Go Set A Watchman - the digested read.

[Paul Whybrow]

Some of you will be familiar with the Digested Read column in the Guardian newspaper. Written by John Crace, he creates an amusing pastiche of a book, summing up what happens in about 500 words. His condensed version is both review and a piece of entertainment, and though his writing can be rather acerbic, he's great at puncturing the pretentiousness that surrounds a book that is making the headlines.

This is what he makes of Go Set A Watchman, and you can access more of his dissections of bestsellers by clicking the Digested Read link at the top of the page :

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/19/go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee-digested-read

 

[Katie-Ellen]

An assassination. I read the first chapter and didn't fancy the rest. It read like forced rhubarb. It's going to make someone a lot of money, all the same.

 

[Carol Rose]

Well bless his heart.

I'm reading the actual book and enjoying it very much. Not as much as I enjoyed To Kill A Mockingbird, but that was genius.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

An assassination. I read the first chapter and didn't fancy the rest. It read like forced rhubarb. It's going to make someone a lot of money, all the same.

It's reckoned that Harper Lee was already earning more than $9,000 a day from To Kill A Mockingbird. I wonder how sales are going since the release of Go Set A Watchman.
It proves to me that the capacity of the general public to comprehend more than a few book names at any one time is very limited. If an author or a book enters the headlines, then that's what people focus on - never mind how worthy the writing is.
As author and professor Daniel J. Boorstin said : “A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.”