I was in an op shop the other day and they had several of the Readers Digest Condensed Book volumes on the shelves. I knew they’d been popular a while back but I had no idea they’d released so many of them.
Anyway, seeing them all got me wondering - I’ve often wondered what the point of an abridged edition of a fiction book actually is. I get an “edited highlights” version of weighty non-fiction books on technical or historical or esoteric subjets, but a John Grisham or Catherine Cookson novel?
They’re not especially hefty to begin with, so what’s the point in abridging them, even for an anthology?
The point was so that the busy, busy person could read the highlights of the book and talk about it knowingly, without having to waste too much of his/her precious time.
Of course, nowadays we get Giant Bloated Books which could really, really use some condensing…
Beats hell out of me. If I like a book, I want more of it, not less, and going on to read the unabridged version after reading the abridgement seems a bit anti-climactic to me.
I inherited a bunch of the Reader’s Digest Condensed versions from my mother-in-law’s estate. I read a couple of the stories and then donated the rest of the books. I didn’t see the point.
Although this
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Of course, nowadays we get Giant Bloated Books which could really, really use some condensing…
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is true. But a book that needs editing as much as they do on the Condensed Version is probably not a book I would like in the first place.
You’re completely missing the point. Abridged books aren’t for books you would LIKE. Abridged books are for books you FEEL YOU SHOULD READ/HAVE READ but aren’t actually interested in READING.
Heh, I’m reading that at the moment, and it’s taking a while! Makes me glad I have a Kindle, as carrying the full thing around doesn’t appeal. I don’t think I’d be anywhere near as interested in an abridged version, though, it’s the details and digressions that make it so fascinating.
The Reader’s Digest whole reason for being was to condense magazine articles into shorter versions so you could skim over the content of dozens of magazines. (Later, they started including original material). So it was not a big jump to do the same thing for books.
And nowadays, when you see people complaining that 19th Century novels are too long, anyone who could come up with a condensed version can do well; many audio books are condensed and sell very well.
You know, I never put that together. I used to read my Grandma’s Reader’s Digest when I was a kid and enjoyed the humour sections. Seems like a decent business model that got replaced by web aggregators like HuffPo.
That, of course, is the reason for the visual joke in the Simpsons at the headquarters of the Reader’s Digest clone of “Brevity is…wit.”
When I was a kid we had the Chronicles of Narnia on audio cassette, and each book was abridged to fit on one side. Years later, I think the most glaring one is probably Dawn Treader, as it cuts out everything after (if I remember correctly) Eustace being changed by Aslan to after leaving Ramandu’s island.
Abridgement in general has the uses you guys state, but the Readers Digest Condensed Books have another purpose–being able to fit four books into one larger book.
There are also books that are abridged for children. I remember that’s how I first A Pilgrim’s Progress. I don’t think I would have ever made it through the real thing had I not read the abridged version first.
There are also many other books I’ve read where I thought the author went on too long, and I wound up skimming, only to later find out I’d missed important and exciting stuff. If I’d had an abridged version, that would have not happened. I can always go back and read the original later.
Yeah, my impression is that Reader’s Digest Condensed Books were pitched at people who wanted to be Well Read—to be familiar with all the latest best-sellers and important books—but didn’t have the time or the inclination to read them all in their unabridged forms. Although they may have appealed to people who were poorer/slower readers (maybe they were dyslexic, or English wasn’t their first language) who would have had trouble reading the full book.
I think nowadays far more audiobooks are unabridged than used to be the case. I do think some of those long 19th century novels could benefit from some judicious trimming, as long as it’s done for the purpose of making the story flow better rather than for the purpose of getting the whole novel to fit onto two cassettes.
For me, I get curious when everyone seems to be going on and on about a book like 50 Shades of Grey. I have no interest whatsoever in reading it but I’m curious what all the hoopla is all about.
Well, as a kid I read some of the classics that RD abridged for young people. I liked most of them, so, knowing they were abridged I went in search of the uncut version. So I read Horatio Hornblower, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jane Eyre, and so on, in both versions.
Which reminds me of a story in my junior year of high school Spanish. We read a novel, El Sombrero de Tres Picos". It was a cheap, mass produced edition to make it affordable to classes. In the introduction they said three short portions had been excised to make it more suitable for young people.
Of course the first thing several of us did was head for the city library, to see if we could find out what lurid goodies we were missing. I did find it and was disappointed.
I just finished “An American Tragedy” (Audible version) thinking I had read it before, in college in an American literature of the 1920’s class. It’s a very long book, and I kept on thinking - I don’t even remember this part, all the way through. I realized the Prof had assigned us the abridged edition, probably because he knew we would never get through the whole thing but wanted us to know the book and author (Dreiser, if you don’t know).
Abridging helps a lot with non-fiction because it yanks the padding and repetition. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was so bloated, especially with a large typeface, wide margins, and heavy leading, that it could have been cut down to an article in Parade without losing anything.
Even the best could sometimes use some editing. Beethoven’s 6th Symphony is considerably shorter in Fantasia, and is tighter and, well, better. But it helps if your editor is Leopold Stokowski.
For the record, they released 232 of them. 326 if you also count Reader’s Digest Select Editions (they changed the name of the series in 1997). And they’re still being published.
