The Reader’s Nook - The N&G Book Thread

Bull Shannon said:
As a Sanderson-allergic nerd in a literary world dominated by Sanderson (my last job was with a Mormon company, and every other software engineer was stoked for the new Stormlight book), I get some giddy schadenfreude from seeing this Wired columnist fold him like a card table:

www.wired.com

Brandon Sanderson Is Your God

He’s the biggest fantasy writer in the world. He’s also very Mormon. These things are profoundly related.
www.wired.com www.wired.com

I will say some of the things said are low blows (what nerd hasn't worn a blazer with a graphic tee? It's a mistake we must all grow through).

edit: In finishing the full article, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. While I really dislike Brandon Sanderson on the basis of his work, he's an overall generous presence (I've listened to his podcast and watched some of his writing lectures) and the piece belies Frank Grimes levels of resentment from a writer who can't square disliking the art with liking the artist's guest shower.
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I'm in the weird position of having met him a few times while never having read any of his novels (I worked at the BYU Bookstore in my college days, but I'm much more likely to read sci fi than fantasy), and I can say he's a really nice guy, including to us employees (something I can say was not true of multiple other authors I met on the job*), and that he was always gracious with his time to the fans that came to signings and such.

*For the record, the weirdest interaction with a "celebrity" in that job was Senator Orrin Hatch, who at that point had been in the senate for something like 327 years. He wanted to find a book, and I was the employee at the desk, but he only spoke the aide standing next to him, who then spoke to me. The interaction and finding the book took several minutes, but he never once spoke a word directly to me.
 
LeSamourai said:
I'm in the weird position of having met him a few times while never having read any of his novels (I worked at the BYU Bookstore in my college days, but I'm much more likely to read sci fi than fantasy), and I can say he's a really nice guy, including to us employees (something I can say was not true of multiple other authors I met on the job*), and that he was always gracious with his time to the fans that came to signings and such.

*For the record, the weirdest interaction with a "celebrity" in that job was Senator Orrin Hatch, who at that point had been in the senate for something like 327 years. He wanted to find a book, and I was the employee at the desk, but he only spoke the aide standing next to him, who then spoke to me. The interaction and finding the book took several minutes, but he never once spoke a word directly to me.
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Ex-bookseller here too! Our bookshop put on loads of author events, mostly because it allowed us to have a stock of wine in the shop at all times! Think we had a reputation for being a little chilled out, so loads of authors came to our shop.

Loved working in a bookshop. Honestly, if it paid enough I'd still be there...
 
Thackeraye said:
Ex-bookseller here too! Our bookshop put on loads of author events, mostly because it allowed us to have a stock of wine in the shop at all times! Think we had a reputation for being a little chilled out, so loads of authors came to our shop.

Loved working in a bookshop. Honestly, if it paid enough I'd still be there...
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I would love to work in a bookstore, even more than a music shop, I think. Just being surrounded by the smell of books all day would be so therapeutic. I'd have to interact with people, sure, but only people who wanted to be in a bookstore, and I'd only have to help them find books to read, right? It just seems like a wonderful way to pass the hours. I feel like I'd learn a lot, too, just hearing about books that other people are reading and interested in.
 
ayayrawn said:
In a bit of a reading rut. Been reading stuff of a bit too much mental strain this year and need a fun page turner, or something short, but compelling. Any recommendations?
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YMMV, but when I think of that I think: Piranesi, most Kazuo Ishiguro (esp Klara and the Sun or Never Let me Go), some Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus), Elmore Leonard (Killshot, 52 Pickup, $wag), Generation X (Coupland), White Noise, Ubik, Raymond Chandler, Shopgirl (Steve Martin writes good one-sitting books; see also Pleasure of My Company).

Again, tastes vary, and my wife likes to point out I don’t read anything actually easy-fun, but these are the titles that jump out at me on peeping my shelf.
 
Bull Shannon said:
YMMV, but when I think of that I think: Piranesi, most Kazuo Ishiguro (esp Klara and the Sun or Never Let me Go), some Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus), Elmore Leonard (Killshot, 52 Pickup, $wag), Generation X (Coupland), White Noise, Ubik, Raymond Chandler, Shopgirl (Steve Martin writes good one-sitting books; see also Pleasure of My Company).

Again, tastes vary, and my wife likes to point out I don’t read anything actually easy-fun, but these are the titles that jump out at me on peeping my shelf.
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Ok now I’m peeping my Goodreads and finding some library books that were quickies:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle: this one’s short, snappy, and atmospheric af; Circe by Madeline Miller; Daisy Jones and the Six; Leave the World Behind, which many people hated but I found short enough to forgive the ambiguity; True Grit; The Vanishing Half; This is How You Lose the Time War
 
Bull Shannon said:
YMMV, but when I think of that I think: Piranesi, most Kazuo Ishiguro (esp Klara and the Sun or Never Let me Go), some Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus), Elmore Leonard (Killshot, 52 Pickup, $wag), Generation X (Coupland), White Noise, Ubik, Raymond Chandler, Shopgirl (Steve Martin writes good one-sitting books; see also Pleasure of My Company).

Again, tastes vary, and my wife likes to point out I don’t read anything actually easy-fun, but these are the titles that jump out at me on peeping my shelf.
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Bull Shannon said:
Ok now I’m peeping my Goodreads and finding some library books that were quickies:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle: this one’s short, snappy, and atmospheric af; Circe by Madeline Miller; Daisy Jones and the Six; Leave the World Behind, which many people hated but I found short enough to forgive the ambiguity; True Grit; The Vanishing Half; This is How You Lose the Time War
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Read and loved a few of these, thank you! Might be time to visit the unread Ishiguro and Vonnegut on my shelf.
 
Second the Vonnegut recs if you haven't read Cat's Cradle or Hocus Pocus (or even if you have), or anything else by him really. If I'm in a rut, I find re-reading an old favourite or something I haven't revisited in a while to be a good way to get excited about reading again.

Have you read Auster's The New York Trilogy? I reread the first volume, City of Glass, recently over the course of a few nights — tight, interesting, the right amount of strange.

Other short ones I've loved: Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Lou Mathews' Shaky Town, Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. Portis' Masters of Atlantis and The Dog of the South are both quick and a ton of fun.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
I haven’t finished a book in 11 months. I hate how stuck I get when I don’t like the book I’m reading but can’t bring myself to abandon it.
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If I am struggling on a book I will drop it an start something else. If, later I am still thinking about about the book, I will give it another shot. If I try again and stall out again but want closure I will either give the audiobook a shot or just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
 
Ericj32 said:
When it comes to books that are classics/public domain and thus available in several editions - do you have a preference or loyalty on which edition you buy?

This goes for both books in print and ebooks. For ebooks, I have a really hard time paying $10+ for a penguin edition of something that's public domain. I usually go for the Delphi Classics editions that have all of the author's works bundled together in one ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. They often seem to include other ephemera: illustrations, photos, articles written by the author on other topics, printed criticism of their work by other famous writers, or printed biographies of the author. If I see an individual novel ebook on sale for $2.99 or less with a really nice cover image, I might buy it, but otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.

For books in print, I'm kind of a sucker for a deckle edge and thus, often end up with Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. I wouldn't hesitate to just say that those are unequivocally the best if it weren't for the bizarre cover art that a good chunk of them have. I'm not at all interested in a book cover that tries to illustrate the plot of the novel as if it were a graphic novel:

9780143137580
9780143105039



Or the set of covers that look like they were designed for angsty goth teens:
9780143129400
9780143106159


Like I said, many of them are really nice covers that I love, but I wish that they'd go for a slightly more consistent aesthetic.

I used to like the regular black penguin classics, but they recently changed the cover design on those so that the both the author's name and title now appear in white text and both in all caps and they seem to have increased the font size of the author's name - like maybe it will grow on me, but after so many years of seeing the author's name in orange and the title in italics, this just looks wrong - I could see someone looking at this edition of Jane Eyre and thinking that Charlotte Brontë was the title of Jane Eyre's novel:
lf


the way that I'm used to:
9780141394930


There's also the newer set of Penguin Clothbound Classics that are hardcovers with patterned designs on the covers:
9780141996332
9780241552650


they're kind of cool - but they're anywhere from $15-30 and I got of few of them and the way that the design is printed on the cloth kind of looks like it will wear off easily. They don't look quite as clean and precise in person, and some of the color combinations or images also just seem odd to me:
9780141392462
9780241347775


There are also Modern Library Classics editions, which feel like the paper is a little heavier somehow:

9780375760068
9780375757815


They also have updated covers on these which appear quite simple and elegant to me:
9780679640004
9780375759239


besides these, there are the hardcover Everyman's classics editions, vintage classics (another one of my favorites though there seem to be different versions between the US and the UK for these), and the red-and-white Oxford World Classics.

I'm torn on this because currently my collection is a smattering of different editions, and part of me wants to see a little more uniformity from the spines on my bookshelves, at least when it comes to the classics.
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I don't really have loyalty to any publisher, but I've been reading long enough to know at least which paperbacks I like the feel of. If a classic has been published by Vintage International, that's normally what I'll go for. They're the perfect size and just the right degree of "floppy," if you know what I mean. Paperbacks should fall open. Stiff ones are annoying.

I first read Faulkner in high school with the Oprah's Book Club (lol) three-pack of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. I like some uniformity on my shelves too — not everywhere, of course — so through the years I've picked up all the others I could find in that style. They changed the look several years back, so I'm trying to pick up the rest when I see them in overstock stores.

PXL_20230412_194150522.jpg

You're spot on about the comic-book style of many of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions; no slight against graphic novels but that's not what I think when I think "classic." Some of them are absolutely gorgeous, though; they're very well made and I like deckle edges. I don't love the uniformity of the font, though. I wish they mixed that up a little more. These are some of my faves on my shelves:

PXL_20230412_192625101.jpg
 
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BjorgenFjorgen said:
I don't really have loyalty to any publisher, but I've been reading long enough to know at least which paperbacks I like the feel of. If a classic has been published by Vintage International, that's normally what I'll go for. They're the perfect size and just the right degree of "floppy," if you know what I mean. Paperbacks should fall open. Stiff ones are annoying.

I first read Faulkner in high school with the Oprah's Book Club (lol) three-pack of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. I like some uniformity on my shelves too — not everywhere, of course — so through the years I've picked up all the others I could find in that style. They changed the look several years back, so I'm trying to pick up the rest when I see them in overstock stores.

View attachment 171763

You're spot on about the comic-book style of many of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions; no slight against graphic novels but that's not what I think when I think "classic." Some of them are absolutely gorgeous, though, they're very well made and I like deckle edges. I don't love the uniformity of the font, though. I wish they mixed that up a little more. These are some of my faves on my shelves:

View attachment 171764
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I don't own of these Folio Society editions but I've been awfully tempted as they look absolutely amazing
lasv_bookshot Small.jpegjaws_bookshot Small.jpegcatc_bookshot Small.jpeg

Beautifully Illustrated Hardcover Books | Folio Society

Discover The Folio Society. The world's most extensive selection of beautifully illustrated books. The perfect gift. Find out more.
www.foliosociety.com www.foliosociety.com
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
I don't own of these Folio Society editions but I've been awfully tempted as they look absolutely amazing
View attachment 171767View attachment 171768View attachment 171769

Beautifully Illustrated Hardcover Books | Folio Society

Discover The Folio Society. The world's most extensive selection of beautifully illustrated books. The perfect gift. Find out more.
www.foliosociety.com www.foliosociety.com
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Yeah, same. There are some stunning ones. I rarely buy hardcovers in the first place and find it tough to justify the cost of those when I'd usually prefer to read a paperback.
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
I don't really have loyalty to any publisher, but I've been reading long enough to know at least which paperbacks I like the feel of. If a classic has been published by Vintage International, that's normally what I'll go for. They're the perfect size and just the right degree of "floppy," if you know what I mean. Paperbacks should fall open. Stiff ones are annoying.

I first read Faulkner in high school with the Oprah's Book Club (lol) three-pack of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. I like some uniformity on my shelves too — not everywhere, of course — so through the years I've picked up all the others I could find in that style. They changed the look several years back, so I'm trying to pick up the rest when I see them in overstock stores.

View attachment 171763

You're spot on about the comic-book style of many of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions; no slight against graphic novels but that's not what I think when I think "classic." Some of them are absolutely gorgeous, though, they're very well made and I like deckle edges. I don't love the uniformity of the font, though. I wish they mixed that up a little more. These are some of my faves on my shelves:

View attachment 171764
Click to expand...
I know exactly what you're talking about with the floppiness of vintage classics - they feel like you barely need to break them in and they lay flat pretty well on their own, so you don't have to play a marathon game of thumb war with the book to keep it open as you read haha. I have all of those vintage classics editions in your photo and also the Oprah Faulkner 3 pack. A lot of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations of Russian literature are available in Vintage classics editions as well and they have a similar distinctive design across most of them. Of the penguin classics deluxe editions, I just recently picked up the master and the margarita and the portrait of the artist as a young man because they were so beautiful.
 
Ericj32 said:
I know exactly what you're talking about with the floppiness of vintage classics - they feel like you barely need to break them in and they lay flat pretty well on their own, so you don't have to play a marathon game of thumb war with the book to keep it open as you read haha. I have all of those vintage classics editions in your photo and also the Oprah Faulkner 3 pack. A lot of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations of Russian literature are available in Vintage classics editions as well and they have a similar distinctive design across most of them. Of the penguin classics deluxe editions, I just recently picked up the master and the margarita and the portrait of the artist as a young man because they were so beautiful.
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That's the only one I posted that I haven't read yet. I admit the cover is what initially drew me to it, but it sounds right up my alley. I haven't read any Russian lit in a while so I'm looking forward to it.
 
Bull Shannon said:
I love this topic!

I'm not too picky in terms of consistency of publisher/spine; if I'm shopping in the store, I'll favor the print that is most readable and the cover that's most pleasant (I'll skew between demure covers and more colorful, interpretive ones, though I agree the comic-book style ones are not my jam even though I'm happy to see some cartoonists I love get a check). Glad to finally have a word to go along with my love: deckle edges. They're great, but not key.

The internet age has made it a bit easier to pick and choose editions and covers; I've had some really good luck with Thriftbooks filling in a few holes in my collection and getting copies of series books which fit one another. That said, I recently received a copy of Dead Man's Walk with the worst book cover I've ever seen (I still haven't read it out of shame):
dead-mans-walk-poster.png

(honestly, the cover itself is in that poor resolution)

Also, on the spine consistency front, I've been a member of NY Review of Books Classics for about two years now, and I'll tell you: the uniform spines slowly become a monolithic reminder of all the Serious books you haven't read yet. I do like the nyrb style of cover in general though; they do a good job of balancing design and class.
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Forgot about the NYRB series. I only read my first few last year from the library but I liked the feel of those books a lot, too; they felt very well made. It helped that all the titles I read were great or at least interesting. I'm sure collecting those would become intimidating, though!
 
Any Don Delillo fans? I saw him referenced in two straight books I just read and had never even heard of him. Then when I looked him up I saw blurbs like 'quintessential American novelist' and I had to wonder how he slipped through, if he's that highly regarded.

I'm going to pick one up...thinking White Noise, Falling Man or Great Jones Street.
 
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