That might have had something to do with it – my mother always looked for opportunities to save money. But she could easily get many of those books at the library. I think that became her main source, and the reason she stopped getting the Reader’s Digest condensed books.
Just an aside here, but all of this talk of condensed books made me think of being back in (UK) junior school (so age about, oh, maybe 9), and there being a couple of shelves of books somewhat like this. So you would have Treasure Island, retold by (Name Lost In The Distant Past). So I guess they were condensed, simplified and (as necessary) censored.
So what? you ask. Well, eating lunch today, out of nowhere, a name I hadn’t thought of in more than fifty years came back to me. Retold by John Kennett. (Don’t ask me what I had for lunch though - I can’t remember.) But hey, yes, that’s what they had for young kids in the UK - here’s some of his oeuvre:
j
The thing is, DJ&MH is only 141 pages long in the original edition, and there’s nothing in it that has to be censored (the movies were actually racier than Stevenson’s novel). It’s pretty quick read, so why “condense” it?
Well, my impression was that they had been considerably shortened, possibly to make the length less intimidating for a nine year old; but it’s a long time since I read any of them, so I’m kinda guessing. I think the major purpose of retelling was to make them “suitable” for a child, whatever that means (but we’re talking 1960s, remember).
j
I read King Rat in high school. I remember there was a gay character who performed arousing stage shows (not campy or jokey) for the other POWs, and was pretty clearly functioning as a woman in the camp. I’m not a vet, and don’t know if the army would be okay selling that to soldiers, well before the time of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
That guy suicided at the end, didn’t her? Walking into the ocean to drown.
Yes, I read King Rat a few times, and Sean / Betty, who’s admired while playing a lovely woman in the plays in the camp, is shunned and mocked after the camp is liberated, and walks into the ocean to die. Very sad.
And I saw some recent RDCs at a thrift shop yesterday. They’re now called Reader’s Digest Select Editions: Reader's Digest Select Editions - Wikipedia
I remember reading a couple of those RD compilations, three books in one, when visiting a relative as a teen.
It is only now that this thread made me realise they were not the complete books… I remember thinking about at least one story that it was good and should’ve been a longer novel, lol.
We had a bunch of RDCBs in the house when I was growing up, and I remember that when I read them I hadn’t realized that it was possible to find unedited versions of the contents.
Occasionally when I was older I would find the original books and when I was reading them I would wonder why I didn’t remember certain scenes or story lines.
My grandparents had some RDCBs. The only one I remember reading is Touch the Devil and I don’t remember anything about it, other than it was an action story of some kind. It didn’t inspire me to read the unabridged version, either. Until now, I had assumed that it was old at the time I read it, but apparently it came out in 1982 and I read it some time in the '80s.
That bit was in the Jack Black version from a while back. Never read the book; assumed it was added for the movie. Well well.
Shortened, and the language was simplified. I read a kids’ version of Lorna Doone as a kid and adored it. In later years, I went to great lengths to find the full novel. OMG, is that book a slog. No wonder it’s not often reprinted. Also, in the kids’ edition, Lorna is a vibrant, charming young woman. In the original, she’s so passive I wonder if she’s supposed to have fallen headfirst off her horse.
Heh. I just remembered that one of the condensed novels in my parents’ collection of Reader’s Digest books was Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris. After my spouse recently saw the remake of this movie, she couldn’t believe that I had read that book, especially as a pre-teen.
I have been reading my uncondensed copy of The Day the World Ended, that arrived in the mail.
What I need to do now is find the RD version. I remember a lot of incidents in the book, but there are, I think, many anecdotes that were not mentioned as all. And there’s a lot more about the politics of Martinique, or at least a lot more detail,
It’s kind of seeing the movie Secretariat. You KNOW what the ending is but it’s still, suspenseful. And in this book it’s scary as Hell too. It’s so much like reading about Mt. Saint Helens, or Pompeii, as they blew out the side too.
Poof, you just died in an instant, and in incredible pain.
“The Day The World Ended” is a fantastic story. I knew about the prisoner who (barely!) survived, but not about the two other people who happened to be underground themselves when the volcano blew, and also the political issues that were going on at the time.
As I remember the RD version the politics were touched on but not to deeply. It was more about the economy, and how evacuation would have lost a lot of the richer folks money. Still, all about greed.