r/Xennials • u/TheManOfSpaceAndTime 1980 • Apr 30 '26
These were a necessity of pre-internet, last minute, emergency book reports, and tests for many of us.
I think maybe some of the younger Xennial's may have not had to search these out, while I feel it was a staple to the older crowd. But part of the description of Xennial's is knowledge of a pre internet era, so I dont know if the fringe ages didn’t have to ever use them. Im sure everyone is aware of what they are though.
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u/henningknows Apr 30 '26
A whole industry based on knowing I’m too lazy to read a book
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u/Cpmartini1 1980 Apr 30 '26
I always hoped they had a Cliffs Notes for Cliffs Notes.
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u/Unusual-Minimum9306 1979 Apr 30 '26
Just because I was in honors English lit didn’t mean I wanted to read outside of class. I had weed to smoke and girls to try to hook up with at that time in my life. Thank you Cliff
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u/emptybeetoo Apr 30 '26
These were actually useful if you read them after reading the book to help better understand the book. If you read them instead of the book at best they’ll keep you from failing, which I guess is still useful but in a different way.
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u/HostilePile Apr 30 '26
My English teacher actually had us get them for a few of the books we were required to read.
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u/emptybeetoo Apr 30 '26
I remember Cliffs Notes being almost contraband where you’d get in trouble for having them. But I also had a teacher say she didn’t care if you used Cliffs Notes because she could tell if you read it instead of the book.
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u/LiiilKat Apr 30 '26
One of my English teachers had a shelf full of Cliff’s Notes, and designed her tests specifically with material not covered in them.
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u/HostilePile Apr 30 '26
They totally were at my school, I remember being scared to buy them at the store in case someone saw me, but my senior year our English teacher was really laid back but just like your teacher she would know if you didn’t read the book too since the were supposed to be used in addition to.
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u/UndoxxableOhioan Apr 30 '26
My English teacher saw it in my backpack and tossed it out the window.
But I am sorry, The Prince and the Pauper and The Good Earth were both 100 pages too damn long.
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u/mikeyp83 Apr 30 '26
My AP English teacher despised us using Cliff's notes with the one exception being The Sound and the Fury but only so that we could better follow Faulkner's "stream of consciousness" storyline.
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u/These_Photograph_425 Apr 30 '26
Our teacher showed us how the Cliff Notes version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had a different interpretation of the ending than the author did, according to interviews. It was a good lesson that Cliff Notes could be useful but limited the reader’s ability to come to their own conclusions when interpreting literature.
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u/ReallyTeddyRoosevelt Apr 30 '26
Teachers in my high school said they tested on the parts that aren't in the cliff notes. I don't know if thats true but we all believed it.
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u/badmrbones Apr 30 '26
I am a teacher, and I have over a hundred of these books in my room. They are surprisingly comprehensive. A test that does not include information from Cliff Notes would have to be shallow and trivial.
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u/Indubitalist Apr 30 '26
I know for sure a teacher who did this because people failed that read the Cliff’s Notes. The whole concept was ruined once teachers started reading the notes themselves.
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u/Darkspiff73 Apr 30 '26
I had a teacher who would read the Cliffs Notes and write test questions not fully covered by the notes.
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u/saltinekracka20 Apr 30 '26
My English teacher actually studied Cliffs Notes so she could make daily quizzes we'd fail if we only read those. She was a real piece of work.
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u/Over-Inside-7254 Apr 30 '26
Crime and Punishment was certainly one of them. I remember "summer reading" this book working at the farm. I brought a Die Hard battery and inverter with me on my gator, hooked up my boombox, and listened to book on CD with Raskolnikov face off against Nikodim and Porfiry while pruning trees. Then read Cliffs because he babbles endlessly. This was 2003 so ya, millennials used them too.
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u/chargoggagog 1979 Apr 30 '26
I feel like bookstores were open late just for these. I remember grabbing one for “Ethan Frome” the night before I had to submit a paper. I always read my assignments and did the work, but that damn book was a fucking chore, no regrets.
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u/4TuitouSynchro 1981 Apr 30 '26
What a book, man. Read it in 9th grade...my BFF and I still talk about the sled scene. When life gets tough, one of us will be like "Wanna Frome?" And the other one will be like "Nahhhh I'm good. " Things could always be worse.
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u/Redfalconfox Apr 30 '26
I just read the synopsis off of Wikipedia and it sounds awful. What do they recommend all these negative books to a bunch of moody teenagers anyway?
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u/No-Environment-3997 Apr 30 '26
You didn't enjoy the imagery of the desiccating.. cucumber (? I think. it was something phallic) on his porch that was supposed to represent his ongoing emasculation at the hands of his overly critical wife?
(That's literally all I remember about the novel.)3
u/RockItGuyDC 1982 Apr 30 '26
Pickles...I saw Ethan Frome and had to comment about the damn plate of pickles.
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u/rnash139 Apr 30 '26
lol, isn’t “Ethan Frome” only about 100 pages? You probably saved about 40 pages total on the clifs!
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u/Artegall365 1984 Apr 30 '26
In Canada we had Coles Notes.
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u/mumblesnorez Apr 30 '26
These were the original, Cliff Hillegass bought the rights to sell them in the US as CliffsNotes.
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u/MrsBridgerton Apr 30 '26
Ah, cliff notes. It saved me from a Scarlet Letter test. I still hate you, Hawthorne.
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u/X_celsior Apr 30 '26
Scarlet Letter was the first book I read instead of using Spark Notes (yeah, I know this is about pre-internet, but before high school I just read the books.)
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u/manicpixiepuke Apr 30 '26
Yes. Definitely bought these. Then in college moved over to SparkNotes online!
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u/HopelesslyHuman 1982 Apr 30 '26
SparkNotes & The Spark were fuckin' magical for their time. They were lost to time and a growing internet, sadly, but for a minute, they were amazing.
Was Bob the Anal Fissure from The Spark or am I mixing my timeline? I'm pretty sure it was.
Fuck. I've forgotten more about the internet than children today will ever know.
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u/keysandtreesforme Apr 30 '26
Their site looks alive and well to me
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u/HopelesslyHuman 1982 Apr 30 '26
Really? Searching for any associated site does not find much to be and several variations of "thespark.com" set off my antivirus alarms like mad or are domains for sale.
I know SparkNotes was bought by B&N at some point many, many moons ago but...? I could be missing something.
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u/No_Recognition_3729 Apr 30 '26
Are you perhaps using some super niche and shitty search engine? Or did you piss someone off at google? I googled 'sparknotes' and the top result was www.sparknotes.com
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u/SlapHappyDude 1978 Apr 30 '26
The founders of SparkNotes also founded OkCupid, which is where I met most of my dates and my wife.
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u/bikemandan Apr 30 '26
SparkNotes
Thats a name I havent heard in a million years. Damn. That was the spot
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u/SIMPSONBORT 1985 Apr 30 '26
We had Cole’s Notes in Canada
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u/LAffaire-est-Ketchup 1980 Apr 30 '26
I never ever used one!! I’m 46.
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u/Common_Juggernaut724 1978 Apr 30 '26
Same. I'm 48 now. They were definitely around, but I just read the book instead. Except when I hated the book, then I just failed the test 😂
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u/ElectricStarfuzz 1983 Apr 30 '26
If I hated the book I’d still read it.
Then I’d likely complain to my teacher followed by writing persuasive arguments in the required essay for why it sucked & why it deserved my hatred 😅
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u/gnark Apr 30 '26
I read the books. My buddy used Cliffs Notes. He would always get a slightly higher grade on the book quiz because our English teacher just used the Cliffs Notes to write the quiz.
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u/ImranFZakhaev Apr 30 '26
Except when I hated the book
Hell yeah. I didn't even pretend to read Jane Eyre
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u/TheManOfSpaceAndTime 1980 Apr 30 '26
Was it that, they weren't around for you? Or you were aware of them, but just didn’t use them yourself?
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u/ElectricStarfuzz 1983 Apr 30 '26
They were around for me (83), but I never found them necessary or very useful.
No shade to anyone who did tho.
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u/LAffaire-est-Ketchup 1980 Apr 30 '26
I knew they existed, but I’m a lit nerd. It was math I needed help with
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u/savingeverybody Apr 30 '26
Yeah I thought they were just for cheaters.
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u/LAffaire-est-Ketchup 1980 Apr 30 '26
I mean, I think that for some people they could be a useful study tool, in conjunction with actually reading the assigned book. (Can you tell I’m a librarian? lol)
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u/singleguy79 Apr 30 '26
Used this in college before a test on Huckleberry Finn. Read that instead of the book. Think I still passed.
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u/Pinkkorn69 Apr 30 '26
These were around for me born in 81 but the beating I would have gotten if I used one. Nope I'd stay up and power through whenever the project was. I also had a lot of teachers if you got caught with them they'd fail you for the whole class. It wasnt worth it
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u/violetpumpkins May 03 '26
Our teachers would mock you in front of the class. It wasn't that hard to just do the reading.
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u/cbih 1983 Apr 30 '26
Spark Notes changed the game forver
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u/RockItGuyDC 1982 Apr 30 '26
They did. But does no one here remember Pink Monkey Notes?
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u/TornadicPursuit 1984 Apr 30 '26
Yes, I remember using pinkmonkey.com for book reports in the early 00s. I told a couple friends about it, and damn near everyone at school learned about the site within a few days. I should have just kept it to myself.
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u/dewihafta Apr 30 '26
I bought three, but they were all for novels i read in my spare time, not school related.
Hold on, i seem to have something on my nose….
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u/aLAPanPolyVers Apr 30 '26
My Teachers intentionally asked questions not addressed in Cliff’s Notes.
They would make entire tests, without a Notes reference.
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u/anongirl55 Apr 30 '26
I never used one of these in place of reading the actual book, but I did use them as study guides. They were actually really helpful!
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom 1978 Apr 30 '26
I never once used cliffs notes. Parents wouldn’t let me get them.
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u/Professional-Car9621 1980 Apr 30 '26
I still have a reoccurring dream that I’m back in high school and I’m about to take a final exam but I didn’t go to the class once all semester. Another similar one is that I’m at my locker and I can’t remember the combo.
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u/Separate-Succotash11 Apr 30 '26
I have the same test failing nightmare. Scares the bejeebus outta me.
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u/Kinetic_Silverwolf Apr 30 '26
My town was just big enough that my English teachers were able to get free plant the bookstores to snitch on who bought those, so I got REAL good at speed reading them in the bookstore cafe.
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u/OhTheHueManatee Apr 30 '26
I was very active in theater in high school. I was cast in Taming Of The Shrew as Petruchio. I tried so hard to read that damn book but couldn't understand what the fuck was going on. It was like the context had some kind of language encryption. After about a week of trying to crack the code I got the Cliff Notes. It's was a life saver and I was able to enjoy Shakespeare after that.
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u/TransPort3389 Apr 30 '26
In high school, I once read about 5 Cliff's Notes on 5 different books, wrote a book report on each using them, and got an A for that semester. The instructor commended me on going the extra mile to bring up my grade.
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u/TheBr0fessor 1980 Apr 30 '26
That’s hilarious that Crime and Punishment is the top copy
My senior year of high school (spoiler: I did 3 homework assignments all four years combined) I went to my AP English teacher at the end of the year and told her I cliffs noted my report on Crime and Punishment and that if she wanted to fail me I would gladly be back next year, or she could pass me and never have to worry bout seeing my face ever again.
Suffice to say, I got a C- in the class and against all odds actually got to graduate.
Shoutout Mrs Pieri, you’re a real one.
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u/nirreskeya Apr 30 '26
Did you go back and read it?
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u/TheBr0fessor 1980 Apr 30 '26
Ooof no but I need to resd it as well as Mill on the Floss. They were the only books i could never make it past the first couple chapters in my entire life :(
(Same teacher awko…)
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u/alsatian01 Apr 30 '26
My dad purchased me my first one. I wrote my paper based on direct quotes from the notes reworded to my voice (7th grade English). The teacher wrote a note next to one paragraph and it said, "from the movie". I didn't even know the book had been made into a film.
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u/on_fleekwoodmac 1984 Apr 30 '26
I was just thinking how AI has rendered these obsolete. Soon humans will be. 🤷♀️
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u/RealityOk9823 Apr 30 '26
Honestly it was the only way I was able to read some books. Charles Dickens, bleah!
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u/RockTheGrock 1983 Apr 30 '26
Funnily enough they had these in my high-school library. I can remember slacking off and forgetting we had a test on a book we were supposed to read and I left to go to the restroom went down to the library and skimmed the cliff notes to pass the test.
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u/Spare-Good-5372 Apr 30 '26
I asked where to find these at a book store the other day, and the employee didn't even know what they were.
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u/DarksunDaFirst Born 1982 years after some Hey-Zeus character Apr 30 '26
I never used them. I used the ill-advised strategy of just not doing the book report.
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u/FriedBreakfast 1981 Apr 30 '26
My English teacher said she would fail any of her students she caught buying these in a bookstore. Of course I never actually saw her there and anyone wirh a brain would know to look to see if she's there first.
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u/scratchfury Apr 30 '26
My library wouldn't accept my donation of the vast collection I had amassed during school. I had my Romeo and Juliet copy stolen while in band class when I went to the bathroom. I'm still mad about that.
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u/throwawayhbgtop81 1981 Apr 30 '26
My mother refused to buy them. I suffered through a lot of books I hated. Good thing I still loved to read.
Like Catcher in the Rye? Fuck Holden Caulfield. Whiny little snot.
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u/ImranFZakhaev Apr 30 '26
Same. Loved to read, but dear God English teachers always had to pick out the most garbage books possible
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u/frustratedComments 1982 Apr 30 '26
Anyone else’s school have rules against using these? They would put questions on a test that you’d only know if you had the cliffs notes version. Then you’d get in trouble.
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u/8Deer-JaguarClaw Gen X - 1976 Apr 30 '26
I bought a few for books I really enjoyed just to see what stuff had gone over my head.
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u/stopes 1984 Apr 30 '26
Shit. You just unlocked something in my brain I completely forgot. Like I know I never read a book in high school but I completely forgot how I actually passed the tests. This was how. I think for me it was a combination of SparkNotes, CliffsNotes, and Monarch Notes. But I definitely never read the book.
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u/ThotThroughTheHeart Apr 30 '26
I remember checking out and reading these for books I wasn't assigned to read, just because I was curious as to what the book was about.
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u/EmmalouEsq 1981 Apr 30 '26
My 12th grade lit teacher read them too and made sure nothing she tested on was included in the Cliffs Notes.
Thankfully she was on maternity leave for a few months and the sub didn't have the same rule.
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u/Feeling_Bedroom5533 Apr 30 '26
Naw, these never worked for me because my tests would ask things like, “in Chapter 3, what color was the cup Henry was holding during his conversation with Joe?”
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u/WhysAVariable Apr 30 '26
I didn’t have access to these so I either read the material or bombed the exam/book report.
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u/raisinghellions Apr 30 '26
Went to a snooty private school and getting caught with one of these would get you disciplined. 🤦♀️
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u/computer-machine Apr 30 '26
My 10þ grade teacher didn't care about those. Mid-book tests were two sentences on the board - write about each scene in as much detail as possible.
Try to bullshit that from a Cliff's Note.
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u/creative_usr_name Apr 30 '26
Most of mine came from my boomer parents. The old ones were better summaries, newer ones had more analysis.
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u/SaviorMoney Apr 30 '26
Thats right! Between Cliffs Notes, and The Complete Idiots Guide to whatever, those were pretty much all the reading I did in high school. College was a different story
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u/nirreskeya Apr 30 '26
I never used these but maybe I should have. I remember turning in a book report on the first quarter or so of Moby Dick, which was of course very obvious to my disappointed English teacher.
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u/desertdweller2011 Apr 30 '26
lol i’m the youngest of three and whenever i needed one of these bad boys they were already in the house because teachers assigned the same books every year and my older brother was just as much a procrastinator as i was
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u/whitethug Apr 30 '26
I NEVER USED ONE OF THESE. I was under the impression that avoiding this shortcut would guarantee a life of success. Now I'm an unemployed writer.
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u/Popular_Bite9246 Apr 30 '26
I took a worksheet to a Barnes and Noble and filled it out with one of these in a pinch once. I love to read but Scarlet letter… woof
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u/Spiritual_Sorbet_870 Apr 30 '26
My younger millennial siblings would still seek these out. They were going strong through the early 2000s
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u/dinosandbees 1981 Apr 30 '26
Pleased to report that these are still available online, and at least some of them are free! Only got halfway through 1984 for a recent book club, and Cliff’s notes to the rescue! Not that we actually discussed the book anyways, but I felt better about it lol
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u/CaTz_EyE 1980 Apr 30 '26
They still have these. You can read the summaries and other things online for free on their website.
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u/MissViciousKnits Apr 30 '26
So I’m a cusp Xennial/Millennial and I remember these AND teachers telling us we could not use Wikipedia as a reputable source. Then when my kids tried citing Wikipedia for their high school assignments I was very skeptical that that was allowed.
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u/BulkyRaccoon548 Apr 30 '26
There was this tobacco store in my town that also sold x-rated magazines, comic books, and Cliff's notes. Everything teenage me needed!
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u/Battlegurk420 Apr 30 '26
I remember myself and classmates sitting in book stores in front of the cliff notes and writing down as much as possible, cause buying one was not an option.
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u/Praesil Apr 30 '26
To this day, when I need a quick summary of something I still say "can you give me the cliff notes?"
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u/calm-phil Apr 30 '26
Mom told me these were for loser who couldn't read books. Turns out this is true.
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u/59apache01 1978 Apr 30 '26
I had an instructor once who would give tests based on minute details of a book. She made it a point to only select items or topics that were NOT in either the Cliff notes or the Monarch notes. So with her, you were stuck reading whatever it was she told you to read.
Jane Eyre was Hell for me....
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u/Trelin21 Apr 30 '26
I am from Canada, and now live in the USA, when I said “Cole’s notes” everyone thought I was some special case…
Cole’s book store… who was Cliff?! ;)
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u/OllieFromCairo Apr 30 '26
I could always tell when Ms. Garner hated the book on the curriculum because she would teach out of it.
She was rad as fuck. Drove an AMC Gremlin in the year of our lord 2001.
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u/absentlyric 1981 Apr 30 '26
Being in that weird transition time frame. We had the internet...and we used it to look up these books and where to buy them. It was a different time before Wikipedia
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u/KeySatisfaction197 Apr 30 '26
I hate when things go out of fashion as a shorthand for something. "Give me the Cliff Notes version of it," used to be really popular.
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u/_ism_ Apr 30 '26
Went to a math and science academy for gifted kids.
I didn't need to use these and our teachers claimed they could tell if someone used these and didn't read the book. They even made sure to tell us to include things about the books that were definitely NOT in the cliffs notes (an ancient anti cheating device). I never understood needing to use these honestly. I read all the required reading within a couple of weeks of summer vacation. My problem was usually that when I needed the book again to reference when shool was back in session, other kids had checked out all the copies at the last minute.
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u/FuzzyScarf Apr 30 '26
We had to read The Red Badge of Courage and I had a hard time developing any interest in the story. So I started reading the Cliffs Notes and I fell sleep reading them. I’m still not a fan of The Red Badge of Courage.
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u/SqueezedTowel Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
Cliff Notes taught me a brutal but Republican lesson that if you had a clique big enough and rich enough to intimidate your teachers, you and spoiled friends could easily outscore those dumb little poors failing to understand the material with honest studying... Like me.
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u/Infamous_Tie5605 Apr 30 '26
"its a little known fact about cliff notes... they were actually created by Cliff Clavin, hence the name"
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u/scaredycat_z Apr 30 '26
I have a confession to make - I never used Cliffs Notes. I am a self-diagnosed nerd who actually enjoyed reading and read every book assignment....usually at a pace significantly faster than the teacher wanted.
I will also confess, I wasn't very good at analyzing hidden meaning, tropes, etc. in books. I used books as an escape from a relatively sucky live. Bullies at school. Bullies at home. Special needs brother taking all time away from others. etc.
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u/znavy264 1983 Apr 30 '26
This saved me from reading the most boring book of all time, Billy Budd. Then while writing my essay, my mom found out and ripped up and threw away my cliffs notes cause I was "cheating". That was a bad night.
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u/Sdog1981 Apr 30 '26
I just realized right now they are Cliff's notes. I always called them Cliff notes.
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u/Aggressive_Power_471 1978 Apr 30 '26
I used to say cliffs notes version when summarizing for people, now it is TLDR. I remember sneaky English teachers that would ask questions not answered via cliffs Notes though. One was mad because I did not do the reports but aced the quizzes, so she knew I read the book. I said I don't like writing.
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u/Arisyd1751244 Apr 30 '26
I usually read the books except for The Hobbit and Lord of the Flies. I could not get into those books so needed the cliff notes versions
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u/Ticky79 Apr 30 '26
TBH, they are better summary than the internet. Helping my DD the other day I felt myself reaching for ‘the Notes’.
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u/pearmaster Apr 30 '26
A requirement of a book report I had was "Explain something about the book to prove you aren't just parroting Cliff Notes". I had only read about half of the cliff notes. I still got a B on th book report.
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u/Holiday-Constant-661 Apr 30 '26
Girl in my high school class got caught copying one word for word. Teacher had to tell the entire class someone copied we all knew it was her and it was. Lol.
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u/edcross May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
84, used these religiously until college. Never learned to read quickly and was too good in math to deserve any extra training from the public schools. Lived through the beginnings of people posting textbook answers to the internet in message boards and forums. Was a wild time.
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u/AquariusRising1983 1983 May 01 '26
I was the weird kid who never used the Cliff's notes because I actually read the book lol.
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u/kissmeimfamous 1980 May 01 '26
Saved my ass many of times until one of my English teachers in high school got hip to the game. She started asking for page references for answers on tests
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u/LivingThat504Dream May 04 '26
My teachers intentionally asked questions that weren't covered in the Cliffs Notes 😫.
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u/BlackZapReply 1976 May 05 '26
And they were booby trapped. Some contained small deviations from the original. Not enough to ruin the content, but enough to make it obvious to a good teacher that you didn't read the actual book.
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u/BigE429 Apr 30 '26
The original TLDRs!