How to Find Book Summaries

Book summaries are an excellent resource for students as well as the casual readers. A book summary can provide a plot description, character analyses, and chapter summaries. When you don't have time to read the entire book (or you failed to read an assigned book), finding a book summary can be a very good thing.
Here are some resources to find free book summaries online:

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Internet

1. SparkNotes.com is one of my favorite resources. The site has hundreds of study guides for literary classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1984, Lord of The Flies, and To Kill A Mockingbird. Plot Overview, Analysis of Major Characters, and Important Quotations Explained, are a few of the categories available in each book summary. SparkNotes also provides study questions, essay topics, and suggestions for further reading.

2. Cliffs Notes have been around for decades. You can purchase the familiar yellow with black stripe soft cover summaries for a variety of subjects including famous books, essays and plays. CliffsNotes.com is a comprehensive website that provides free literature notes and book summaries for more than 180 different titles. Categories for literature notes include Book Summary, Critical Essays, and Summary & Analysis by Chapter. Each of these are available to purchase in either PDF or book format from their website. The website also has free articles and study guides on Writing, Grammar, Spanish I, French I, and even Accounting Principles.

3. Antistudy.com is like a clearinghouse of available online book summaries. Use their search engine to find free book notes and summaries by title or author. The search results will give you a direct link to each summary available on reputable sites such as Cliffnotes.com, PinkMonkey.com, and Barrons Book Notes. Their database has more than 800 searchable titles.

Tips & Warnings

• Even if you use a book summary as a study guide or to otherwise gain an overall synopsis, make a note to go back and READ the book when you have some free time.

Resources

• SparkNotes.com
• CliffsNotes.com
• AntiStudy.com
• Study Guides at AMAZON

[cwengre]

on 3/29/2009 Great resource for finding book summaries. I'm looking for those all the time. Thanks

[gatunibi]

on 3/26/2009 All good resources1 I have used them myself!5*

[HardworkinJudy]

on 3/19/2009 Thanks for the resources.

[pondsrus]

on 3/19/2009 Very interesting article and well written. 5*

[blingaling]

on 3/19/2009 I haven't thought about book summaries since college! Thanks for writing this and for the website info.