Introducing: Books By Bullets

I want to start a new type of entry to my blog. I'm going to be calling it Books By Bullets (or BBB for short). If you wanted to compare this to something, I would say it's similar to Spark Notes. But BBB is different and will have its own function and I'll explain why below.

BBB will provide bulleted summaries of books. Spark Notes can get a little too detailed and can be a little hard to digest. Its pretty much like reading a book to read through the Spark Notes. Spark Notes are also usually only available for classics and certain popular adult titles. Spark Notes are usually geared at academics, and for people reading for school. BBB will be geared more towards people reading for fun and will be for a larger variety of books. BBB posts will have a bulleted summary of plot points that happen in the book. It's not going to focus so much on symbolism or things like that, but the focus will be on action. So for example, let's say the book is about a man making a trip to the beach. The book may be portraying certain themes or messages through certain symbols or motifs or thoughts, but BBB will just be summarizing action as simply as possible (Jack gets in the car to head to the beach. Jack's car gets a flat tire. Jack stops and fixes the tire. Jack picks up a hitchhiker who is also heading toward the beach. Jack reaches his destination and stays all night). BBB isn't really an analysis, it's just a quick summary of the plot points that should reignite your memory to be able to decipher those messages for yourself. The main users of BBB would be people who have already read the book (as opposed to Spark Notes which is for people who read the book to refresh their memory and think about some of the themes and metaphors, but also for people who haven't read the book). The main point of BBB will be to provide the bulleted summary, but I also want to include a list of characters, setting and trigger warnings. The list of trigger warnings would be useful for people who haven't read the book, but I would warn that the trigger warnings may contain spoilers.

I'll tell a little story to explain how I came up with this idea. I've wished that there was something like this that exists for a long time now (and maybe this does exist somewhere and I just haven't discovered it yet). But this all started for me when I was reading one of the Pretty Little Liars books many years ago. There are 16 Pretty Little Liars books split into 4 "arcs." I never finished reading this series and I'm not quite sure where I left off, but I think I dropped off somewhere around book 10 or 11. I think I must have been reading Book 9. There was a bit of a bigger gap between Books 8 and 9 (which is also where Arc 2 moves to Arc 3), but I think it had been awhile since I had read one of the Pretty Little Liar books so I had forgotten a lot of the things that had happened in the previous book or just in the overall series in general. I had picked up one of the books, and the character was talking about something that happened in the previous book that had huge repercussions on the current book and I had ABSOLUTELY no memory of that happening. Pretty Little Liars is such a convoluted series, and has so many twists and turns, so while this specific plot point was huge, in the ultimate scheme of the series it wasn't that important, and thus wasn't mentioned on the Wikipedia page that gives a summary of the previous books. It was really concerning to me that I couldn't remember this really important thing, and nothing was getting jogged in my memory and I felt bad like I was missing some context or something. But ever since then, I have wished that there was something like Spark Notes that was available for Young Adult books, and new books. Spark Notes usually just makes entries for classics and a select few modern favorites/bestsellers. Additionally, Spark Notes can be a little confusing and complicated to read itself. A very extensive summary is provided, and a focus on themes and symbolism is included. I wanted to make something that is available for a bigger variety of books, and that would be provided in a more digestible way. So what I want to do with BBB is just provide a summary in bulleted from that focuses on retelling the plot of the story. This would be mostly for people who have read the book that are just trying to be refreshed on it. And hopefully once you read the plot point, you would be reminded of some details or symbolism that you might have latched on to. This would be especially helpful for series, so you can refresh yourself before picking up the next book in a series. It's also helpful for writing reviews, or when trying to reflect on your opinions regarding a forgotten book. For example, for books I've read awhile ago I mostly just remember whether I liked them or not, but I don't really remember details of why or what the story was about. A bulleted summary would refresh my memory of the story and may reignite some of my opinions.

Eventually I want this to be a kind of Wikipedia where everyone can make their own posts, and people can edit it. But I'm not very good with technology so it's going to have to be this way for now. If it starts gaining interest then that would be something I would want to look into. I want BBB to be available for as many books as possible, but since I will be running these for now, these will only be available for a very small amount of books (around the ~20 or so books that I get to read every year).

I'm really excited about this project. Hopefully anyone who finds this will also find this helpful.