The Digested Read

by JohnCrace (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.25

  What do Pamela Stephenson's Bravemouth, Ian McEwan's Saturday and Darren Gough's Dazzler have in common? They've all been properly cut down to size in John Crace's Digested Read. Each week in the Guardian, the reader's champion takes the book that's produced the most media hype and gleefully puts paid to the publisher's claims of pure gold. In 500 bitingly satirical words he retells the story while pointing his pen at the clunky plot, stylistic tics and pretensions to Big Ideas. Nothing and no one is sacred in his irreverent pastiche. Whether it's Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Dave Pelzer's The Privilege of Youth or Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety, after reading these miniature gems, no book will ever seem quite the same again.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.25

  The second volume of John Crace's Digested Read carries on where the first volume left off. Naomi Wolf, Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, Michel Houellebecq, Tony Parsons, AA Gill, Stephen Hawking, Liz Jones...even the Bible - no one escapes Crace's brilliant pastiche, as every clunky plot device and pretentious stylistic tic of the latest over-hyped book is exposed in 500 hilarious words. Crace goes where the reviewers fear to tread to serve up his own rare mix of stylish intelligence and humour. As John Sutherland, chair of last year's Booker Prize, says: Unlike with other forms of digestion, what comes out of John Crace's Digested Read is often a great deal better than what went in .