Customer Reviews

The Great American Bathroom Book, Volume 1: Single-Sitting Summaries of All Time Great Books

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a very, very good book, especially the first volume.

The basic concept of the book is this: 90 percent of the book is devoted to short 2 page summaries of great books. For example, the first volume has summaries of books such as "Lord of the Flie" and "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". The book is divided into many sections such as Classics, Science Fiction, Self Improvement, and Managmant, and Biographies.

The other 10 percent is devoted to quotes or anecdotes from many famous people on various topics such as problem solving and happiness. The last section is usually a section with many intersting facts and statistics. It is basically a quiz section.

The Great American Bathroom is also good if you have to do a book report and don't want to read the whole book. The book is basically good when you are very bored and have nothing to do.

It is also very good for making you save time and not reading an entire self-help book when the key points are covered in 2 pages instead of 300 hundred pages such as in most self-help books.

You can read it in the bathroom or on the bus.

All in all this book is very good for the person on the run or the person looking for something fun to read. It is good and very fun.

I'm retired from the US military. When I was deployed on Operation Joint Endeavor in support of the Bosnia mission - I tucked this book into my ruck sack. The book was well read not only by myself but by others in the unit. The once-over-the-world summaries gave a much better understanding of books and plays we would otherwise not have read. My thanks to the author.

This book series is a great way to brush up on your basic cultural literacy and gain a basic understanding of major works of world literature, philosophy, religion and so forth. However, whoever did the copy-editing job for this publication...--I've never seen so many typos in print--and the quality of the summaries is inconsistent. If you're thinking this is an easy "Cliff Notes"-type way to cheat your way through a lit class by reading summaries, you might get yourself in trouble since the two-page summaries can't do justice to the works themselves, and while some of the summaries are accurate, others are superficial and perhaps even misleading. Use this book as a reference, but don't be lazy--if you want to understand an important work of literature, get over your short attention span and go read it. While the Bathroom Books might help you decide what you're interested in exploring further, they are no substitute for the sheer joy of immersing yourself in a timeless, well-told tale.

I don't have the time or the motivation to read fiction or biography, but I yearn for cultural literacy. The Great American Bathroom Book fills my needs, with its well written summaries of well known books. In some cases, the summaries even make me want to read a whole book as in its compelling condensation of Life and Death in Shanghai or Not Without My Daughter.

This book is a great for refreshing your memory about general knowledge. It surely helps pass that time on the throne.

Despite the title, this is a great addition to any library. A collection of over 200 short but thorough literary summaries and biographies (most are 2 pages). Included are biographies or works of Lincoln, Shakespeare, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Milton, Dickens, Cervantes, Voltaire, Twain, Alcott, Darwin, Plato, Goethe, and many others.

This is not an anthology, which is a collection of writing segments. Rather it is a collection of summaries of writings. Great for a quick introduction to classic writings, for deciding what complete writings you would like to read, or for procrastinating students who didn't get around to reading an assigned book and need a quick summary of it.

Can be read 2 pages at a time, skipping days, months, or years between readings. Highly recommended with one caution: The print is small and may be difficult for some readers.

Perhaps the best book in the entire world to keep in your bathroom or by your bed!! I can't say enough about how spectacular this book is. Whoever put it together is a genius, a man above men, a hero to the little people of the world who might never learn about some of the topics of this book if it weren't entitled "BATHROOM BOOK". Thanks!

This is THE BEST book for your bathroom. It was a permanent fixture at my grandparents' house, so I bought one for myself when I became an adult. There are several different sections of the book, all of which are informative and educational. This is a great book to have if you want to know a little bit about everything: the rules of football, the plot summary & commentary of To Kill A Mockinbird, the lifetime achievements of Ghandi, etc.

I agree with the reviewer who commented on the editing and content. The editing is appalling, and I found a number of inaccuracies in some summaries (for example, Beethoven's first two symphonies contain the Sonata in c-minor and the Moonlight Sonata!) It makes me wonder where there are other inaccuracies I didn't catch because I don't know enough about the subject matter.

Some of the content is interesting.

Great addition to any library in or outside of the bathroom! Every single Book is edited down to a 1 page summary- in pain english. Such classics as Great Expectations whittled down to a 10 minute read, "cliff note style" without missing any pertinent information! LOVE IT!!