SoCS: Readers Digest

Is the Readers Digest still around? That’s what came to mind. My parents subscribed to the Readers’ Digest so it came by mail every month. It was reading-lite for the masses. Very short stories, condensed informative articles, personal anecdotes, jokes: one little magazine could hold 25- 30 articles.

I would go through it reading all the jokes, then the anecdotes and maybe some one page stories or articles.

We also had the Readers Digest Classics.  Brown leather-like hard-cover books with gold embossed letters. One book could hold 3 or 4 condensed classic novels! Are those Dickens, Bronte sisters and Henry James novels too lengthy with boring descriptions? Have a novel-lite and get the gist of it….. you can say you read it!

But the funniest ever I discovered at my in-laws when I first went to visit them many, many years ago. They played their vinyl collection of Readers Digest musical classics….. The best in Classical music reduced to 3 minutes.  Battle of 1812 (I still sing ,”this is the cereal that’s shot from guns”) Beethoven’s Fifth,  each album had 12 pieces on each side. The best parts of 24 classical works! All the boring parts cast aside. I say funny because I laughed then realized I had better stifle that laugh.

SoC; I gotta go look for some pictures.

Oh gosh its still going strong. Here’s the format I remember;

 

 

https://lindaghill.com/2018/11/23/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-24-18/