NYRB Collections and New Acquisitions

I collect books in the Modern Library, Everyman and New York Review Book series. I started the NYRB collection not only because they had obscure, forgotten and overall interesting titles, but because I loved the look of the collection - the nice size of the books and the colored end-papers and the interesting jacket photos and designs.

Why do other people like to collect this series? What is your latest acquisition?

My newest acquisition is Life and Fate, which I originally acquired at the library and decided I had to own - especially once I found out it was a NYRB book.

Edited to add that I got a great NYRB copy of Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War The Balkan Trilogy today at Barnes and Noble. It was a complete surprise. I was a bit bad as I already own an edition of this book, but the NYRB was just so nice.

Hello Anastasia169, I agree that the books have lovely art and I like the size and feel of them. I mostly started because I seem to be drawn to good (often) obscure writers that are out of print and I started realizing I had several from NYRB then I started seeking them out because I found I trust their editors to find interesting work. I feel like there are only a handful of publishing houses that I have such a clear sense of their editorial choices and like them.

I just got an early reviewers copy of The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick yesterday so I am looking forward to reading that next.

Marensr - I agree about NYRB and the clarity of their vision. I would add Virago Modern Classics for similar clarity for out of print women writers - yet another collection to nurture. And I agree that NYRB is great once you start delving down into the strata of 19th and 20th century literature.

Ah yes Anastasia169. I love Virago Modern Classics for that reason as well. Many of us are in the librarything group for Virago as well. You should join if you haven't already.

NYRB produces a quality book. They aren't afraid to go off the beaten path either.

Hesperus Classics deserves a little love too. Check out all the cool titles on amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-k...

http://hesperuspress.wordpress.com/

There's also a publisher called Oneworld Classics that shows great promise.

http://www.oneworldclassics.com/

DanMat-
I didn't know about Oneworld Classics.
Thanks so much for posting the link!
-Donald

Found a copy of Dud Avocado by Elaine Drury at a thrift shop. Looks like fun!

I went a bit crazy at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, New York, and walked away with:
Cassandra at the Wedding

A House and Its Head
The Long Ships
The Towers of Trebizond
The Vet's Daughter
Summer Will Show

I downloaded the Kindle edition of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach, after reading an e-mail from NYRB classics about this book yesterday.

>9 kidzdoc: kidzdoc,

Let me know what you think of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. The whole experiment strikes me as unethical, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. I did download the Wedding of Zein to which I am looking forward.

I've been waiting to see The Three Christs of Ypsilanti in my favorite bookstore -- not there as of two days ago.

Kasthu that is a pretty good kind of crazy!

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis. Looks fun, especially since it is an omnibus edition that includes all the novels and stories associated with Maqroll. (My only pet peeve, "Why don't they translate all the foreign language epigrams at the beginning of each installment?" I'm a literature enthusiast, but not a polymath.)

The Siege of Krishnapur, bought with a Barnes and Noble gift card.

13, The book is transcendant, the final book for me in whatever sense you might take it...Maqroll would say don't be a poly anything, skip what you want. I would say don't skip a word...

Cool! I'll have to read it sometime soon, along with its obvious antecedent Don Quixote

I've acquired three NYRBs by Tove Jansson in the past two weeks: The True Deceiver, The Summer Book, and Fair Play.

Oh such good books kidzdoc! Enjoy them!

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household Finally got my hands on a copy. Found it at a used bookstore in Minneapolis where NYRB had their own section. FTW!

I just received two NYRBs in the post: To the Finland Station and A Savage War of Peace.

I don't read as much non-fiction as I probably should. Its hard to find time outside of summer holidays. But these two both look fascinating.

This weekend i found a bunch at the Strand in New York:

Manservant and Maidservant
The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick
The Pumpkin Eater
A Month in the Country
The Strangers in the House

The Unpossessed by Tess Slesinger

New York Stories by Elizabeth Hardwick.

I love NYRB books, too. My most recent finds are The Jokers and Alfred and Guinevere. One of the used bookstores near me seems to get rafts of them in all the time!

Not an NYRB but related: The World by Jan Morris, a collection of 50 years of her travel writing.

21 - The Strangers in the House is an old fav, as is all of Simenon.

24 - ditto The Jokers

kswolff—was that some sort of trick political message? The supposed Jan Morris link takes me to a Thomas Friedman book!

obviously kidding, but it is amusing to imagine

27: WTF? I think some touchstones are programmed by rogue Dadaists. That's the only thing that makes sense.

I'm enjoying The Letter Killers by Sigizmund K.

I recently got a whole bunch of em, they're very cheap at the book depository, but to pick one from the pile: A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy.The good thing about the collection is that the quality level is so high, that you don't need to be that aware of what you're buying, whatever you get, you'll always end up with quality goods on your hands. You might not always think that a certain book is right up your alley, but a nyrb read is never wasted time, at least not for me that feel I still have alot to learn about writers, writing, history, culture and so on.

A high quality collection that includes alot of experimental, very interesting authors (Alain Robbe-Grillet, Gilles Rozier, W. G. Sebald, et al) is the Swedish Panache series. Here's a list of what it includes: http://www.albertbonniersforlag.se/Bocker-auto/Panache/Tidigare-utgivning/.

Found an anthology of Soviet sci fi writers, World's Spring, edited by Vladimir Gakov. Not a NYRB volume, but I'm sure there are some writers included who would justify a revival from NYRB.

I just received a copy of The Ice Trilogy in the post and discovered that pp. 473-520 have been bound upside-down. Did anyone else have the same experience, or am I just lucky?

Found Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Really chomping at the bit to read this, since I read and reviewed the Grossman anthology "The Road." Might make a fascinating compare-and-contrast with William Vollman's Europe Central

Today I discovered the Joseph Fox Bookshop in Philadelphia, which is an independent bookstore that has... an entire turntable of NYRB Classics in the back! Although I told myself I'd only buy one or two I came away with:

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
Herself Surprised
The Judges of the Secret Court
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Great Granny Webster
We Always Treat Women Too Well

Yikes!

>33 Kasthu: Yikes indeed!!!

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. The plot sounds like The Royal Tenenbaums, but with ghosts and a murder mystery.

And found Morte D'Urban by JF Powers at the local Salvation Army thrift store.

The Fountain Overflows is one of my favorite, go-to, touchstone, press-upon-others books. I've read it a half dozen times and hope to reread it a half dozen more. I hope it's at the top of your to-read pile!

I've had The Fountain Overflows on the TBR for years! You're making me want to go dig it out from wherever it's hiding.

Do. And if it excites you as it does me, we can squee about it together.

Found Hilda and Eustace by LP Hartley at the local thrift store. Also found a nice paperback of Facial Justice at the CONvergence sci fi convention in Bloomington, MN. "Facial Justice" is a dystopian sci fi novel Hartley wrote in 1960. NYRB Classics should reprint it. Would look good alongside Hav and the Ice Trilogy

I have retread The Fountain Overflows several times. I love the book.

Tyrant Banderas by Ramon del Valle-Inclan

It's one of those books that shows you different facets each time you read it.

Poison Penmanship by Jessica Mitford. Went along nicely with my Oxford anthology on Diogenes the Cynic

Got The Quest for Corvo by AJA Symons. I plan to read it along with my copy of Hadrian the VII

The new Robert and Elizabeth Chandler translation of Happy Moscow by Platonov just arrived - very excited!!!

Found The Colour out of Space at the local sci fi convention in Bloomington, MN. Looks delicious!

32Please don't c&c Grossman with Vollman--two entirely different authors. I liked both books a lot, but especially like Vollman because he captured Shostakovich so brilliantly, which is a thing apart from Grossmann.

What Rick said, although I had mixed feelings about the Vollman. I'm a big Grossman fan, and L&F is his masterpiece.

48: If one can't compare and contrast authors, why bother reading anything in the first place? And a reading like that -- Life and Fate and Europe Central -- isn't about the naive assumption that both authors are the same (however one chooses to define such a loaded term). William S. Burroughs and John Rechy are both gay American authors, but, alas, not the same in how they choose to describe it.

Got some new books via Strand Bookstore:

Everything Flows by Grossman
Memories of the Future
Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin

Shit. lost the whole thing. Anyway, Ks, didn-t mean anything but to add to the comparison, which is apt and welcome and I think RNYC would agree. Very interesting possibilities in comparing the two.

B Tril>excellent, especially WW from a woman-s pov

51: Not a problem. My apologies if I harshed your mellow. Tone is very hard to pick up with online discussion threads.

I started in like this: '32Please don't c&c Grossman with Vollman--two entirely different authors.' That was written without thinking. You were right to call me out.

#50 Great books you bought. Ice Trilogy is amazing and like Rick I loved The Balkan Trilogy. Everything Flows is great too; haven't read Memories of the Future but have it and was baffled by Krzhiizhanovsky's The Letter Killer's Club.

#51 Of course, agree with Rick too about comparing authors; just was trying to say how different they and the books were, but of course you knew that already, so what was I saying? Nothing meaningful!

So, KS, you want to have a conversation with two dipshits?

I personally loved Krzhiizhanovsky's Memories of the Future and The Letter Killers Club so I'm very much anticipating the forthcoming collection.

I'm also greatly anticipating the Krzhizhanovsky release. I've been raving about this author to my friends and giving them copies of The Letter Killers Club for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. (basically any occasion I can come up with as a gift-giving excuse).

You all are making me think I should try The Letter Killers Club again -- I admired it, but it just didn't resonate with me. Maybe I should try Memories of the Future instead.

Memories of the Future is short stories, instead of a longer work so you might enjoy it more. I do love his works - they don't read like anybody else to me, but I accept he might be an acquired taste!

Have just cracked and sent away for An Armenian Sketchbook - couldn't resist any longer...

55: I have those every time I look in the mirror.

You should get facing mirrors.