First: the All New Horsemen of the Apocalypse competition winner. Thanks to everybody for your outstanding entries, and a compilation of the best would include at least one from everybody’s list. But this time I’ll do the whole tear-off-an-Elastoplast-quickly thing and just blurt it out.
Oh so close was our runner up, The Imaginary Reviewer, with the inclusion of equine-replacement transportation so nearly clinching it. A big hand, please, lazengennulmen. But the winner is tennyson ee hemingway. Take a bow, Sir, and your choice of award:
Now, given my indecisiveness I’m not sure why I do this but here we go again with another competition.
In these straitened times we are all looking for ways to cut corners, make ends meet, make do and mend, darn our own yoghurt and so forth. So I got to thinking (while stealing ever so slightly from “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”) about how some of the world’s great novels might have been more cheaply entitled. So here is a list of Credit Crunch Classics:
Lady Chatterley’s Brother D H Lawrence
The War of the Worms H G Wells
Fahrenheit 4 Ray Bradbury
The Perfectly Reasonable Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
For Whom the Kazoo Blows Ernest Hemingway
Atlas Raised an Eyebrow Ayn Rand
Squinting in Gaza Aldous Huxley
The Maltese Sparrow Dashiell Hammett
Zen and the Art of Mending a Puncture Robert M Pirsig
A Couple of Weeks of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
Love in the Time of Feeling a Bit Under the Weather Gabriel García Márquez
Teatime’s Children Salman Rushdie
A Tale of One Village Charles Dickens (“It was the best of times. That’s it”)
À la Recherche du Cléfs Perdu Marcel Proust
The Gentle Breeze William Shakespeare
The Old Man and the Pond Ernest Hemingway
Paradise Mislaid. Down the Back of the Sofa, Perhaps John Milton
The Lord of the Brooch J R R Tolkien
On the Sidewalk Jack Kerouac
Catch 2.0 Joseph Heller
You are charged with the task, should it please you so to do, of adding your own. Enjoy!
Thanks to 
First, congratulations to T ee H!
And now…
Two Men in a Boat – Jerome K Jerome
The Fairly Well-Concealed Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
All Somewhat Muted On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Moderate Expectations – Charles Dickens
Timorous New World – Aldous Huxley
The Thirty-Eight Steps – John Buchan
Jude the Not Terribly Well Known – Thomas Hardy
The Pencil Sketch of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Thanks for the runners up prize, I shall cherish it as I do all my near-misses!
As for my favourite credit crunch novels:
Harry Potter and the Ethics Student’s Pebble – J K Rowling
Foucault’s Carriage Clock – Umberto Eco
The Dan Brown Code – Dan Brown
The Tomcat, the Old Lady Down the Street in the Weird House and the Small Bedside Chest of Drawers – C S Lewis
His Charcoal-Grey Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman
The Slightly Sinister Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Waitress’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Plastic Bird Chronicle – Murakami Haruki
Love it, yours are all so brilliant I will have to think hard & come back!!!
Well, thanks for the win there G. Henry. It’s my first award you know, so I’ll treasure it like a treasure that’s on an island someplace. No really, I will.
As for cheapo books?
I might have to think about that.
How about
War and – Leo Tolstoy (was it Tolstoy? Now I’m just confusing myself.)
That’s all I’ve got thus far. I’ll be back.
Before I read comments I should ensure that I have not just taken a gulp of coffee. It’s getting expensive in screen-wipes.
Exceptionally funny.
And delightfully gnomic, there, tennyson. How about ‘War and Peas’ ?
Hooray for Tennyson! A man with such literary heritage behind his moniker ought to win an award from you at some point, G Henry. So very well deserved – he’s rather brilliant, after all.
Like my fellow Australians, Soda and Tennyson, I plead intimidation and will have to return again very soon to throw my own cheap imitations into the ring. Although I must agree – reading these posts with a mouthful of hot liquid is dangerous to one’s hardware. And of course I mean that in the most high-minded fashion possible. Simon, I’m sending you the bill…
Congrats Tennyson!
Um…
‘The Excruciatingly Lengthy Story’ – Michael Ende
‘Le Tour du Village en Quatre-Vingts Jours’ – Jules Verne
‘A Tale of Two Shanties’ – Charles Dickens
Around the Block in Five Minutes – Jules Verne
alternately
Around The World in About Six Months – Jules Verne
Three Feet Under the Sea – Jules Verne
A Christmas Haiku – Charles Dickens
War of the Next-Door Neighbours – H.G. Wells
Charlie and the Carob Factory – Roald Dahl
James and the Slightly Larger Than Average Peach – Roald Dahl
and this one’s for Teacup:
Harry Potter and the Ordinary Pebble = J.K. Rowling
Congratulations to Tennyson ee Hemingway, and to Imaginary Reviewer (who, it seems to me, can simply elevate himself to a tie for first by saying it happened). When I get a minute, I’d actually like to write one of these myself:
The Well Thought Of Bible – King James, et al
Captain Corelli’s Ukulele – Louis de Bernieres
The Quebecois Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
Dante’s Toaster Oven – Dante Alighieri
Travels With My Sears Order Desk Receptionist – Graham Greene
Sugar (Soda & Candy to the uninitiated), I laughed at your ‘A Christmas Haiku’. I think I read that, in fact, probably from Charles Dickens’ fortune cookie-writing days:
Here Comes Santa Claus
Looks like he’s got Scrooge’s bird
How’s your leg doing, Tim?
Let’s see now:
George’s generic copy of the original medicine – Roald Dahl
The Fully clothed and the fairly ill – Norman Mailer
The Breeze in the Weeds – Kenneth Grahame
Visible Vacant Lots – Italo Calvino
And that’s about all we have time for.
Marvellous. Simply marvellous. And a wonderful haiku thrown in, to boot, by Mr Green; fortunately I was not tasting a hot beverage this time.
Thank you all; when I began my idiocies I had no idea how generously people would share their brilliance and humour. I’m overawed.
Announcement in the next post.
Bugger, that’s what I get for not reading all the comments… sorry TIR, I swear I was not copying you!!! Yours is much better anyway.
Also, Cooper: “How’s your leg doing, Tim?” – I about died laughing!
[...] said that, I do at least owe a final podium for Bargain Basement Part I and Part II. The quality was as high and heroic as ever; and to be honest I can’t slip a [...]