FRANCIE: Actually, I have something I’d like to put on the table to be discussed.
PARIS: Oh, okay. Well, we only have a couple of minutes, so give us the Reader’s Digest version.
Reader’s Digest, a general interest family magazine founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Wallace. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, and now headquartered in Manhattan, Reader’s Digest was for many years the best-selling magazine in the US. The periodical has a global circulation of 10.5 million, making it the largest paid-circulation magazine in the world.
DeWitt’s idea was to gather of sampling of his favourite articles on various subjects from monthly magazines, often rewriting and condensing them – this might be what Paris means by the Reader’s Digest version. She may also refer to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books – hardcover anthologies of classic and bestselling novels in abridged (“condensed”) form. These were published from 1950 to 1997, after which it became softcover and called Reader’s Digest Select Editions.
To condense, the Reader’s Digest version is the short version of something.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 