9 Great Novels Summarized as Haikus

It’s a sad fact of life that even the most dedicated bookworm runs out of time to read. When you’re busy, you have to steal five minutes here and two minutes there just to enjoy a few pages. You browse a chapter during a conference call, race through a short story while heating up leftovers, or devour a couple pages standing in the checkout line, but there’s still not enough time to read! That’s why we’ve boiled down the gist of 9 great novels into short and sweet haikus (a Japanese poem consisting of seventeen syllables, broken up into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables). It’s PERFECT for busy bookworms on the go!
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Captain hunts big whale
Will he finally prevail?
Yes, but not really.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
A factory tour
Goes terribly wrong because
Children are awful
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
War: If you are sane,
You can’t leave. If you are nuts
You can, but you won’t.
IQ84, by Haruki Murakami
A contract killer.
A childhood love. A strange cult.
What surreal intrigue.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is twelve.
Humbert Humbert is forty.
Tragicomedy.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Teen runs from drunk dad
Befriends a runaway slave.
Satire of Old South.
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Shipwrecked boy on boat
Richard Parker hides there too
Believe what you will.
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Feisty girls who read
Grow up and marry doctors
So there, Josie Pye.
Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville
Whatever you ask
He says, “I’d prefer not to”
and then will not leave.
What’s your favorite novel you’d like to see as a haiku?