Brideshead Abbreviated
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, hilariously summarises the great - and not so great - classics of modern literature
From the Back Cover
'A genius and a madman. The meanest, funniest parodist alive' Joanna Briscoe
'I've read all these books at least twice - and now I've read John Crace's digested versions I wonder why I bothered' Will Self
John Crace's 'Digested Read' column in the Guardian has rightly acquired a cult following. Each week fans avidly devour his latest razor-sharp literary assassination, while authors turn tremblingly to the appropriate page of the review section, fearful that it may be their turn to be mercilessly sent up.
Now he turns his critical eye on 100 classics of the 20th century, offering bite-sized pastiches of everything from Mrs Dalloway to Trainspotting via Lolita, Ian Fleming and the Highway Code. Witty and sharp, this is essential reading both for those who genuinely love literature and for those who merely want to appear ridiculously well read.
'For the last 10 years "Digested Reads" have been reason enough to buy the Guardian' The Spectator
'A swift kick up the backside to some of modern literature's most iconic works' Sarah Waters
'Beautifully observed and poisonously cruel ... laugh-out-loud funny' The Lady
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
John Crace has made a name for himself as one of Britain's leading literary satirists with his "digested read" column in the Guardian newspaper. He takes a book and in about 900 words sums it up by mimicking and mocking the author's own style and voice. (You can see his digests of the latest new fiction and biographies here: www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/digestedread )
In this book, he turns his merciless critical eye on the classics of the 20th century - 100 great books by 100 different authors, 10 from each decade: Joseph Conrad, HG Wells, E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Ian Fleming, Muriel Spark, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - they are all here. (Along with a few wild cards, such as The Highway Code.)
The more grandiose the author, the funnier Crace gets - I loved reading the original Midnight's Children but Crace's digested version is a brave and funny attack on the book and the pretensions of Salman Rushdie. Similarly, I am a big fan of John Updike's Couples but Crace pillories its sex scenes brilliantly in his version. With plenty of modern classics getting the Crace treatment here - including Nick Hornby, Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson - I can't imagine Crace gets invited to many fashionable literary dinner parties.
Crace is fantastic at getting the voice of different authors absolutely pitch-perfect, and even books which are themselves satires, such as Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, get precisely parodied and shown exactly how profoundly shaped by their era they are.
You can dip in and out of this book, and read a classic author every night. I would say this book is essential reading for any students of 20th century literary and for anyone else (ie, all of us) who feels they should've read more classic books but haven't.
Mostly though, it is essential reading for anyone who wants a book that will make them laugh out loud.
In this book, he turns his merciless critical eye on the classics of the 20th century - 100 great books by 100 different authors, 10 from each decade: Joseph Conrad, HG Wells, E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Ian Fleming, Muriel Spark, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - they are all here. (Along with a few wild cards, such as The Highway Code.)
The more grandiose the author, the funnier Crace gets - I loved reading the original Midnight's Children but Crace's digested version is a brave and funny attack on the book and the pretensions of Salman Rushdie. Similarly, I am a big fan of John Updike's Couples but Crace pillories its sex scenes brilliantly in his version. With plenty of modern classics getting the Crace treatment here - including Nick Hornby, Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson - I can't imagine Crace gets invited to many fashionable literary dinner parties.
Crace is fantastic at getting the voice of different authors absolutely pitch-perfect, and even books which are themselves satires, such as Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, get precisely parodied and shown exactly how profoundly shaped by their era they are.
You can dip in and out of this book, and read a classic author every night. I would say this book is essential reading for any students of 20th century literary and for anyone else (ie, all of us) who feels they should've read more classic books but haven't.
Mostly though, it is essential reading for anyone who wants a book that will make them laugh out loud.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is your chance to speed read your way through the twentieth century. I have read compilations of comic pieces by journalists before and have oftern found that there can be too much of a good thing, not so here, the more I read not only the funnier the book became, but the cleverer it became. To be able to capture the flavour of the 100 chosen authors so accurately and to parody them at the same time is brilliant and I was breathless with laughter and admiration. You will need to buy two copies - one as a christmas present for the cultural snob in your life and one for you to keep.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
John Crace's caricatures of the great reads of the 20th Century are grouped here by decade, his vicious wit tackling beloved classics like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, controversial works like Crash and Lolita; and even Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. My own favourites are some of the classic sci-fi works - Brave New World, 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Or maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the cartoon dialect of Trainspotting.
This isn't a book to read cover to cover. My copy will find its way into the magazine rack in the smallest room - there to be digested in small bites of disrespectful condensations.
An interesting and discussion-provoking project for a reading group who feel they've read everything!
This isn't a book to read cover to cover. My copy will find its way into the magazine rack in the smallest room - there to be digested in small bites of disrespectful condensations.
An interesting and discussion-provoking project for a reading group who feel they've read everything!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Lit-Crit Alleviated!
If you love English and American literature; if you are in college, or are a graduate, and have been assigned sundry tedious articles of literary criticism; and if you have a... Read more
Published 2 months ago by F. S. L'hoir
Patchy compilation of parodies
I quite enjoyed Crace's "Digested Read" books; I am enjoying this book (moderately) too, but only because I like a cheap laugh based on cheap shots as much as the next person. Read more
Published 4 months ago by J
Miniature masterpieces
This is a collection of literary parodies spanning the Twentieth Century. I particularly liked The Wizard of Oz, welcomely reduced to two-and-a-bit pages, which nonetheless... Read more
Published 18 months ago by T. Bently
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
