The verdict: I thoroughly enjoyed rereading Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which I think is a great book, but the "restored edition" just published doesn't add much of anything to the experience.

The changes to the original book are relatively minor, and the additions don't bring much of value. The whole exercise, performed by Hemingway's grandson, seems to be a poor excuse to sell new copies of an old book. A.E. Hotchner, a friend and biographer of Hemingway who gets at least partial credit for the book's title, goes a step further. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Hotchner calls the new edition a "bowdlerized version." Hotchner contends the book was basically ready for publication when Hemingway committed suicide, so no second-guessing of his intentions is warranted.

"Ernest was very protective of the words he wrote, words that gave the literary world a new style of writing," Hotchner writes. "Surely he has the right to have these words protected against frivolous incursion."

I had hoped this restored edition would add some valuable content to "A Moveable Feast," which is rather short. But it's clear from reading most of the new material that it was left out because it didn't quite measure up to the standards Hemingway had set for the book. And so, why bother?