Book Summaries

Elaborate Book And Book Chapter Summaries

You like to read, but you have commitment issues: if you’re going to invest the time to pore through a 300 page novel, you want to make sure there’s a pay-off at the end. Fortunately the Internet is awash with book summaries, some from professionals, some from readers just like you. Think of these as your Bits & Bytes book club. A word to the wise: a book review is not a summary of a book – sometimes a book review tells you very little about the book at all. Here’s where to look:


Litsum: http://litsum.com/

The largest collection of book summaries online is to be found at Litsum which breaks its summaries down into book chapter summaries and also offers literature lesson plans. Click on one of the alphabetical links on the home page to be taken to titles.

Free Book Notes.com: http://www.freebooknotes.com/

Summaries for over sixteen hundred books, plays and poems are contained in Free Book Notes.com’s digital library. The layout is a bit goofy – what looks like a navbar at the top of the home page isn’t. Scroll down and select the content you’re interested in from the links farther down on the page.

CliffsNotes: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/

Cliffsnotes have been the mainstay of students for generations cramming in the final hours for the report they should have started last week. Guess what? All those Cliffsnotes Book Summaries are now online! At the top of the main page, click the link that says, “Read Online Free.” Then use the links at the left of the page to navigate to the summary for the book that interests you.

Allreaders.com: http://www.allreaders.com/

Allreaders.com is a literary search engine that sorts titles by 2,000 specific elements, allowing you to search for books by a wide variety of criteria including genre, plot, character, setting and theme. Actually it’s four search engines covering sci-fi, romance, mystery/thriller and literature. Say you are looking for Mystery Books — specifically one that takes place in the period between 1930 and 1950 where violence and chases comprise 30% of the action and the protagonist has a cynical sense of humor. (You’re leaving out twenty additional search criteria here by the way.) Enter your parameters and hit “Click Here To Search” at the bottom of the page. Bingo! Mickey Spillane. With a summary – and links to a message board should you be interested further in reading what people have to say.