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

John Crace squashes Houellebecq’s Submission and asks whether the sacred monster of French fiction is just making trouble for its own sake

John Crace puts the annotated editon of the Nobel laureate’s poetical works through the wringer and assesses the stature of the modernist master

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 forgetfulness

John Crace puts the squeeze on Go Set a Watchman, and considers its effect on the author’s reputation

John Crace digests Hillary Clinton’s latest autobiography, and picks it over for clues to vital questions – what does she really think of Obama?

John Crace digests Murakami's latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, and wonders if the bestselling Japanese author has bleached the life out of his fiction

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 • More digested reads podcasts

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 the crest of the fourth wave of feminism

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 Holocaust

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 and white powder

John Crace digests Karl Ove Knausgaard’s multi-volume autobiographical fiction, My Struggle, and asks if it is exceptional in anything apart from length • More digested read podcasts

In the first of a daily series of digested reads, John Crace considers Russell Brand’s political manifesto, Revolution More digested read podcasts

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 affection

John Crace boils down JK Rowling's first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling – published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith – into just 600 words

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 the merits of Jimmy Rabitte's return

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 have reached a tipping point

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 great poet

John Crace digests Morrissey's Autobiography down to just 600 words, while Will Woodward and Caspar Llewellyn Smith wonder if the one-time Smiths frontman is as cool as he thinks he is

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 work

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 Bridget has aged

John Crace has a quick dip into the Booker prize-winning novel

John Crace looks at the author's memories of life with Harold Pinter, with the pauses taken out

John Crace makes a quick study of a depraved academic