The Digested Read podcast

A podcast version of John Crace's wickedly satirical Guardian column, lampooning the literary style of leading authors by summarising their books in five minutes

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Episodes

EL James: black and blue and read all over? – books podcast

John Crace whips through the lastest instalment of EL James’s sado-masochistic bestseller, Grey, and asks if it’s time to apply the safe word

Dec 31, 2015•14 min

Michel Houellebecq: profane or prophetic? – books podcast

John Crace squashes Houellebecq’s Submission and asks whether the sacred monster of French fiction is just making trouble for its own sake

Dec 30, 2015•17 min

TS Eliot: beyond commentary? – books podcast

John Crace puts the annotated editon of the Nobel laureate’s poetical works through the wringer and assesses the stature of the modernist master

Dec 29, 2015•16 min

Kazuo Ishiguro: roaring giant or sleeping dragon? – books podcast

John Crace boils down The Buried Giant and asks whether this genre-bending quest novel is destined for the halls of glory or the mists of forgetfulness

Dec 28, 2015•16 min

Harper Lee: a happy return to Maycomb? – books podcast

John Crace puts the squeeze on Go Set a Watchman, and considers its effect on the author’s reputation

Dec 25, 2015•15 min

Hillary Clinton: the big reveal? – books podcast

John Crace digests Hillary Clinton’s latest autobiography, and picks it over for clues to vital questions – what does she really think of Obama?

Jan 02, 2015•12 min

Haruki Murakami: Cult of the colourless? - books podcast

John Crace digests Murakami's latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, and wonders if the bestselling Japanese author has bleached the life out of his fiction

Jan 01, 2015•10 min

Val McDermid: Jane Austen's equal? - books podcast

John Crace digests Val McDermid’s update of Northanger Abbey, and asks if her attempt to square up to Austen’s gothic melodrama is fine or foolhardy• More digested reads podcasts

Dec 31, 2014•12 min

Caitlin Moran: all about the girl, again - books podcast

John Crace digests Caitlin Moran’s debut novel, How to Build a Girl, down to 600 words, and wonders what it adds to the autobiography that set her on the crest of the fourth wave of feminism

Dec 30, 2014•11 min

Martin Amis: back in the danger zone? - books podcast

John Crace digests Martin Amis’s new novel The Zone of Interest down to 600 words, and wonders if he was wise to return to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Dec 29, 2014•12 min

Stephen Fry: low tales of the high life - books podcast

John Crace digests Stephen Fry’s latest memoir, More Fool Me, down to 600 words, and finds the nation’s favourite luvvie adrift in a blizzard of names and white powder

Dec 26, 2014•14 min

Karl Ove Knausgaard : Proust or poseur? - books podcast

John Crace digests Karl Ove Knausgaard’s multi-volume autobiographical fiction, My Struggle, and asks if it is exceptional in anything apart from length • More digested read podcasts

Dec 25, 2014•13 min

Russell Brand: the raffish revolutionary - books podcast

In the first of a daily series of digested reads, John Crace considers Russell Brand’s political manifesto, RevolutionMore digested read podcasts

Dec 24, 2014•10 min

Iain Banks: a death foretold? - books podcast

John Crace digests Iain Banks' last novel The Quarry, about a man dying of cancer, down to 600 words, and explains how satire can be powered by affection

Dec 31, 2013•11 min

JK Rowling: a question of identity – books podcast

John Crace boils down JK Rowling's first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling – published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith – into just 600 words

Dec 30, 2013•11 min

Roddy Doyle: gutsy performance or needs more commitment? – books podcast

John Crace boils down Roddy Doyle's sequel to The Commitments, The Guts, into just 600 words, while Caspar Llewellyn Smith and Hannah Freeman debate the merits of Jimmy Rabitte's return

Dec 29, 2013•10 min

Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath – books podcast

John Crace digests Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath down to just 600 words, and Oliver Burkeman joins him to discuss whether popular science books have reached a tipping point

Dec 28, 2013•15 min

TS Eliot: giant of poetry or literary obsessive? – books podcast

John Crace boils down the fourth volume of TS Eliot's Letters into just 600 words, while Nicholas Wroe examines their importance for understanding a great poet

Dec 27, 2013•15 min

Morrissey's autobiography: vain or glorious? – books podcast

John Crace digests Morrissey's Autobiography down to just 600 words, while Will Woodward and Caspar Llewellyn Smith wonder if the one-time Smiths frontman is as cool as he thinks he is

Dec 26, 2013•12 min

Richard Dawkins: intellectual titan or tiresome self-publicist? – books podcast

John Crace boils Richard Dawkins's memoir, An Appetite for Wonder, down to just 600 words, while Ian Sample and Andrew Brown consider his life and work

Dec 24, 2013•13 min

Bridget Jones: today's heroine or yesterday's woman? – books podcast

John Crace digests Helen Fielding's third Bridget Jones novel, Mad about the Boy, into just 600 words. Lisa Allardice and Rosie Swash discuss how well Bridget has aged

Dec 23, 2013•18 min