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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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, Revolution
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
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
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
Malcolm Gladwell: David or 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
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
Morrissey: 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
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
About 166 results for The Digested Read podcast 
