| Synopsis: |
SHOTS are plain-English summaries of great books, and they help make these books accessible. They make reading easier and quicker, and are interesting in their own right. They will help you learn things for yourself, and you will want to read more. By "you" we mean anyone with an enquiring mind.We take complicated stuff and simplify it for you - concentrated rather than diluted, so some effort is still required! As Einstein said:"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."Available in print and e-book formats, they are far more than just functional, lifeless abstracts of the source material. Reduced to around 20-25 pages of summary, each SHOT is enlivened with relevant quotes which provide a taste of the original.SHOTS unlock the door and make decent writing accessible to a wider audience, enabling more of us to escape into that other world from which we may improve our own.LEARNING (& TEACHING) WITH SHOTSLearning to get around on our own two feet doesn't begin with a sprint against Usain Bolt. So when you start reading great literature, the last thing you need is to be force-fed 300 pages of Hamlet to get you in the mood for Shakespeare.Start gently: it's not a race."A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled" - Plutarch. You can download a book, thousands of books even, onto a Kindle, iPad, or whatever; but sadly you can't download them directly into your brain complete with the knowledge required to understand them - not yet anyway.But never mind, SHOTS are the next best thing, because they are written to inspire you. You can understand them, and they make your work easier for you.Each SHOT contains the following: A brief introduction to the play/novel to whet your appetite An overall summary of the plot/story, usually a page or two, to give you your bearings A more detailed scene-by-scene/chapter-by-chapter summary, which encapsulates everything in 20-25 pages All the quotations you need on the facing pages, directly referenced in the summary page to which they relateUSE SHOTS TO: Break the ice by giving you a quick, overall view of the work Speedily get you acquainted with the text and the storyline, so at least you know what's going on Make notes as you go in the sections provided (in the printed versions of Shots) Revise the work to help jog your memory before exams Provide you with, and help you learn, the quotations Read round the subject, i.e. SHOTS of other works by the same author.All these things will calibrate your dials and put the work in context so that reading or studying the actual text falls into place more easily and enjoyably. What SHOTS will not do is spoon-feed you with dry "analysis" which strangles your own ideas.THE SHOTS DIFFERENCEYou read a SHOT, you get something out of it, and then it gets out of your way.It won't pester you for a complicated response, and it won't bore you with commentaries that are soon forgotten.Yes, SHOTS really are different from other summaries. True to the original work, they have a life and an identity of their own. They are short, but not superficial. They are inspirational, not mechanical. You don't have to plough through hundreds of pages. Reading SHOTS is a pleasure, not a chore. |