As should be obvious from the eclectic mix of subjects addressed on this blog, book collecting is limited only by one's imagination. And one can always re-charge that imagination simply by wandering the aisles of virtually any independent bookstore or neighborhood library.
Of course, such serendipity only gets one so far. As we have observed in several previous posts (see, for example, here, here and here), most Americans still manage to miss out on much of the world's great literature by virtue of the fact that most such literature has never been translated into English.
Some book collectors are doubly cursed, for not only are they monolingual, but the serendipity that other book collectors take for granted is unavailable to them because they live in areas where both independent bookstores and local libraries have been shuttered by an uncaring public. It's folks like these who could use what Hollywood power types call a personal assistant, someone who can wander the aisles of far-flung bookstores and libraries in search of overlooked classics, obscure tomes of exceptional interest, as-yet-untranslated masterpieces that remain virtually unknown to the general reading public. This amounts to collecting by proxy, but as we have pointed out elsewhere, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Unfortunately, personal assistants cost a lot of money. There's that whole salary thing to deal with, not to mention the extra expense of benefits like healthcare insurance, a personal car, etc., etc., etc. Good thing someone came up with the bright idea of NYRB Classics:
Here at The Private Library we think of NYRB Classics as the personal assistant without the headaches (or expense). Founded in 1999, this publisher's mission statement reads like the Help Wanted ad for our ideal personal assistant, since its purpose is to seek out
nineteenth century novels and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, tell-all memoirs and learned studies, established classics and cult favorites, literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of.
It then reprints these newly-uncovered treasures in handsome uniform trade paperback editions...[that] feature an introduction by an outstanding writer, scholar, or critic....
To our especially great delight,
literature in translation constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, simply because so much great literature has been left untranslated into English, or translated poorly, or deserves to be translated again, much as any outstanding book asks to be read again:
The series, which now comprises over 260 in-print titles, even includes a graphic novel (Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati, translated into English for the first time last fall):
What NYRB Classics has long done for adult books it recently also has begun to do for children's books:
The New York Review Children's Collection began in 2003 in an attempt to reward readers who have long wished for the return of their favorite titles and to introduce those books to a new generation of readers. The line publishes picture books for preschoolers through to chapter books and novels for older children.
For reasons we have outlined in several previous posts (e.g., here), we generally do not collect paperbacks. We make an exception for NYRB Classics....
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