John Crace's Digested Read first appeared in in February 2000 and has been running ever since. Each week Crace reduces a new book ? anything from a Booker Prize winner to a Nigella cookery book is fair game ? to 700 words in a parody of the plot, style, dialogue and themes. Or lack of them. The Digested Read has not just become an institution for readers; it is read and enjoyed by publishers and authors too. So long as it is not their book being digested. A few years ago Crace wrote Brideshead Abbreviated, A Digested Read of the 20th Century. This is the 21st Century. So far.