The true twelve days of Christmas begins on Christmas Day and end on Epiphany January 6. You could wait until Jan 7 to take down decorations. Just a suggestion.
Yes indeed! January 6 is the first day of Carnival and traditionally Joan of Arc’s birthday. Eat a king cake while taking down your decorations, watch The Dead which takes place on Epiphany, then if you’re in New Orleans go to the Quarter and see the Joan of Arc parade! 💜💚💛
Mike, you just got my 9-year-old interested in these books. He was glancing through my video feed and saw "I Love Penguins," and got a kick out of the thumbnail. I don't think the video was what he expected, but this afternoon I caught him rooting through my old Penguin classics collection, so I gave him some to try (The Odyssey and Dracula's Guest). He may be too young to fully appreciate it, but I started reading the classics at his age and became a lifelong addict. So bravo!
When I was a kid reading voraciously in the '60s, my go to's were those Signet classics. Well made paperbacks. Strikingly creative, vivid cover art. A very light, almost silken paper that felt so classy to the touch. Highly informative forwards and prefaces. For a buck a piece or less. I had dozens of them; most especially every Dickens edition I could find. Would love to see you address those.
In my youth, I was all about the Signet and Bantam classics, because I could buy more of them with the money I had. I also had some that were printed by Scholastic. Loved the book fair as a kid. That said, Penguin is the classic line that I respect the most.
Penguins are wonderful editions. And I think you could also have a discussion about your love for mass market paperbacks - when they are great, and what genres work well for them.
I agree about Penguin Books. When I go to Barnes and Noble (or on-line) I always try to choose the Penguin edition. I couldn't get a Penguin of Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so I settled for a Modern Library Classics edition. It's a good edition, but it sticks out amongst all the Penguin copies of the Dickens books on the bookshelf.
I have to say I haven't read a lot of penguin classics however, I do love the way penguin makes their clothbound classic hardcovers. My copy of Dracula is a clothbound classic and I love the way the spine feels when I read it; the silk ribbon used to mark it is a nice touch as well. Wonder what other penguin classics could be out there? 🙂❤📚
I have so much love for Penguin. They came with us on family vacations, they’ve been given and received as gifts through the decades, their ebooks are almost always good, the whole deal. Fascinating look at the history of their design. I don’t recall ever seeing a bunch of those early ones. So thanks!
I love Penguins too! 🐧😜 Something about the minimalist black covers are so classy. It'd be interesting to see a video of your top 5 and bottom 5 Penguins (just for contrast). It's easy to praise Penguin, but I also thought it was interesting hearing you talk about their idiosyncrasies and occasionally lackluster/strange choices.
Happy New Year Michael and Roger and The Lady Of The Manor. To me, Penguin is synonymous with quality and professionalism in publishing. The New South Wales Education Department often recommends the Penguin edition for English texts being taught to Senior students for their final exams.
I love me some Pengie Classics Michael..just wonderful..Fantastic.!..The Cover design is so good..I remember Picador did a series of classics.The covers were dual colors black and white ..really made an impression.Seasons greetings to you MKV...Thanks for all you do..
I prefare a Penguin over an Oxford too, both are very good with striking minimalist designs, and each has its bonus points. Although Oxford doesnt have a tasty chocolate biscuit named after it. [your free holiday joke] * * sorry if the joke doesnt translate across the pond, p..p..p..Penguin biscuits are famous in Britain.
Hello Michael, I love Penguin books too; so many fascinating book covers over the years. I agree about the latest cover design, it just lacks something. I do feel very differently about Penguin now since the controversy this year of them coming out with new editions editing, censoring, and even re-writing harmless older books. I read that they even give warnings in the introductions that the book contains "outdated' terms. Even censoring P.G. Wodehouse! Apparently they'd been altering little things here and there for a while and people didn't know, it's very disappointing and dishonest that they would cave in to that sort of thing. I will collect older editions, but frankly, I don't trust them anymore to buy new ones, and I prefer the look of the more vintage ones. Lori
I do love me some Penguin. I wish the black spine series used acid-free paper and I wish they were easier to find in good condition here in the Twin Cities (even the new ones often seem kinda bedraggled), but they're still nearly an auto-buy when that little orange penguin shines out at me from the shelves. Happy New Year, Michael!
After the resounding success of the Morrissey autobiography I'm sure they're probably going to release the Penguin Classics Varney the Vampire in 3 volumes with the crappy black spines. Then, once everyone has that, they'll put out the single volume deluxe edition with the French flaps...
I have a few of the James Bond series that Penguin brought a few years ago. The covers are beautiful in my view. They also did Princess of Mars which is a book I fell in love with when I first read it.
Epiphany. Leave the Christmas stuff up until the Wise Men arrive, (symbolically, but isn't all of it symbolic?) Two sales? Roger won't let you borrow his books?
Re: how long to keep Xmas tree and decorations up. It's entirely up to you, but traditionally the period from December 25 to January 6 covered the "12 days of Christmas." January 6 -- the Feast of Epiphany -- celebrated the journey of the Magi to see the Christ child, which was a fitting end to the story. Now, I'm not religious, but I like the idea of the 12 days of Xmas and keep my decorations up through January 6.
I believe they've also made some changes on the newer black spine editions, so that they hold up much better to repeated handling and wear & tear. The glue and binding in the spines seem much more sturdy. My old copy of The Count of Monte Cristo looks like it's been through the Napoleonic Wars, and I've only read that edition once. That new translation of Les Miserables is excellent. Probably the best english translation that's been done. It deserves all the praise it gets.
The thing that irritates me about Penguin's Plutarch editions is that the Lives are *parallel* lives; the point of them was that they written in pairs, one Greek and one Roman, to compare them. Penguin splitting them up defeats the entire point.
Love both penguins and Oxfords, both it comes down to translation on some titles. The Oxford Herodotus is better than the penguin translation in my opinion but penguin Thucydides is the winner compared to oxford’s.
The Monk might be my favorite old time gothic horror novel. I’m tending to ebooks for most classics, but some of those are very poorly formatted and the translations are very old.
I've been disappointed in the clothbound Penguins starting with my copy of War and Peace, which is too small to accommodate over 1300 pages of text and is very well made otherwise but impossible to read because of the narrow binding. The cover design is also rather dull. I am partial to Norton Critical Editions if you want to explore a work at depth, and New York Review of Books Classics for lesser known but generally great editions. Everyman's Library also does a nice job with hardcovers.
Hey Michael, did your household help ever come back? Roger does seem to be a bit chubbier than normal. EDIT: Oops, I goofed and made my comment before the end of the video. You answered my question. That staff must be difficult to keep around!🤣🤣🤣
