What do you call a book that is a summary of other books?

Yes, I have an advanced degree and yes, I feel a bit silly asking this question. But my high school poli sci teacher always said the only dumb question was the one you didn't ask.

Is it just a collection of abstracts? Is it a type of annotated bibliography? I've tried searching the internet, reverse dictionaries, etc, to no avail.

Specific example: 50 Spiritual Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon

I'm looking for *the* specific word or phrase that librarians and/or publishers use.

Well, I am not a librarian or publisher (gettting ready to post a question of my own to teh librarians) ... the noun I would suggest is "anthology."

Maybe, but I don't think so. An anthology, I believe, is a collection of actual works, not someone else's summary of other people's work...

I did consider the term originally...

I do have the itchy feeling that there is another term for this, but "annotated bibliography" seems pretty inescapable to me. Perhaps you could reach waaayyy back and call them "vade mecums."

I do have the itchy feeling that there is another term for this, but "annotated bibliography" seems pretty inescapable to me. Perhaps you could reach waaayyy back and call them "vade mecums."

A book I have that fits your description (I think) is titled A Thesaurus of Book Digests. Sounds as if "digests" would be right.

Edited to add that I'm not a Librarian. Just butting in. :-)

I like digest, too.

I'm meeting Tom next week, I'll try to remember to ask him what he calls them.

Be sure to tell him that a LTer thinks he rocks.

I loooooove his books. I have his Spiritual and Self-Help books.

And tell him to upload an author picture ;-)

I see that he's posted an author picture - clean forgot to ask what to call the books.

I believe that there's an Amazon special due on the books in February

> clean forgot to ask

You could of course leave a comment on his LT profile... ;-)

I could indeed - though I think he only created the account to put the picture up. I have to email him anyhow. I'll do my best to remember.

Also tell him if he bothers to catalog 49 more books he can become an LT author.

Hmmm doesn't '50 Classics of Self-Help' count as fifty books?

* laugh *

He can try, of course.

Digest does sound good BUT, it wouldn't be *the* word used. Neither would any of the other suggestions (according to silnet). I looked up several works of the type you discribed and could not find a single subject or discriptive that linked them. Sorry. As so often happens in "Library land", such a word doesn't seem to exist (sigh).

I did ask Tom and he doesn't have a word either: "I don't have a name for my format of books; each chapter I call a 'commentary', which is a cross between a book summary and a review. Most people call them either summaries or reviews, but neither is quite right. "

myshelves:

I bought a copy of Thesaurus of Book Digests at the Goodwill today (99 cents!) -- flipping through it makes me think that, for now at least, I'm using the tag "book digests" for similar books. If I find a better tag, I guess I can switch them out.

Thanks everyone!

I believe the correct term is Annotated Bibliography, as Stephen said. I am an MLS student, and I have had to write one or two of these for almost every course I've taken so far.

Oh, you know what's a lovely example of a book summarising (and criticising) other books? Photius' "Bibliotheca", dating from the ninth century and containing summaries of many ancient books now lost; for many it's the only information we have about them!

In Italian, the word biblioteca (notice the missing h) means Library. :)

Funny you should mention it, my copy of Photius (or Fozio in this case) is the Adelphi Italian translation from the Greek... :)

Hello all,

I just wanted to add my two cents... I know a bit late, but I just joined librarything.... We just recieved a really great annotated bibliography (my two cents) at our library. If any of you are teen or YS librarians, I would suggest the book 500 great books for teens by anita silvey for those teenagers who would rather "listen" to a book than the very uncool librarian!! It has a great selection of new favorites and old classics!

I believe the word you are looking for is anthology.

The M-W dictionary says it means, a collection of selected literary pieces or passages or works of art or music.

Contrast with bibliography -- the history, identification, or description of writings or publications.

I happened to have purchased a bibliography just this past weekend -- Mark Twain: A Bibliography -- it contains images, descriptions and notes of over 760 editions of his books, and 327 items if correspondence. The back of the dust jacket contains 3 color photos of first editions of his books.

I'm probably late too, but "annotated bibliography" is definitely the term. My library service produces them reguarly and also puts them on our website. Even when they're formally published, they're still called annotated bibliographies.

It seems so wrong, somehow, for them to be called annotated bibliographies. I can't explain it, but it doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's because I'm used to annotated bibs being full of non-fiction works and used for research purposes.

100% for sure, the word it is not anthology. An anthology is a collection of actual works or parts of works as originally written by the author, not a collection of another writer's summaries and critiques of various works.

I agree with you, pdxwoman, annotated bibliography doesn't sound at all right. Neither does anthology! The Readers' Digest produce collections of abridged novels under the heading of "condensed" - at the risk of sounding like a chef, perhaps an anthology of condensed texts, or even a collection of abridged texts?

how bout something like the word metadata (data about data)....

from http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid87_gci212555,00.html

Meta is a prefix that in most information technology usages means "an underlying definition or description." Thus, metadata is a definition or description of data and metalanguage is a definition or description of language.
(sorry too lazy to re-acquaint myself with posting in html)

bibliobook?
metabook?

I'm going with digest. These two definitions of digest convinced me:

7. to condense, abridge, or summarize.
11. a collection or compendium, usually of literary, historical, legal, or scientific matter, esp. when classified or condensed.

This seems to make the most sense to me...

Thanks! And I'm always open to hearing any new ideas on the matter...I'm kind of a stickler for just the right tag ;-)

Digest looks good.

Would digest also include a book of abstracts? Or would that be a directory or index or catalog?

Just wondering.