Sunday, October 18, 2009

This + This



Book mashups. I found the idea somewhere and can't remember where. A meme? Someone's private game? If I locate it, I'll link it.

The Getting of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
(Henry Handel Richardson's The Getting of Wisdom + T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom)
A misfit Australian schoolgirl leads the Arabs to freedom while they bully her.

The Street of the Enormous Crocodile
(Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles + Roald Dalhl's The Enormous Crocodile)
The narrator's father turned into a crab and he was yummy yummy yummy!

The Book of Disquiet Flows the Don
(Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet + Mikhail Sholokov's Quiet Flows the Don)
A group of doomed Cossacks moves to Portugal to stare moodily at trams.

Fantastic Mr Letty Fox
(Christina Stead's Letty Fox + Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox)
An ambitious young fox decides to get married to three farmers and eat all their chickens.

The Sorrow of War and Peace
(Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War + Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace)
A Vietnamese man returns from fighting the Americans so that he may marry into Russian high society.

Life and Fate a User's Manual
(Georges Perec's Life a User's Manual + Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate)
A dissident, a Communist, a university professor, a prisoner of war, a Jew, a platoon of Russian soldiers, Stalin, and Hitler, all live in a block of Parisian flats at 11 Rue Simon-Crebellier.

White Oleander Noise
(Don deLillo's White Noise + Janet Fitch's White Oleander)
An obsessive fear of death makes a teenage girl uncommonly artistic.

The Makioka Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants
(Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters + Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)
Four sisters in 1940s Kyoto ease the pain of social and familial upheaval by passing a pair of jeans around.

Finnegans Wake in Fright
(James Joyce's Finnegans Wake + Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright)
A teacher from the big city makes his way to an outback town and is intimidated by the densely allusive language of the local alcoholic kangaroo-hunters.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets of Nimh
(J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets + Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH aka The Secret of NIMH)
A group of enterprising rats explains the nature of electricity to a British boy. "It is science, not magic."

And some others that I don't have summaries for:

The Man who Loved Children of a Lesser God
Idylls of King Solomon's Mines
Wise Blood Meridian
Accordion Crimes and Punishment
The Salzburg Tales of Genji
Father and Native Son
Dombey and Sons and Lovers
The Line of Beauty and the Beast
The Death of Witches in Brunswick
The Lord of the Rings of Saturn
The Secret Diary of Francis Kilvert aged 13 3/4
Swann's Way of All Flesh
Bleak Little House on the Prairie
The Portrait of Our Lady of the Flowers


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