Condensed versions, anyone?

[Peder]

ed narrativeDoes anyone read condensed versions of novels, apart from cramming for exams of course.?
When? Why? What do you think of them?

I recently got tired of being the only person I know who had not gotten around to reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I finally decided to find a "sparks-notes" but actually did better. I found a 100-page summary and read it. Not bad at all -- full length down to 100 pages allowed for a quite detailed summary of the entire story, including very considerable detailled narrative and dialog. And now, at least I feel I have filled a blind-spot and know the story of "To Kill a Mockingbird".

Of course, I didn't read the author's original words -- O heresy!! -- but, for this book, I'm not sure that reading the author's original style was vital to the enjoyment. Double heresy, I know! But I am unrepentant.

Anyone else? Any thoughts on why you do or don't, would or might, or wouldn't ever?

 

[regdog]

I wished I'd read the condensed Les Mis and Hunchback. I really didn't need the constant 20-30 page side stories about the history of the Paris sewer system, history of a Priory, the battle that took place years before that left a bullet scar in a tree. Too much and too distracting.

 

[Peder]

I wished I'd read the condensed Les Mis and Hunchback. I really didn't need the constant 20-30 page side stories about the history of the Paris sewer system, history of a Priory, the battle that took place years before that left a bullet scar in a tree. Too much and too distracting.

Definitely agree with that, regdog, although in my younger years I too read Hunchback. Like climbing Mt. Everest, "because it was there."
Your post brings to mind some other famous (er, notorious?) works that are long on style: Proust's Remembrance, Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. I won't suggest they are short on story, because who among us general readers would know without a good condensation to plot only? Not too short, not too long, but just right.