Turns out lots of us lie about reading the classics so Dave gave them a helpful comedy makeover
As parents who have spent the last week or so desperately trying to come up with a costume for their kids will know, it’s World Book Day on Thursday.
And to mark the day Dave did a survey of the nation’s reading habits which revealed that 46% of us have lied about reading the literary classics in a bid to impress others.
So Dave – which also ran down the top 10 books we fail to finish – did its bit for the cause by making six of those hard to read classics a whole lot more palatable with a comedy makeover, complete with brand new covers.
And before we get to that top 10 in full, here’s Rachel Parrish giving us a taste of those ‘made over’ classics.
And finally, as promised, here are the top 10 books we fail to finish (with a very helpful precis from Professor Sam Haddow from St Andrews University who helped conduct the study).
1. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy – Napoleon took six months to lose his war with Russia. Tolstoy took six years to write about it. That probably tells you everything you need to know
2. Hamlet, Shakespeare – The world’s most self-loathing man spends a lot of time talking about himself, to himself. Also, Denmark collapses
3. Moby Dick, Herman Melville – An overlong list of whale facts, and after 137 chapters, an altercation between a man and a whale. The man loses
4. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë – A man becomes obsessed with vengeance when his soul mate literally ghosts him
5. Animal Farm, George Orwell – A lot of pigs who are not really pigs, but are actually pigs, convince other farm animals to work on a farm. And communism
6. Bleak House, Charles Dickens – A 750-page book about a legal dispute lasting 117 years
7. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo – Over a quarter of this 3,000-page novel is made up of moral philosophy arguments. No, really. It got better when they condensed it to three hours and added songs
8. Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo – A terrible man does awful things which the novel ignores and focuses on the buildings
9. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald – An American learns that capitalism is bad, whilst drinking martinis in a mansion. Leonardo Di Caprio does NOT feature
10. Ulysses, James Joyce – A man walks through Dublin towards his wife, who is at home having an affair. Meanwhile, everybody in Ireland says everything that has ever been said. Loudly
And you can find all the reworked cover art over here.
Source Dave