The Digested Read podcast

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

2015-12-30 20:00:48 00:14:29

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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

2015-12-29 20:00:13 00:16:30

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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

2015-12-28 20:00:01 00:16:10

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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 forgetfulnes...

2015-12-27 20:00:26 00:15:40

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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

2015-12-24 20:00:14 00:15:15

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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?

2015-01-01 22:00:00 00:11:55

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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 b...

2014-12-31 22:00:04 00:10:18

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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•...

2014-12-30 22:00:00 00:12:05

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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...

2014-12-29 22:00:00 00:10:46

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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 Holoca...

2014-12-28 21:00:00 00:11:55

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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...

2014-12-25 21:00:00 00:14:12

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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 leng...

2014-12-24 21:00:00 00:12:56

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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

2014-12-23 21:00:00 00:10:21

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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 affect...

2013-12-30 21:00:00 00:11:06

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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

2013-12-29 20:00:00 00:11:20

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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 t...

2013-12-28 20:00:00 00:09:47

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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...

2013-12-27 19:00:00 00:15:08

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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 g...

2013-12-26 20:00:00 00:14:58

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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 fron...

2013-12-25 20:00:00 00:12:02

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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 wor...

2013-12-23 20:00:00 00:12:44

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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...

2013-12-22 20:00:00 00:17:30

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