Which Books Do You Have Multiple Copies Of? (12/8/24)

[Marc]

Are there books whose titles you have multiple copies of? If so, which ones? These can be different translations, different covers, the same exact edition, etc. How did you end up with multiple copies of the same book?

[Robert]

The majority of my duplicates occur due to receiving a review copy then receiving the book through a subscription , although I’m pleased to say that it only happened once this year.

The one and only time I deliberately bought a second copy of a book I have on my shelves was catch-22. This because it was reissued with a bigger font and in hardback.

[Rachel]

I have several different editions of On the Road and Catcher in the Rye. They’re two of my favorites and so I always pick up cheap used copies in bookstores or little free libraries to give to friends (yes, many people in my life have still yet to be introduced to classics such as these 🙃).

[Lark]

The Magic Mountain, in the original language, plus both the Lowe-Porter translation and the Woods translation

Zillions of translated Decamerons, Infernos

More than a few Iliads & Beowulfs

Also I tend to keep 2 copies of some books, so I have something to give to a friend who comes over and says something like: "novels are all the same these days" or: "I have nothing good to read." Right now I have 2 copies of:

Kassandra and the Wolf by Margarita Karapanou
Reproduction by Louisa Hall
The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy
Sweetland by Michael Crummy

[Rose]

I have three copies of The Great Gatsby - one with my annotations and one annotated by each of my kids. It's my favorite book and I can't let go of any of them.

I also have several versions of The Odyssey, Sophocles' plays, and Shakespeare plays

[Hugh]

Hardly any, but I did buy a second copy of In a Free State because the first one was an incomplete version that only contained the longest of the five parts. There were also a couple in boxed sets that I already had copies of.

[Henk]

I have almost all the books of David Mitchell in translated and original editions

[Jenna]

Like Lark, for me its also mostly about accumulating translations- the Iliad, for example, are we on 5 with the new Wilson one?! - or buying a book that I tend to give away - Pierre Michon’s winter tales. There are also multiple copies in the house of things the daughters have bought new because they don’t like the old pocket paperbacks, and so the old worn copies of bronte and Wharton should probably go to the little free library at this point.

[Bill]

I have three copies of an Ursule Molinaro collection. Since I'm away from my library for another couple weeks, I'm not absolutely sure which one it is, but it's most likely Thirteen: Stories.

No, there's only one edition, no translations etc. I bought them in different bookstores. That's the kind of fan I can be.

[Janet]

Two copies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation plus Tolkien’s translation plus an audiobook both in modern and Middle English; multiple versions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ditto Ovid’s Metamophoses. I don’t know why but I like having multiple versions of them. I also sometimes have print and audiobook formats of the same book I’m reading, but these I try to borrow from the library.

[Luke]

Lord of the Rings, Tale of Genji, a couple of others in translation I can't recall the titles of.

[Marc]

I don't think I have too many multiple copies, but the ones I'm sure of...

- Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler)
Owned a copy and then over the pandemic Capitol Hill Books (used DC bookstore) was offering "mystery bundles" where they picked surprise books for you (with or without your suggestions; I told them a few authors I liked). One of the 5 books in my bundle was this one; however, it was a different edition that includes at least one story not in the edition I already owned.

- Two Serious Ladies (Jane Bowles)
This is one of those books I refused to order for many, many years, but enjoyed looking for in almost every bookstore I ever entered. I finally found a copy (we're talking a decade, at least, of looking). Then I wanted to read more Bowles and ordered My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles (a book I'd seen many times in stores)--turns out Two Serious Ladies is included in My Sister's Hand in... .

[Hester]

The Bible . I'm an atheist but ....an irresistible text for me .

Dante / Divine Comedies . Likewise

Trollope Barchester and Palliser Series ( in print and audio as Timothy West is irresistible ) .

My son collects Penguins so we have several copies of many Classics as they get republished in newer formats .

[Marc]

Hester wrote: "The Bible . I'm an atheist but ....an irresistible text for me .

Dante / Divine Comedies . Likewise

Trollope Barchester and Palliser Series ( in print and audio as Timothy West is irresistible ..."

How could I forget that one?!! Yes, we have multiple copies of the bible (at least 4 or 5) and two different translations of the Quran.

[Joy D]

I often get both audio and e-book so I can switch between the two. I have too many of these to list them all. I also have multiple copies of the Bible - King James, New, and an old family Bible.

ETA - I also have multiple copies in hard cover or paperback, and e-book. I tend to like to switch between different formats depending on my location and circumstances.

[Marc]

I remembered I have two copies of Candide--one is a paperback I've read more than a few times and one time I got really excited about this version:


I got so excited by the Chris Ware cover that I impulsively bought the e-book thinking Ware had done a whole graphic novel version of Candide. I let it sit for quite some time and when I finally got around to reading the e-book I realized Ware only did the cover and it was just a text version of the book.

[Joy D]

I sometimes get multiple copies of Russian translations, such as The Master and Margarita and Petersburg.

[Stacia]

Dracula.
The Great Gatsby.
Bibles.
The Story of My Teeth (English and Spanish copies).
The Child Poet (English and Spanish copies).

[Franky]

The Bible
The Great Gatsby
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Great Expectations
A Christmas Carol