OK, let's have a show of hands: Of those of you who bought Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, helping to make it a huge best-seller, how many actually read it?

We thought so.

You stuck it on your coffeetable and used it as an oversized coaster, didn't you?

Well, now's your chance to redeem yourself. Apparently under the impression that the first Brief History wasn't nearly brief enough, Bantam is set to release A Briefer History of Time .

"The title of this book differs by only two letters from that of a book first published in 1988," reads the foreword of the new book by Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

While the previous book sold "about one copy for every 750 men, women and children on earth," the foreword continues, readers yearned for a new version, something "that maintains the essence of A Brief History yet explains the most important concepts in a clearer, more leisurely manner."

That's code for: Who can wade through this tome? Make it shorter!

The new book is a svelte 153 pages. It's slimmer, but according to the foreword (hey, you didn't expect us to actually plow through the thing, did you?), it hits all the key issues: "What do we really know about the universe? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going?"

Interestingly, the price of Briefer doesn't seem as downsized as the book. At $25, all we can say is: Sometimes less is more.