I have this edition, and it's one of my favorite editions of The Hobbit! 😊 Probably second or third only to the Folio Society edition (which is by far the best in terms of overall quality but also by far the most expensive) as well as the Alan Lee illustrated edition (I prefer the Lee illustrations to the Catlin illustrations mainly because I prefer the realistic-looking art in Lee to the cartoon-like art in Catlin, but both are beautiful in their own way).
Thank you for this beautiful display of different artists' responses to this wonderful book, one of my favourite novels, though I'm no great reader of fiction. My copy is an old-fashioned Penguin, one with the wide orange and white horizontal stripes, circa 1960, no illustrations at all. It's a lovely idea to present such a huge range like this. As I looked it occurred to me what a beautiful exhibition these books would make spread out as in a museum. Some of the types used were very beautiful, too. How many different versions of the novel do you own now? It must be quite a number!
Olá! Que bom que voltou ! Lindo livro, mas pra ficar melhor ainda as ilustrações poderiam ser coloridas...Posso refazer uma cobrança antiga? Quando vai mostrar as edições da Carambaia?
So happy to see a vid from you after a long time! ^_^ Hope you've been doing well. This is a really beautiful book 😍 I knew William Morris for his wonderful textile designs but wasn't aware he was involved in book designs and publishing as well. Thanks for sharing
I have been waiting for them to reprint The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russell Wallace. I wanted that book so badly, but it went out of print before I had the money and now it's selling used for $600+! No way!
I don’t think they are expensive. Love their collection but their selection of Latin American literature leaves a lot to be desired: they have published Borges, Cortázar, Allende and García Márquez but, as far as I know, nothing from Brazil or Mexico
I agree with you, the catalog has this limitation. A book that has been trending recently in the English-speaking world is The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. It would be a nice addition to the EL collection!
It's not silly! Beautiful books are great, whether while you're reading or as a decoration on your shelf. I have hundreds of nice books! And visitors can more easily strike up a conversation when they see something interesting, or something they have read sitting on my shelves.
Gorgeous Books, a masterpiece of edition, would be great this work in Brazil, sure; with honest price. Love Shakespeare !!!😊🎉 Hugs!!! I wish success to your chanel. 🎉😊
I’m a bibliophile myself as I have a library of about a thousand books on mainly physics and math. Although I do enjoy the Everyman’s library as well, beautiful books for an affordable price!
would love a library book tour since you havent been around for so long would be nice to see all your new books and old ones too to refresh our memories
I think I will not impose the failings of another human being upon the characters in a book. It will be hard enough keep myself out of the way and get my book report turned in on time.
Regarding Penguin Classics vs. Oxford World's Classics (OWC). At least for me, the most important differences seem to be: 1. Translation. If the book wasn't originally written in English, or at least in an English that's understandable to contemporary English readers (unlike, say, Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales), and if one can't read another language, then a good English translation is a necessity and indeed it can be utterly crucial in comprehension and enjoyment of a book, for some translations are better or worse than others. Broadly speaking, a translation can err toward one of two extremes or sides. Either toward the side of being more formally faithful to the original text, which is often good for capturing the literality of the source language such as its literal metaphors, but often at the cost of wooden or stilted or simply strange or puzzling or incomprehensible language. Or toward the other side of being more functionally faithful to the original text, which is often good for capturing the original meaning and subtleties and nuances in an idiomatic and even literarily stylish fashion, but often at the cost of losing the structural or syntactical facts of the matter. For example, consider the English phrase "to have a frog in your throat". This phrase makes perfect sense to a native English speaker. And it would be accurate to the English in a literalistic way to translate "frog" as "frog" in another language like French. However, if it is translated as "frog" in French, it would not entirely make sense to a French only speaker. In French, one would say "chat" which is the French word for "cat" in your throat for the same meaning as frog in your throat in English. A translation would lose the literal English word "frog" by substituting it with "chat" or "cat" in French, but the translation would gain in meaning by making the phrase comprehensible to the French speaker. Of course, one can reverse languages too. In other words, if the English only speaker is puzzled why one has a cat in their throat, then the French only speaker would be just as puzzled as to why one has a frog in their throat! It cuts both ways. And it's almost always if not always a tug of war between which extreme a translation wishes to err toward - formal faithfulnesa or functional faithfulness. That is, accurate to the grammar and grammatical structures and so forth (form), but less idiomatic and comprehensible, and perhaps less clear and natural sounding and stylish as well; or idiomatic and comprehensible and readable and often even literarily stylish (function), but less accurate to the grammar and grammatical structures and so forth. It's almost always if not always impossible to capture both perfectly, for there's typically always something lost in translation; the translator is a traitor, as the Italians say ("traduttore, traditore"). Maybe somewhere out there there is such a perfect translation for a work, but if so I'm unaware of it. Getting back to Penguin vs. OWC translations. I think the choice here is more or less equivocal. Sometimes Penguin has better translations (e.g. The Count of Monte Cristo translated by Robin Buss is better than David Coward's translation in OWC), while other times OWC has better translations (e.g. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea translated by William Butcher is better than Penguin's translation by David Coward). We have to evaluate a translation on a caese by case basis since it depends on the specific book in question. 2. Introductions. Both Penguin and OWC can have good or bad or average introductions. In general, an introduction can be done one of two ways. First, a more or less boilerplate kind of introduction or an introduction that follows a certain template that any literary scholar of the work can write (e.g. an introduction to a Sherlock Holmes book might start with a brief biography of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, how he began to write, what made him famous as a writer, involve a history of Sherlock Holmes as a character in the context of detective or crime fiction, trace its influences as well as what it influenced in later novels, perhaps talk a bit about Sherlock pastiches, and so on, and end with a popular quote like "The game's afoot!"). These introductions are literally introductions which help introduce and situate a reader unfamiliar with the book to the book. It gives one a broad background to understand the book, but it's not deeply analytical. The second way to write an introduction is almost the opposite. An introduction that's a trailblazer. An introduction that breaks new ground and gives new insight into the book. If done well, the introduction itself can even become a work of literature that's widely known and widely cited. In this respect, the introduction doesn't provide much of a broad overview of the book, maybe just enough to move on, but it dives deep into literary criticism and analysis. 3. Notes. Typically it's either footnotes or endnotes. Both Penguin and OWC have done both footnotes and endnotes, I believe, but Penguin usually tends to favor footnotes, while OWC usually tends to favor endnotes. I prefer footnotes, but others may differ. Both Penguin and OWC can have good, bad, or average notes in terms of content. It just depends on the specific book in question. Also, it's worth noting (no pun intended) that different scholars sometimes write different notes for the same book, depending on US or UK versions of the same book, for example. Sometimes this is also true for other factors like cover art. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe there are copyright, royalties, and/or other legal and financial concerns that publishers need to consider across continents. 4. Supplementary material. I think this is where the differences between the two publishers really stand out. OWC usually seems to provide far more supplementary material than Penguin. Penguin might do so better than OWC in some of their books, but OWC is more consistent than Penguin in doing so for most of their books. I'm thinking of material like appendices and bibliographies and so forth. This is where OWC tends to shine brighter than Penguin. That said, sometimes I only want a minimalist edition. A bare bones book. Just give me the text and a few helpful notes and let me come to my conclusions via my own interpretations. In this case, the Penguin would be preferred. In fact, sometimes it may even be overwhelming to have additional material. Anyway, in the end, it depends on one's purposes in reading a book. What one wishes to get out of the book. 5. Book quality. Factors like cover quality, paper quality, binding quality. I think the quality of each of these for most Penguin and OWC paperbacks is going to be more or less equivalent or comparable to one another. Both Penguin and OWC editions are meant to be affordable paperbacks that can be read a few times at most, then discarded. It's not like the cover of either Penguin or OWC is matte paper made of dense card, neither has French flaps let alone dust jackets, I'm not sure if the paper is even acid free in either, and (like most paperbacks) the binding will be glue-bound in both Penguin and OWC. That said, if I had to choose, it seems to me based purely on anecdotal evidence from my own experiences and friends and others that OWC is slightly better in terms of overall quality than Penguin. OWC paper feels better to touch than Penguin paper. As far as I know, both are glue-bound, yet the OWC binding seems to hold up better than the Penguin binding when opened. Probably the OWC would better bear more wear and tear such as repeated readings than the Penguin. But again, the difference here doesn't seem huge to me. Hopefully others who are far more knowledgeable and informed about book quality issues than I am can and will give scientifically objective details and specifics. To me, it seems close, with the edge to OWC if push came to shove, but it's probably negligible overall. 6. Aesthetics. This can be an important factor, though I think a lot of it is also subjective. I'm thinking of things like cover art, typeface, font type and font size, page layout, as well as the general look and feel of a book. I think overall Penguin tends to do a better job here, except for the typeface where I tend to prefer the OWC typeface. I especially love Penguin's easily identifiable black spines. (Note that the orange colored Penguin editions are atrocious in terms of quality. I'm certainly not referring to these Penguins. Penguins aren't tigers or orangutans; they look better in black and a bit of white than orange!) But again I realize this is a bit subjective. It depends quite a lot on one's personal tastes. By the way, the Penguin Classics Deluxe series is next level. It's aesthetically far better than the regular Penguin Classics as well as any paperback OWC produces. But I'll leave the Deluxe series aside since the Deluxe is not directly comparable to the Penguin Classics or the OWC as paperbacks. 7. Conclusion. In general, I think both Penguin and OWC are good if one simply wants a book that's the combination of readable, affordable, portable, annotatable, and/or lendable to friends and family and others. It seems to me choosing between Penguin vs. OWC can't be completely generalizable where one is definitively better than the other; it depends more on the specific book we have in mind and our goals or aims in reading the book.
I also don't like endnotes. But it's not a big deal: I use paper money as a bookmark. When I put down the book, I fold the paper money in half: one half is where I've left off reading, and the other half is at the endnotes that come next. So from the side (opposite the spine), you can see the paper money peeking out of the book. When I pick up the book to read it, I fold the money in half, and stick it in with the endnotes. That way, when I want to read some notes, it's easy to just flip the book. Not ideal, but liveable.
