Heard Any Good Books Lately?

Students hopelessly behind in required reading for their classes have long relied on Cliffs Notes, synopses of great books ranging from Homer to Hemingway. In 80 to 100 pages, the notes neatly summarize dramatic highlights and offer concise literary analysis geared to the questions that might appear on exams.

Now Cliffs is marketing the ultimate shortcut for harried students: 45-min. audio cassettes billed as "companions" to twelve such standard assignments as Wuthering Heights and the Odyssey. The tapes incorporate dramatizations of key scenes and brief lectures on their meaning.

Introduced in August, 200,000 copies have been sold in 2,000 bookstores for $7.95 each. Four more tapes will be added to the series this fall. Cliffs President Richard Spellman, who hopes that these miniclasses will appeal to adults as well as students, notes that basically the tapes are designed for people who do not have time to read. Stephen Colbert, manager of a Waldenbooks store in the Ford City Shopping Center in Chicago, calls the tapes a panic buy, particularly for procrastinating high school students whose parents drag them in. Says he: "It's Tuesday night and the kid needs to have it by tomorrow, and the parent always says, 'This is the last time you'll do this.' "