Playtime

Got this from our buddy, the Margin Alien, who got it in the mail from Anvar Alikhan, and we decided it needed a place in the sun. Or at least in the sweetness and light this blog radiates. (If you know where it originates from, do tell)
Change one letter in a book title and you get a whole new story..

The Bobbit
Small man with big feet tries frantically to find someone in Middle Earth who can re-attach his penis.

The Catcher in the Rue
Sensitive French kid walks the cold Parisian streets, filled with angst. He has a beret with big earflaps, which he insists on wearing backwards.
The Gropes of Wrath
Sexual harrassment in the Depression.

One Hundred Bears of Solitude
Alas, there are only about 8 dozen of them left in Colombia today.

The God of Small Thongs
Arundhati Roy's haunting story of a South Indian lingerie tycoon.

The Fridges of Madison County
The history of refrigeration in Iowa.

Sour Man in Havana
Disgruntled tourist in cold war Cuba.

Uselyss
700 pages of drivel.

The Sound and the Furry
The only really useful guide to healthy animals in the American Deep South ...

Meanwhile, from the Comments section (these were all via a comments plug-in, now defunct, because Blogger did not have native comments; thankfully I saved them) and the inbox, here's some contributions.

From Hurree Babu at Kitabkhana:

Rave New World
Aliens land on earth and flee when they discover the barbaric earthling practice of clubbing

Animal Form
Snowball and Napoleon take over the classroom

To Bill A Mockingbird
From the old South, a tale of racist corporations out to bankrupt a fine and upright man by overcharging him for everything

The Wind in the Pillows
Tragic love story centering around what happens when flatulent hero sleeps with head the wrong way around

Mom Jones
Chicklit goes grey when a dissatisfied suburban housewife decides to craft her own picaresque adventure

Withering Heights
The king of the killer review gets his comeuppance on the moors

The Call of the Mild
The ultimate gerbil adventure story

From mjones of scribblingwoman:

Spamela
Young girl of modest background rises to fame and fortune by selling generic Viagra on the internet.

The Dairy of Samuel Pepys
The comprehensive manual for dairy farmers.

Sensei and Sensibility
After her sister is seduced by a rake, a young woman journeys to a monastery to learn martial arts before seeking revenge.

Greet Expectations
The story of a young man who goes to Edinburgh seeking to better himself.

From vivian:

The Starch for the Perfect Language
Prescriptivism runs rampant in this rejoinder to Umberto Eco' s entertaining novel.

Boing and Nothingness
Don't bounce too high.

From aurora of garlic and gravy:

Lucky Jam
a story of hardship and marmalade

The Raves of Steel
robots get into hip hop

From R at Words in a waltz

The Ford of the Rings
Where rubber meets the middle-earth road

From bArt:

Brainspotting
A stunningly raw insight into the search of one TV journalist for an IQ above 40 in a Miss Universe Beauty Pageant.

The Scarlet Wimpernel
The boring expolits of a sunburnt, ageing English actor and his pet whore

Finnegan's Cake
700 more pages of half-baked drivel

The World According to Carp
A very weird tale of a goldfish whose mom shagged a vegetable

Block Beauty
The biography of a ghetto-born juvenile criminal who finally finds fame and fortune playing defence for the L A Lakers

From Anwar Alikhan and friends, via the margin alien:

Of Human Bandage
Medical treatise on early skin grafting techniques.

Our Mutual Fiend
Turns out Silas Wegg and Mr Venus have sold their soul to the same minor demon.

Lord of the Flues Group
of errant schoolboys get stuck up a chimney.

The Unbearable Lightness of Boeing
Spiritual awakenings in airports.

Lady Chatterley's Liver
Minor gentry drinking too much.

Animal Fart
Radical thoughts on alternative energy sources.

The Man Who mistook His Wife for a Cat
Miaow.

The Complete Woks of Shakespeare
The masterwork of the man who introduced Chinese cooking to Elizabethan England.

Of Rice and Men
Autobiography of above.

Men and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Proofreader cocks up million-selling opportunity.

The Red Badger of Courage
A heroic small mammal's exploits during the American Civil War.

Slaughterhouse Jive
You work it out.

Atlas Drugged
Turns out that he was on steroids all the time. (Hmm, that figures.)

The Wife of Johnson
Boswell's neglected biography of the great lexicographer's spouse (3 vols, 877pp).

Finnegan’s Cake
Long stream of consciousness novel about a Dublin baker.

Sing Lear
Musical Shakespeare.

To Hove and Have Not
A tale of penury on the Sussex coast.

Paradise Loft
Milton redecorates his Clerkenwell conversion in the latest trendy style.

The Old Man and the Pea
An epic struggle set in a kitchen garden.

The Cruel Pea Sequel to above.
A House for Mr Tiswas
Chris Tarrant searches for new accommodation.

Bride and Prejudice
Lizzie gets married in Chapter One. Darcy doesn't like the look of the vicar. A very short novella.

Lord of the Pings
A humble hobbit saves the world in a final climactic game of table tennis against the Dark Lord.

A Secret Gent
Russian emigre hides his class origins in C19 London.

Bridget Jones’ Dairy
Single woman decides to sell butter and milk

Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A reworking of Shakespeare's classic in the subculture of 1970's USA

As I Lay Dyeing
Experimental account of relaxed hairdresser.

Kiss Me Mate
Musical rendering of coming-out story in Elizabethan England

The Catcher in the Wye
The angler’s guide to Wales

Claudius the Mod
Grave's tale of debauchery, incest and madness in Brighton.

Shot the Dog
Early learning book introducing children to guns and rifles, and offering ideas for suitable game

Ann of the Greek Gables
A child's guide to classical influences on architecture

Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire
(c) Wisden MCCLBW

Mansfield Pork
Repressed desires and nice frocks on a North Nottinghamshire pig farm.

Watch 22
Those who end up on the Midnight Watch tend to go mad if left there for any great length of time.

Where the Wild Thongs Are
Small boy visits island of untamed underwear.

Aspects of the Navel
E.M. Forster introspects

Sods and Lovers
Miner's son grows up to be turf cutter, but loves his old mother a bit too much

The Sub Also Rises
Hemingway’s final, semi-autobiographical novel about hunting German U-boats in the Caribbean. (Later re-published as Islands in the Stream)

Nuked Lunch
William S. Burroughs experiments with microwave cookery. And drugs, of course.

String Awakening
Wedekind's shocking yet sensitive account of the coming of age of a small ball of twine.

Finnegan’s Cake
Joyce's take on Proust

Hairy Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The plot is the same, except that Hogwarts is now a college of Ceramic Arts and the hero has a beard.

American Psyche
A scientific examination of the inner life of the modern American, told through the metaphor of pornographic violence.

The Brother Karamazov
Black power explodes in Tsarist Russia (with soundtrack)

Jif on a Winter's Night
Calvino's cure for the common cold

Homage to Catatonia
George Orwell’s introduction to altered states, reached through meditation and/or drugs

Read Souls
Gogol's epic about a psychic serf in Tsarist Russia

Pert Goriot
Balzac's tragic tale of an 18th century Parisian nymphet.

The Turn of the Shrew
Terrifying Gothic tale of what happens when small furry critters turn mean and nasty.

From the margin alien:

BEING, BEING
Frolicksome '60s comedy about existentialists swapping theories and airhostesses* while flying around the world. (*it was a 'sixties comedy and hence cheerfully unconcerned about attitudes that would be heinously sexist today)

And we came up with:
Jurassic Pork
Stars Miss Piggy. Kermit guests as amphibian with a taste for the Other White Meat.

Bone With The Wind
Rhett follows his libido.

The Princess Ride
Another set of Princess Di revelations. The butler did it, apparently.

A Suitable Toy
A comprehensive guide to Christmas shopping on the internet.

Vernon Dog Little
Dyslexic boy framed for incident in the city pound.

A Stud in Scarlet
Holmes helps a metrosexual accused of a crime of fashion.

From Facebook comments

Anuradha Srikantan

Angels and Lemons-
citric story about a secret society that wants to destroy the Vatican using a antimatter laced lemonade.

Kavitha Rao

A Tale of Two Titties
a bodiceripper. Love triangle starring two Bollywood starlets and the plastic surgeon that came between them.

Samit Basu

Unaccustomed Darth
A space-wandering Dark Side overlord's bittersweet reacquaintance with his roots.

Tuna Julia and the Scriptwriter
An old man, a sea, and how a fish inspired the greatest film of all time.

The Whining
horror novel featuring the serial butchery of Indian writers in English

The Moor's Last High
Rushdie's trippy beat novel set around the jails of Dubai

Half A Wife
mixed-race mixed-gender mix-up by VSN

Who Moved My Cleese?
the shocking financial scandal behind the Monty Python breakup

Five Joint Someone
Chetan Bhagat's drug memoir

The Old Man and the Sex
sequel to Marquez' Melancholy Whores

Sea of Poopies
Sewage management in the Raj era, an epic saga.

Nilanjana S Roy

Swish Family Robinson
rugged adventures in the fashion world.

Canterbury Pales
lament by G Chaucer in which he argues that no guid fiction will ever emerge from ye olde england again.

The Old Man and the Tea
Stirring tale about the fight to the death between an aging warrior and his nurse over the question of whether he may or may not have a second cuppa.

Jury
Rushdie's bitter epic is a savage onslaught that rips apart the secret world of literary prizemakers, who all have cojones smaller than his.

A Suitable Bob
V Seth's tender romance raises a toast to gay marriage in just 4,000 pages.

Nitoo Das

My Game is Bed
Miniature beds write about the tricks played on them by love, art, death

The Shadow Vines
The saga of a spectral, carnivorous vine as it moves hungrily through Calcutta, Bangladesh and London.

Pout of Africa
A white woman’s sexual escapades in deepest Kenya

Fart of Darkness
Theory of the hidden fart

Zone Air
An orphan plane company comes into its own

Hard Fines
Ah! Class struggle!

The Lust of the Mohicans
A colonial epic of promiscuous beauty

The Pound and the Puri
The economics of globalisation

Or-lund-dough
How a man can turn into a woman: explained in three easy steps!

The Pun also Rises
Self-explanatory

Pradipta Sarkar

Lust Girls
Merely correcting the proofing error


Creme and Punishment
A hard-hitting story of fetish

The Blousetrap
The tale of a young tailor's adventures in suburban India

Peter Man
happened when Peter finally grew up

The Soya Factor
An Indian woman's struggles with love and cuisine

The Snatcher in the Rye
The cereal fights back

Exodust
Same story. But the villains are vamps

American Pods
A tale of myth, magic and peas

A Rich Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A cautionary tale about what happens when you're picky about your rides

Me:

Kuri
A graphic cookbook.

Thin Fish
What happened when Barun forgot to stock up on fish food.

A Matter of Paste
Arts & Crafts workbook, sponsored by Pidlite.

Mostly Charmless
The memoirs of VSN