some drugs, then sobers up. The End.

gosh, that coulda put Goat’s ear outta whack, will Rat take advantage again and try to get a couple of ringers?

Reminds me of my sister’s summary of Don Quixote: A guy goes crazy, he regains his sanity, and then he dies.

kid goes orphan, meets super rich bald guy, guy decides to adopt her…………………………so that is why rat things Annie is boring

Pastis wrote a hilarious bit on his blog a while back about the work of a Russian playwright whose name escapes me. Pastis read one play, and it ended with the protagonist shooting himself in the head. Pastis read another play by this guy, and it ended with the protagonist shooting himself in the head. Now, Pastis was going to start a third play by the guy, but he had a hunch about the ending and decided against it. Then, he looked up to see how the playwright eventually died.

Tubercluosis. BOOOOOOOOO-RIIIING!

Sounds like a Russian author. Those guys dragged their black clouds around with them like that character in Li’l Abner, Joe Btfsplk.

Q: What do they call writers of happy stories in Russia?A: “Foreigners”

rat’s on another of his litanies

yep, thats rat for ya.

Shut up Rat…go eat some tainted cheese.

Venice is a nice town. A bit damp. Rat is not nuanced enough in his criticism to be a successful professional, so I don’t think we will have to worry about reading his commentaries in the Big City Book Review….

Any book that facilitates sleep, is a good book. . ..

yep pretty much,

Hard to know WHAT “classic” means, when we’re supposed to accept the idea of “Classic Coke,” “Classic Peanuts” and “classic muscle cars,” along with various things being dubbed “instant classics.”

Instead of reading the book, he should have watched the movie. At least he’d have gotten to hear some Mahler. Not that he’d appreciate it, but…

“Death in Venice” is not a novel – it’s a novella. There ARE differences.

ah come on now they said sphere was a classic and it was great. so was dune

Crime and Punishment : Man commits murder, blah, blah, blah, someone figures it out.

Famous description of The Wizard of Oz: “A young girl kills a complete stranger, then teams up with three other strangers to kill again.”

Moby Dick: Man vs. whale. Whale wins.

I once read Great Expectations, but it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.

Classic usually refers to a work too deep to really get on first reading… which unfortunately is more times than the average person reads anything worthwhile.

“Titanic”; boat sinks.

Let us not forget that Huckleberry Finn is a classic.

Wizard of Oz: Woman gets transported to a strange land. Kills first person she meets. Teams up with three others to kill again.

Agreed. Must be showing my age, otherwise why would anyone think they have to tell us who Mark Twain was???

“Great story.”“How did it end?”“Dunno, my battery died…”

You’re right, it’s not the same.

Old Man And The Sea: guy sits in boat… FISH! guy sits in boat…

My brother’s summary of Romeo and Juliet: everybody dies.

@Richard S. Russell – Funny you should bring up Mark Twain. I had a freshman English course in university, where a book analysis of his “Puddin’head Wilson” was a major portion of the final exam. I read the first 50 pages near the start of the semester and got bored with it. Read the last 10 pages a few minutes before the exam to find out how it ended, and extrapolated everything in between. Passed the exam with flying colors and got an A

great book reviews! hmmm.. JRRT’s LOTR: “hobbits, orcs, something about a ring.. battles and then the end, the end, and then the end.”

Perfect summary of “Anna Karenina” – boring and sucky

So what do you think Rat’s favorite book is? I’m guessing “120 Days of Sodom.”

Yes, Rat. Yes it is.

Classics in Western Literature by Berke Breathed is a good read.

Here, lemme summarize everyone’s life here. You were born, and you’ll die. That’s it. And even that doesn’t matter.

Mark Twain: A book which everyone praises, but nobody reads.

You mean like this comic could very well become a ‘CLASSIC’ ????

One definition of a classic: a work with an excess of meaning, which means that you may read it repeatedly, discovering new ideas and symbols in it every time.

Happy families are all the same; unhappy families are all different. Tolstoy.

Rt should read “Death of a Salesman”. A man who sells things and dies…..CLASSIC!!!!

Wanted to summarize Moby Dick humorously, but then realized that my forehead slammed onto the table before I finished the first chapter. Really, I tried. Just about anything by Mark Twain, though, is great.

“The man who knew too much”Man cuts hair, kills someone, someone else is found dead, man gets executed, … Who the hell is narrating the story if that character is the man who knew too much?

I can see Rat would love “Death of a Salesman” and “Hamlet.” Bet he’d be a big Poe fan. “The Tale Tell Heart” “The Masque of the Red Death.” “The Cask of Amontillado.” They’d probably be right up Rat’s alley.