Can You Guess These Book Titles From A Single Sentence Summary?

By: Isadora Teich
Estimated Completion Time
5 min
Can You Guess These Book Titles From A Single Sentence Summary?
Image: Martin Dimitrov/E+/Getty Images

About This Quiz

There's a term from screenwriting called a "logline." It refers to a script or movie summed up in just one sentence. The term comes from broadcasters' logs, back in the days before DVDs or streaming services, when television stations were the only ones to broadcast movies once they'd left the theater. 

TV logs were very concise (think of the one-line descriptions on a TV grid), so no matter how complex the film, its description had to fit in one line. Screenwriters adopted the practice of summing up their scripts and became adept at boiling their plots down. 

But books are different, right? Surely you can't sum up "Anna Karenina" or "The Hobbit" in one sentence? We're challenging that book-snob assumption with a 35-question quiz that condenses some classic novels (and also some popular potboilers) down to just one sentence.

We're willing to bet they DO condense just fine. But how confident are you that your literary chops are up to the test? Do you know which book we're referring to when we say, "A boy wizard attends a magical school while the world is under threat from a powerful wizard"? Okay, that one was pretty easy. What about "A man makes a long journey home, facing monsters and more, after fighting in a war"? 

We're willing to bet that whether you ace this quiz, or just muddle through, you'll end up with a few more books on your to-read list!

An old sea captain obsessively seeks vengeance on a white whale.
"Twilight"
"Moby Dick"
"Brideshead Revisited"
"Measure For Measure"
A poor family of sharecroppers is forced to leave their home during the Great Depression.
"Brideshead Revisited"
"Catch-22"
"The Grapes of Wrath"
"Dune"
A spider tries to save the life of a pig she's friends with.
"Charlotte's Web"
"Angels and Demons"
"Black Beauty"
"Lolita"

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A lawyer tries to defend a black man falsely accused of rape by a white woman in small-town Alabama during the Great Depression.
"Contact"
"To Kill A Mockingbird"
"Dune"
"Memoirs of a Geisha"
A man and woman kill their way to royal titles, go insane and lose everything.
"The Great Gatsby"
"Macbeth"
"Winesburg Ohio"
"Frankenstein"
A short creature with hairy feet is roped into an adventure by a mischievous wizard.
"The Hunger Games"
"The Hobbit"
"The Fault In Our Stars"
"Fifty Shades of Gray"

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A great white shark terrorizes a resort town.
"The Godfather"
"The Scarlet Pimpernel"
"Jaws"
"The Secret"
A strange murder in The Louvre museum in Paris gets two academics caught up in a deadly religious mystery.
"Deception Point"
"The DaVinci Code"
"The Andromeda Strain"
"The Satanic Verses"
A humble civil servant resists the terrifying totalitarian society he lives in but is ultimately crushed by it.
"1984"
"The Lord of the Rings"
"The Vampire Lestat"
"Trainspotting"

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This epic novel explores the events leading up to Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia.
"Huckelberry Finn"
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"
"Moby Dick"
"War And Peace"
A boy wizard attends a magical school while the world is under threat from an evil wizard.
"The Lovely Bones"
"Romeo and Juliet"
"The Age of American Unreason"
"Harry Potter"
Two teenagers with cancer meet in a support group and fall in love.
"The Fault In Our Stars"
"Julius Caesar"
"Gone With The Wind"
"The Hunger Games"

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A ravenous caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly.
"The Silence of the Lambs"
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar"
"Charlotte's Web"
"The Celestine Prophecy"
Set during the French Revolution, this story follows the adventures of an Englishman with a heroic secret identity.
"Interview with the Vampire"
"The Scarlet Pimpernel"
"The Jungle"
"The Kiterunner"
A man gets rich illegally in order to win the affections of an old love during the Jazz Age.
"The Iliad"
"One Hundred Years of Solitute"
"Fifty Shades Of Gray"
"The Great Gatsby"

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A man suddenly turns into a giant helpless insect.
"Titus Andronicus"
"Casanova's Memoirs"
"Les Miserables"
"The Metamorphosis"
A rowdy kid gets sent to bed without supper, only for his room to transform into a jungle full of wild creatures.
"The BFG"
"The Pillars of the Earth"
"Game of Thrones"
"Where The Wild Things Are"
Young people compete in a twisted and deadly competition for the entertainment of the rich elites.
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"
"Faust"
"Billy Liar"
"The Hunger Games"

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A mad scientist creates an intelligent but hideous creature and regrets it.
"Pride and Prejudice"
"Wuthering Heights"
"Faust"
"Frankenstein"
A middle-aged man becomes dangerously obsessed with a young girl.
"1984"
"Yellow Fever: 1793"
"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"
"Lolita"
A young prince goes crazy while trying to avenge his father's murder.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
"Don Quixote"
"Hamlet"
"Faust"

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A woman deals with the intricacies of high society during the British Regency era.
"Crime and Punishment"
"Pride and Prejudice"
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
"Angels and Demons"
A wrongfully imprisoned man escapes prison and uses hidden treasure to fund an epic revenge quest.
"The Bhagavad Gita"
"The Count Of Monte Cristo"
"Venus in Furs"
"Huckleberry Finn"
An insane perfume maker with an extraordinary sense of smell kills teen girls to try and preserve their scents.
"The Pillars of the Earth"
"Mrs. Dalloway"
"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"
"Norwegian Wood"

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A man makes a long journey home, facing monsters and more, after fighting in a war
"Ulysses"
"The Odyssey"
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
"In Search of Lost Time"
In this fantasy series, ruthless nobles of several houses fight for power.
"The Lord of the Rings"
"Dune"
"Game of Thrones"
"Fifty Shades of Gray"
A teen girl who was raped and murdered watches her family come to terms with her death from heaven.
"Speak"
"The Lovely Bones"
"Go Ask Alice"
"Night"

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A troubled teen talks about how he played hooky in New York City for two days before being expelled from school.
"Anna Karenina"
"The Catcher In The Rye"
"Middlemarch"
"The Iliad"
In this science fiction novel, the nobility of a feudal future society battle each other for control of a planet containing "spice."
"The Lord of the Rings"
"Catch-22"
"Romeo and Juliet"
"Dune"
An escaped convict becomes an upstanding and wealthy citizen and father, while being tailed by a ruthless police inspector.
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
"Les Miserables"
"The Count of Monte Cristo"
"Harry Potter"

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A teen girl falls in love with a moody vampire.
"Crime And Punishment"
"Twilight"
"Bram Stoker's Dracula"
"Speak"
A rich man hires a goth-punk hacker and hardened journalist to solve his niece's long ago disappearance.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
"Macbeth"
"Gone Girl"
"The Stranger"
A poet travels through hell, purgatory and heaven.
"The Divine Comedy"
"Angels And Demons"
"Faust"
"The Naked Ape"

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A king who is the victim of a terrible prophecy learns disturbing truths about his family.
"Candide"
"Oedipus the King"
"Frankenstein"
"The Canterbury Tales"
An academic is brought into a world of scientific and religious intrigue and must find a can of stolen antimatter that will explode in 24 hours.
"The DaVinci Code"
"The Little Prince"
"Angels and Demons"
"The Witching Hour"