Unpopular opinion: abridging classics is worse than just skipping them entirely

My book club tried reading the full Moby Dick last month and after 3 weeks only 2 of 8 members finished it. The rest of us grabbed an abridged version to catch up and it completely lost the feel of the book. Now half the group thinks we should just pick shorter books instead of gutting long ones. Any other clubs run into this divide between reading full vs abridged versions?

2 comments

2 Comments

drew_west23h ago

Completely lost the feel of the book" seems like a big claim for a book club disagreement.

simoncarr21h ago

Yeah, "completely lost the feel" does sound pretty dramatic when you put it like that. But I dunno, sometimes a bad adaptation really does mess with the tone and atmosphere of a book so much that it feels like a different story entirely. If the movie cuts out all the internal monologue and changes the ending, that can kill the whole vibe. I guess it depends on how attached you were to the original.