NEWS: Save Time By Reading Shorter Books

CULTURE: Save Time By Reading Shorter Books

With the constantly high demands by broadcasters, the internet, music, and sports, it becomes harder and harder to find time for the simple things: namely a cup of tea and a good book. Hell, even tea's moved on and been replaced by a grande caramel double mocha with soya milk. So, books are moving on too: publishers are going creating books that are more accessible. The classics are becoming shorter:

Bluffer's guides have existed for quite a while: Passing Time In The Loo was published in 1999, and contains two page summaries of around 120 classics. It's not just classics that are recieving this treatment: the recent besteseller "novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" will be republished in a three volume form, mirroring the Victorian novels that were originally published in serial form. Even the science books can't escape, with the most popular scientific title in recent years, "A Brief History Of Time" will be cut down, despite having been republished in the late 90s with an illustrated version

You'd think that with rising book sales, this isn't a necessary step: however, when Victoria Beckham ("Posh Spice") admitted she hadn't read a book (and, let's face it, she's not too busy these days), statistics backed her up by saying that 1 in 4 adults in the UK does not read books at all. So, any steps are better than nothing: it's better to read something than not at all, isn't it?

Hey, human race! Ready to get even stupider?!

I am already signing up for a course in reduced literature. First lecture:

Wow, in other words people are saying that they know what some of the world's most brilliant minds were really getting at, so they can just hack out big pieces of it to make it "more accessible."

This is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard.

What next, TRR (Total Request Read?)

So Spot's guide to the classics will be out next year?

No, but his books will be down to just three (very thick) pages. Sources close to Spot say he's apoplectic (means mad).

This reminds me of the Dummy's Guide books, of which I've owned a few and have never, ever found the least bit helpful or useful. In fact, I'm usually far more aware of the university professor who wrote it picking up their commission check than I am of any of the concepts I am supposed to be learning.

[Edited on Sep 12, 2005 by Jeff_Fries]

Fucking hell. . .

This story reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and the dumbing down of culture that Bradbury talks about in that novel, and the stupid people it creates. However, since that bit of wisdom comes from a book, I doubt it's gotten around.

As long as the originals are still published, and the condensed versions are clearly marked, I don't have a problem with this. People who want to be properly educated will still read the originals, people who are stupid will remain stupid.

They'll just gloat about how they're not stupid because they've read the classics.

Actually, I've just remembered that we read an annotated version of Great Expectations in my sophomore English class. I transfered to AP English shortly after, but I suspect that for some of my classmates, it was the only time they'd read a book that wasn't on the best sellers shelf of the pre-teen section.

I don't know that being made to read twenty pages a night instilled a love of great literature into anybody, but I'm sure that some of them wouldn't have gotten through it if we'd had to read the unabridged version.

From the sound of the article, war and peace isn't getting shorter, just retranslated in to more contemporary sounding language.

If all you complaining smarties really want to read a classic, learn russian first so you can enjoy it as it was meant to be read, otherwise you're taking the dumbed-down "other language" route. Morons.

Reminds me of a bumper sticker that I saw that said "If it ain't King James, It ain't Bible." Maybe I'll make one that says if it ain't ancient hebrew it ain't bible and go drive in front of that guy.

As for A Briefer History of Time, you can hardly call people stupid for not really understanding the more complex concepts in the original book. On the other hand, there are some people who won't understand the concepts of quantum physics no matter how dumbed down you make it.

This is disgusting.

It pains the purist (= snob) in me to say this, but I'd rather people heard Sixpence None The Richer's version of "There She Goes" than that they never heard the song ever.

Reading seven hundred pages that were written with a completely different audience in mind can exhaust your energy and curiosity, and if you just end up scanning lines and turning pages, that's not smart, it's intellectual pride or intellectual gluttony.

On the subject of abridged books, I'm hugely impressed with something Brian Eno did:

[Edited on Sep 11, 2005 by headphones]

Another nice effort was A Humument.

[Edited on Sep 11, 2005 6:03PM]

Not by Eno, though, of course.

I saw the movie.

But that's because Sixpence None The Richer are so awesome!

You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress...

There's another version?

Isn't "A Brief History of Time" only like 120 pages to begin with?

The saddest thing about this is how few commenters in this thread actually read the original article.

Does it say War and Peace will be abridged?

No, it doesn't. Briggs carried out his work with the aim of making Tolstoy's novel read less like a 19th Century English novel. What's wrong with translating the work with a different audience in mind? The existing translations were designed to be accessible to readers of the Brontes and Dickens. Briggs, like dozens of other translators working on literary classics from other languages, is challenging the cultural bias of extant translations. There's absolutely no mention on his part of simplifying the work, only reformulating its intended audience.

Will Susanna Clarke's novel be re-written?

No. It'll be broken up into several volumes, just as was done to novels such as Vanity Fair... and War and Peace. Even Lord of the Rings got this treatment. This is nothing new to the world of publishing.

The only book the article mentions that will be abridged is Hawking's--and the literary value of each sentence he laid upon the page is dubious at best. He's trying to convey concepts, not human drama or poetics, so if someone can carry out that task in less space than he did, what's wrong with letting them?

[Edited on Sep 11, 2005 10:09PM]

Yeah, the Slipknot original.