Reader's Digest Condensed Books - what's it like to actually read one?
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- Shunned by booksellers, unwanted even by charity shops - what's it like to actually delve into a Reader's Digest Condensed Book?
Experimental read of a 1994 edition ft.:
Without Remorse, Tom Clancy
The Acorn Winter, Elizabeth Webster
Survivor, Hans Herlin
Royal Stakes, John Welcome
Thumbnail image credit: Terriloui, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
I found you because the thought occurred to me, whatever happened to Reader's Digest (it's still around btw). When I was a kid they were everywhere, our house, our grandparents' houses, everybody's houses, the fishing club, every doctor's office. It seems to have pretty much vanished from our cultural landscape. As a teenager, I started picking them up and reading bits of them. I guess by college I'd learned that intellectuals scoffed at RD. I had a professor who would always repeat the same joke where someone would say, "I read in Reader's Digest," then realize he'd committed a major faux pas, and say, "at the dentist's office." I've never read a condensed book, but we had a bunch of them in our basement and they were also ubiquitous. There was a joke about them in MASH.
It just occurs to me now, what a nation of readers we once had. This was not high status literature. People who read RD products were not considered intellectuals, and usually did not have graduate degrees. Yet ordinary people read voraciously. And we put them down. Sad.
Today, I read a book occasionally. Mostly I just noodle around the Internet. I rarely read a magazine article from beginning to end, or a well crafted piece of discourse that's more than a page. I can't help but be nostalgic about what we've lost. The smarter we get, the stupider we get.
Thanks for these thoughts. I picked up a current RD and it wasn't bad, clearly aimed at the older folks' market now with lots of health articles. My parents used to subscribe, partly I think with the idea that it would be good for me - and who knows, maybe 'It Pays To Increase Your Word Power' did have an effect. I agree about the lost literate days of yore, there was I think general readership going on with books flowing around through libraries and second hand shops.
same here, i regret not able to find reader digests paperbacks from the 70s and 80s. actually overseas now, i would enjoy reading the stories that got me started in reading.
As an Indian who has read any number of these books, I'm extremely sorry to say that I did not find any value in your analysis. It is my opinion that these volumes introduce you to a multiplicity of genres and authors, and does so quite effectively. Having read a few examples of the condensed book version of a novel as also the original, I feel that the exercise is, by no means, lacking in rigour. If these books were cheaply available in India I would have no hesitation in procuring them. Readers Digest Condensed Books have actually proven a casualty to Hollywood.
Although I acknowledged that they are regarded poorly by some, I did say I personally enjoyed the one I read. I do think they were a good thing for the reasons you say. It is interesting that inclusion in a Condensed Book would increase sales of the full length version, hence publishers' desire to have their works featured.
I'm aware of R. Digest to be sure but never heard of these things - until l was searching for a title on an on-line auction site - and a bunch of these showed up in the search. I smelt a rat - went on youtube and here we are. Thanks for the heads up to Roy - I agree - why in the world would you want to read snippets of a title rather than the whole. It's a total bastardization of how writing is to be read in my non-learned opinion. I'd be interested to know how these little monstrosities have hurt my glorious Hollywood though. Are folk spending their cinema popcorn dollars on 'procuring' these things? INSTEAD OF BUYING CINEMA TICKETS?!?
The world has gone to hell.
@@834arglebardconnden7 Casualty to Hollywood means people prefer to watch a movie rather than read a book. A Hollywood adaptation of a novel is likely to be even less valid than a condensation. But the customer is king.
Gen Z here, I’ve always enjoyed the reader digest magazines as they were around the house a lot. Didn’t exactly know that they weren’t what’s considered high class, because personally for me, they are quite info packed and had lots of good stories in it. I’d consider it better than gossip magazine but that isnt exactly a high hurdle to clear, enjoyed your video on it :)
I found an old one from 1969 and it was pretty good, even today it's readable though rather skewed to aging readers. Thanks for commenting!
@@royreadsanything I found one of the reader’s digest condensed books in a goodwill store. When I saw it I decided to buy it. Specifically it was volume 6 1995. I’m looking forward to read the stories
@@mariomgpower Cool! I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to dive into another one soon...
This was very enjoyable. Love the parallel between the special needs teacher and the ruthless assassin. What struck me most about the selection was that I can’t imagine one person wanting to read them all. It seems quite an odd mix. I’ve actually read the Clancy one, years ago, and can’t imagine it being edited hurt it too much.
My grandparents were Readers Digest readers, looking back the notion of condensed books does seem odd. I wonder if in some ways it’s similar to the modern bad habit of looking at your phone while watching TV.
Also, now I want to read a book with the same qualities as condensed milk.
Olly, in the 50s and 60s in the US, being well read was a sign of being an intellectual. It was a desirable designation. The condensed books were a way to say you'd read a book without having actually read it. Kind of a step above cliff notes. RD tried each month to have at least one of the 4 appeal to each subscriber. They always contained a variety. It was also cost efficient. Only well off folks owned books. Condensed books were 4 for the price of one. Households had only one car, so getting to a library was not always easy.
I suppose they were intended for a whole household to enjoy. Somewhere between a magazine and a book maybe.
@@bjminton2698 ah fascinating! That does make a lot of sense. Thank you!
@@royreadsanything true! And in fact if I think of my grandparents, between them they probably would have read that whole book
The fun part is the options of
genre. From romance to sci-fi
in one book. Whatever mood you
we're in to go for the rollercoaster
ride that movies couldn't give you.
Olly sent me here. I flipped through many Reader's Digest Condensed Books and magazines as a kid. My nephew inherited the farm, I should check with him to see if he kept the Reader's Digest books and then borrow a couple.
They're worth a look if only as curios. And some of the illustrations in the old ones are lovely.
I remember these. My mom had a lot of them. I'd imagine they stopped making these at some point, but I don't know when.
I'm not sure they survived into this century, at least not very far.
We had a few around the house when I was young in the early 1970s that I read and enjoyed. I think it was the starting point of my reading life. The actual books cut a swath through the reading interests of mainstream culture, becoming a reflection with sociological value. Decades later, the reading list is more valuable to me than the condensed books themselves. I have a few of the actual regular length books in my collection, and I've noticed some on digital services. What to read in life is a dilemma. The RD list makes it easy if you're not too picky or want to understand legacy mainstream, middlebrow stuff.
The further you go back, the more intriguing those middlebrow books appear to be. I'm looking forward to another RD experience soon!
Hey Roy! I found your channel through Michael K Vaughan and just chose to watch this video first at random!
I really enjoyed your style here. The holding up of the condensed milk and soup made me cackle. I should note that I've never actually read a readers digest book, so your explanation and little history of the books was immensely informative. However, as a member of gen z, I've seen them many times at Goodwills and library book sales. Maybe I'll buy one next time. If nothing else, as you said in a comment, it would be interesting as curios. At best, it could turn me towards some new books and be a good video idea.
Thank you for the interesting video. I'll be sure to watch some more of them.
Thanks for the kind comments 😀 Glad that you're watching 👍
Olly sent me. Fun video! Dick Francis is one of my favs too.
It's been.a while but I powered through a load of Dick Francis once and really enjoyed them. Thanks for stopping by!
You nailed this video! I too used to look through these at older relatives houses and even read two of them as a youth 😄
There are about 50 in various local charity shops, but I'm not tempted mainly due to space
@@royreadsanything yes space. I seem to remember that abstract concept 🤔
I find that I have a 1998 volume of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books on my shelves, and I plan to read one of the stories in July for “BookTube at War”. The book is _Five Past Midnight_ by James Thayer, condensed from 352 pages down to 150. It seems to be the only book that I have that takes place during a historical wartime.
I remember my grandmother subscribed to the series in the 1960s and our house had a bunch of the RDCBs on the living room shelves.
Getting a nice looking row of them must have been part of the appeal. Great idea for July!
Next time I see one of these for sale I might pick it up. This looks like a fun experiment.
Great idea!
I missed this one when you did it, it's making me look longingly at the RD books I picked up a while ago
I keep seeing them around, I could have 100s by now if I bought them all! BTW I found the first 2 Continuum books today, looking forward to a reread.
@@royreadsanything
If you could start a resale site for some
interested readers.
Rumer Godden, an author whose books have been published in Reader's Digest Condensed form, said: It's like going to the spa (this was in the 70s), you're still the same, only slimmer; even I can't tell what has been left out of the story.
That's lovely - thanks!
Thx for the explanation. I thought they were just summaries of books.
I think the shortened books would be nice for ppl who don't want too waste too much time on books they might not like, or don't have the time to get through a book while having really busy lives.
I think you're right about their appeal to busy folks.
I just picked up a 1995 and 2012 readers digest today, i dont much about these sorts of books but I'm excited to dig in
They can be fun, I hope you enjoy them
I used to read these when I was a kid and enjoyed them i think they got a bad rap from people who never actually read them
Always learning something from your videos; for some reason, I assumed out of my own cultural inferiority that only in the USA would something as abominable as this fly, but apparently I'm wrong. Anyway, when I was growing up in the 70s my mother subscribed to the series and I probably read several of them - one I'm almost 100% certain I did was Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed - which I later read in it's full-length original. There was also a series called Condensed Books for Young Readers and I think I read a good chunk of those - there were a dozen, or at least we had a dozen of them. Mostly classics those, like Treasure Island and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
And I still see them every time I go to the library (always on the sale rack for .50 apiece) or at thrift stores. What's the audience for them these days? People who aren't readers have so many other entertainment options, and perople who are tend to be snobby about them, like me, and would never dream of reading them.
I still have a dark desire to read one of the most-cut-up examples, and do so alongside the original, to see just how different the experience is, but I don't think I'll actually ever really bother with that.
The Eagle Has Landed is one of those books I've unaccountably never read - it sounds great. These days the market seems to like big thick books, so I can't imagine Condensed finding much of an audience now.
As an indian with western thinking family i dont know what to do with these books. My father is a casual reader. And my grandfather was an English professor. Now I got 70-85 bookes just collecting dust. I showed them the full versions of these books online in amazon and other websites. Do these books have value or they go by "raddhi" and just discard them? My dad and grandpa liked to read these coz of lack of interest in tablets. But I am not a litrature fan and would like to know someone's opinion on this!
I don't know what to say - they probably don't have much value beyond people's enjoyment of them. Though some people enjoy the look of a row of matching spines!
They're great for learning a foreign language.
Sir, Are these books from 'Reader's Digest ' different or the same
' Write & speak well ' &
'How to write & speak well'_ Do they differ in contents.?
Yes, these were a mixture of fiction and non-fiction books in abbreviated versions, whereas 'How to Write and Speak Better' was a self-help book also published by Reader's Digest. As well as being a magazine Reader's Digest was a publisher of books on many topics.
i sell these books online and they still sell, for me anyways. they don't sell for a lot, but they are a good source of income
I get the impression, since I made this, that people are keen on them again. The oldest ones are very attractive in a retro way and the newer ones have the advantage of matching spines. I can imagine that appealing to some buyers.
I kinda like them…l
Fun when you find them at thrift stores.
The ones from the 50s are written markedly different from the ones
written in the 80s.
Traducir al Español por favor..
I have adjusted the settings so there may be a translated version available