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Drawing the Wrong Lessons – Bad Book Review Clickbait
Per some rather head-smackingly daft articles @titustechera has been bringing to my attention on Facebook (I’ll not link to them so as to spare the guilty), let’s have a game. The goal here is to come up with one or two sentence article titles on life lessons you can draw from classic or famous books or stories, but with a catch. You see, you must demonstrate that while your article title does indeed convey that the you may have read the story in question, you obviously did not understand it, and are instead trying to wring out whatever preconceived life lessons you think the story should have been about. Some starters are:
- A Christmas Carol: How hard work, thrift, and personal sacrifice allow generous philanthropy in old age.
- Wuthering Heights: How to stay true to yourself.
- Game of Thrones: How your siblings can help you get ahead in life.
- McTeague: How occupational licensing laws ruin lives.
- The Great Gatsby: The evolution of automotive safety.
- Tom Sawyer: How to leverage networking your friends to distribute workloads more evenly.
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: When to bring out your inner wolf to achieve success.
Have fun with this, and show no mercy to the ignorant.
Published in Humor
Gone With the Wind: A big storm blows all her nice clothes away, but a spirited Irish-Confederate girl makes new ones out of draperies.
Around the World in 80 Days: A man gets stuck in a flying balloon for almost three months.
2001: A Space Odyssey. The Arthur C. Clarke classic about a singing rock and the stewardess in a weightless miniskirt.
That’s the movie, not the book.
Moby Dick — a gay action piece, as evidenced by a whole chapter about Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed.
Romeo and Juliet — teenagers are idiots. Though that might be the right lesson.
Paradise Lost — Satan is cool!
Huckleberry Finn: Summertime, and the livin’ is easy down South! Nothing’s warmer than black and white friendship in this funny story about the Good Ole Days.
For Whom the Bell Tolls: A town in Spain loses their church bell in a war, but General Franco helps get it back.
On the Road: If gas is only 17 cents a gallon, why not take the Hudson? Big car room for two guys and plenty of girls.
Let’s see…do I remember any books?
Frankenstein–Leftovers go bad
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Lot’s of weird people out there, but the dolphins are nice.
Two Years Before The Mast – A young man recovers his health by means of a leisurely sea voyage.
The Sun Also Rises: Friends and lovers attend a religious festival in Spain.
Maybe that’s not right.
No One Here Gets Out Alive — See Paris and die.
The Highland Clearances: How the English saved Gaia from the Mother Earth hating Highlanders.
A Prayer for Owen Meany: A weird life full of coincidences.
David Copperfield: How young men everywhere can learn courtship lessons from Uriah Heap.
A Tale of Two Cities: How Madame Defarge shows how to knit our country back together.
Hamlet: Hamlet’s mother shows to be a parent in a 2nd marriage.
Dating Advice from Richard III
Leo Tolstoy shows how to affair-proof your marriage in Anna Karennina.
The Iliad: Achilles totally pwns Hector.
Lolita. Mischievous young girl leads lovestruck professor on a hopeless chase.
Ulysses. June 16, 1904 was a big day in Dublin. Lotsa stuff happened. A Jewish guy’s wife says she’s ready for love.
Brave New World. Cars fly. People have really let their inhibitions go.
How 1984 demonstrates the importance of Common Core for ensuring a commonality of education.
Atlas Shrugged shows the need for modernizing our rail system.
How Fahrenheit 451 shows the perils of inadequate sprinkler systems in libraries.
Fear: Why love means never having to say you’re sorry.
The Scarlet Letter: home-wrecking tramp gets what she deserves.
Scarlet Letter: How Hester Prynne Fought the Patriarchy
Sermon Lessons for modern preachers, from The Scarlet Letter.
Corporate Organization lessons from Animal Farm.
The Hound of the Baskervilles — Basic canine training.
Jane Eyre tells young ladies everywhere “Put a ring on it!”