A picture is worth a (hundred) thousand words.

Couldn’t get through Proust? Forgot you joined that book club? The Unbearable Lightness of Being simply unbearable? Problem solved! Long Story Short is a comic-book romp through classic and contemporary literature. Organized by subject (or motif, as your old English teacher would say),including “Big Thoughts,” “Friends and Frenemies,” and, of course, “Love,” “Sex,” and “Death,” comics by Lisa Brown (The Airport Book; Baby, Mix Me a Drink) summarize and skewer a hundred books we all love and love to hate—from curriculum classics like Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, and Jane Eyre to modern favorites like Beloved, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Twilight.

Cancel your library card and delete all your audiobooks. Lisa Brown read them—and then drew them!—so you don’t have to.