Score

Ha. I've only read 23.

9780141184760

add this book also...

One can criticize Penguin for many things, but this is a pretty great list of books. I have read 68 of them and, apart from a couple, all are 4-5 star worthy.

Uh oh people are adding Vintage editions to the list now. Aubrey, maybe you should disable the settings where anyone is allowed to add books.

Samadrita wrote: "Uh oh people are adding Vintage editions to the list now. Aubrey, maybe you should disable the settings where anyone is allowed to add books."

yeah - not quite sure why people do that sort of thing! But yes Aubrey, maybe you should delete those and change the settings...

Sigh. I wanted this list to work out the way the NYRB one did with 100% correct editions with community adding, but people will be idiots. I'll deal with the damage later and decide whether to request it be frozen then.

The reason is that when GR gives you the option to search for a book, unless you're searching for one that's on your shelf and you've already shelved the Penguin edition, it only gives you the option of adding one edition. So then (unless I'm missing something - I'm far from expert at lists) you have to go find the right edition, add it to your books, and then search for it in your books. (Not that I'm excusing adding Vintage editions - obviously it defeats the purpose.)

One can also search within the GR database proper and add the PMC edition via ISBN. I would rather people request additions in the comments that I as a librarian could more easily enable, rather than adding something that will inevitably be deleted. As such, I have modified the description.

Aha, the ISBN, of course!

I noticed someone deleted Borges's Labyrinths from the list - was that you? I couldn't see a reason for it so I added it again, seeing as how it is the Penguin Modern Classic which most reorganised my head. But I'll add nothing more.

I made the mistake of checking for duplicates (instinctive these days) and merged the proper one with the incorrect one someone else had added, of which the incorrect ended up triumphing and was subsequently deleted. Thank you for adding it back.

No problems.

I haven't read a lot but have many on my tbr. Also I didn't finish Ficciones so I'm not counting that. Some I may have read in other editions.

What I want to know is when Penguin is going to acquire the rights to Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. It's an incredible oversight on Penguin's part: this is probably (with Ficciones and One Hundred Years of Solitude) one of the three most influential works in modern Latin American literature. Though Penguin Modern Classics have been a major influence on me, it's lapses like this that make me realise how arbitrary their choices really are.

(How about a new list: "Books we'd like to see in Penguin Classics"?)

You may create the list if you wish, Ben, although a personal shelf would be a safer bet. The general populace has a far different view of modern classics than you or I.

No DH Lawrence?

You may add Penguin Modern Classics of his work, if they exist.

"Though Penguin Modern Classics have been a major influence on me, it's lapses like this that make me realise how arbitrary their choices really are."

It's not about choice on the part of Penguin; it's about rights determined by agents, authors and estates.

Yeah, I wondered about that. But surely any agent or estate, in this instance, would rather sell to Penguin than Serpent's Tail (who last published Rulfo in English)?

Depends on dozens of needlessly complex, melodramatic and frustrating variables.

Not surprising, I guess. So the Penguin list (and, by extension, the whole western canon?) is arbitrary because of legal issues, not taste. Should I be relieved or depressed?

I notice you just rated Walser's Selected Stories. "Kleist in Thun" - now that is a classic.

A "Books We'd Like to See in Penguin Classics" list would be great.

"Kleist" mesmerized me start to finish. It felt extraordinarily real.

Jeremy wrote: "A "Books We'd Like to See in Penguin Classics" list would be great."

Nice idea, Jeremy!

Jeremy wrote: ""Kleist" mesmerized me start to finish. It felt extraordinarily real."

Good to hear it! In all this talk about Walser that's snowballed over the past 10 or so years, and the common perception of Susan Bernofsky as his only worthwhile translator, the fact that he wrote one of the greatest short stories in any language seems to have been forgotten.

Re the list, do you think it'd do any good? I guess (in my naivety) I thought maybe the staff at Penguin might notice it and act on it. But even in the unlikely event that they did, maybe they'd be powerless.