I'm stuck in the tardis

Orion the Publisher are going to start cutting down classic books, to make them easier to read for a modern auidence.
Full Story.
My own take on this is that books should remain as close to the original manuscript as possible.
Books are precious things, i do not like it when a book gets hacked to pieces just to make them easier to read.
The whole point of reading in my view is that you are challenged by the language and the ideas contained in that book.
I would not say this is dumbing down literature because it just smacks of being a new way of selling editied books.
Compact Editions they will be called. First titles to get the treatment will be:
Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, North and South and The Portrait of a Lady.

Though this comment really takes the biscuit:
Weir does not think the Compact Editions represent a dumbing down. "Personally, I am guilty of never having read Anna Karenina, because it's just so long. I do get turned off by a thick book," she says. "I'd much rather read two 300-page books than one 600-page book!"

That just smacks of lazyness to me.
Anyway i feel cold now that i've had my haircut. I'm going for a lay down.