The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

NYRB Classics is my favorite publisher. I love their variety -- classics, histories, essays, cookbooks, translated fiction, and even a doctoring manual.

I have even been a part of moderating the NYRB Classics group (though it's been dormant until a recent surge of interest, that I still need to help direct). You can go there for loads of information about the books, but I'm very happy to have something here too that allows for more general discussion.

Please feel free to comment below.

I have seen and enjoyed a few NYRB Classics titles here in the UK, but their availability seems to be hit and miss (perhaps due to copyright issues).

One of the many authors they have published is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. There is a rather good podcast on the author doing the rounds at the moment ...

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/20...

Ah shucks, Paul!

I am slightly obsessed with nyrb classics. I have been to the nyrb group, but it hadnt had much activity last time I looked.

I love them. The quality of the binding and paper is great, and the selection too.

They make for lovely bookshelves.

I'm a big fan too - they do look wonderful lined up on a bookshelf!

We ought to have another topic re bookshelves - and whether one even keeps books after one reads them or not. I'm a "not".

I do. I have even, rarely, bought a nicer copy of a book I have read. I just bought the nicer edition of Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish, the edition with color plates of paintings of fish. I have multiple copies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Good Earth, and have had to replace Midnight’s Children after too many of us read it and it fell apart.
I pick up extra copies of books that I know I am likely to “lend” at used book stores, so I don’t have to worry about getting them back.

I am a re-reader so I can’t give away books, which is a growing problem again. I purged books last summer and am back to stacks of books around my chair. It’s a welcome problem though. I consider myself the family librarian: my adult children get books from me and my granddaughters are just becoming teenagers so they can get books from me as well.

I will never be an eReader. I see the sense of tablets for traveling, but keeping all of one’s book in the cloud is to me like storing all of one’s travel photos in a box in the basement. Noticing a beloved book brings up a small rush of pleasant memories, and as practical matter, seeing an unread book reminds me that I have it to read yet.

It’s nice to see the the nyrb group is getting active again.

I like to keep books and have full interesting bookshelves, But, to tell you the truth, I cant afford to buy many books these books. So my reading usually comes from the library. And they seem to want the books back.

On the plus side, library books tend to be hardbacks which are much nicer books to read - bigger print, nicer paper and wider margins.

Abigail by Magda Szabó is available to order and on sale right now.

I did not renew my subscription. I don’t think they need the support from subscriptions and I’d rather choose my own titles.

WndyJW wrote: "Abigail by Magda Szabó is available to order and on sale right now.

I did not renew my subscription. I don’t think they need the support from subscriptions and I’d..."

I somehow missed the sale on that one, unless everything is marked down, which I'm just not noticing, but I came here to let everyone who hasn't already bought Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl that it's currently on sale for only $19.95 - which is 50% off the actual price.

Also at 50% off is Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad and Daniel Mendelsohn's essay book: Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones which was at least longlisted for the PEN essay award. (Not sure if they've released the shortlist yet.) And a bunch of other "Best of" books - only for this weekend: Józef Czapski: Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp; Last Letters: The Prison Correspondence, 1944–1945 by Freya & Helmuth James von Moltke; The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner; John Aubrey, My Own Life by Ruth Scurr (One of The Telegraph's best books of the decade), All of Us: A Young People's History of the World by Yvan Pommaux & Christophe Ylla-Somers (a children's book, translated from French by Anna Lehmann) and a few comics (If you'd like them listed, let me know.)

All are 50% off for the rest of today only.

A group of people in the nyrb book group just read Stalingrad and it doesn’t sound like many of them thought it was worth the time it took to read the whole thing, don’t take my word for that though.

Nothing like the prevailing view I've heard. And statistically the average rating on here is 4.15 (and for me, average friend rating 4.6).

This was an egregious example of how bad the GR search is. I couldn't remember the author without a general search engine, and the right book wasn't in the first two whole pages of search results for just Stalingrad.

Antonomasia wrote: "Nothing like the prevailing view I've heard. And statistically the average rating on here is 4.15 (and for me, average friend rating 4.6).

This was an egregious example of how bad the GR search is..."

Yeah, I've got to say that I've only ever heard very positive things about Stalingrad. Also, the GR search seems to get worse by the minute. Lately even w/ an ISBN I've had a couple books it couldn't find. Amazon ruins everything they touch, including my weekend, actually...

WndyJW wrote: "A group of people in the nyrb book group just read Stalingrad and it doesn’t sound like many of them thought it was worth the time it took to read the whole thing, don’t take my word for that though."
I thought it was very impressive!

I did say don’t take my word for it. It was a few people on nyrb, not a large sample of the population or people who read Stalingrad.

I thought Stalingrad was excellent. It is, however, a Very Long Book (short book lover here). Of the two Very Long Books I've been reading this year (the other is Anniversaries), I far prefer Stalingrad.

What I have seen in the Stalingrad discussion is that a lot of people seem to be unable to get beyond their idea that the Soviet Union was evil and that any book that doesn't scream this from the rooftop is deeply flawed. And while the current version of Stalingrad does have critical things to say, it's also largely a book about the doomed heroism of everyday Soviet soldiers.

Emily wrote: "I thought Stalingrad was excellent. It is, however, a Very Long Book (short book lover here). Of the two Very Long Books I've been reading this year (the other is Anniversaries), I far prefer Stali..."
I agree - there are chapters that read like Soviet propaganda, but the book as a whole is nuanced and by no means uncritical, and the picture it paints is very comprehensive. Admittedly Grossman pushed his political boundaries a lot further with Life and Fate, but he did actually manage to get Stalingrad published before Stalin died, and the new Chandler edition has comprehensive notes on what was changed and when.

Hugh wrote & Emily wrote

You both bring up good points. I've witnessed how dissonant it is for some people to imagine the USSR as anything beyond an evil empire. But there are people there, and as far as I'm aware, there have been for quite some time. Anyway, I bought it from the sale, and a few others, so once I finally finish the many long books I seem to keep jumping headfirst into, I shall read it myself. I do recall being nearly shocked in grade school to learn that the soviets fought alongside us in WWII. It seemed impossible to me that this "horrible place" (which was basically what a US kid heard about the USSR in my childhood) would have given so much. It swiveled my head in those days, but it also cleared a path for a less nationalistic fever against the country as a whole, I suppose.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/wint...

NYRB is having yet another sale: 50 of their books at 50% off

less interesting or great deal-ish is: SPEND $50 OR MORE AND GET FREE US SHIPPING

Ella, you’re the devil!

I wish we could get that in the UK!

Ang, I do not feel sorry for you! nyrb is one of the few favorite presses from which we can get free shipping. We have to pay shipping for Galley Beggar, Salt, Charco, Fitzcarraldo, Bluemoose, Dodo, Dead Ink, and so forth and so on. Even US orders don’t get free shipping from nyrb, except for this sale and even then the order has to be $50.

WndyJW wrote: "Ang, I do not feel sorry for you! nyrb is one of the few favorite presses from which we can get free shipping. We have to pay shipping for Galley Beggar, Salt, Charco, Fitzcarraldo, Bluemoose, Dodo..."

What's up w/ all the sales at NYRB. They have a different one every week it feels like.

If anyone not in the US wants to take advantage of this or any future NYRB sale, PM me, and we can figure something out. I'm good at mailing things. :-)

If you figure out how to ship from the US to the UK for some reasonable price, let me know! It’s ridiculously expensive every time I do it!

Shipping costs are the bane of book lovers and the reason so many use Amazon and Book Depo. I don’t judge people who for financial reasons use Amazon /Book Depo, it’s often buy from them or go without, but since I am now able to pay for shipping to use indie publishers I do.
I do have to give Bezos props for giving 10 billion to an organization to fight climate change.

When ordering relatively mainstream things from the UK, I try to use Blackwells. I don't know if they're a "nice" company, whatever that means, but they're not Amazon and global shipping is included in the price.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/retai...
A lot of the ratings is based on unknowns which is why they have a middling score - but the upshot is that there are several worse places.
They also run bricks & mortar shops, unlike the other competitive online booksellers.

This gets increasingly difficult to figure out: the "nice" company thing w/ books especially. I've been buying ebooks from the publisher when they offer that, and I'll point out that many/most of NYRB is sold in ebook format, but I don't know how that works if you're outside of the US.

I hate seeing publishers send me to Amazon to buy their books.

As for mailing from the US, I honestly don't know any "cheap" way to do it. Media mail would be best, and it's typically not THAT much longer inside the US, but that would change for outside of the US, I'd bet. No, probably just as well to purchase from NYRB themselves and pay them to ship, unless for some reason you can't.

I'm a bit shocked at how expensive it is to order from the US. I was shocked at the prices quoted in another thread too. As someone who orders from the UK fairly often, we do seem to be getting the better deal.

Of course, as the currency changes, that changes too. I'm always excited when I shop in the UK until I do the math. Things "seem" cheaper there when, in fact, they are not.

This is very last minute, but if it is not yet midnight on March 17 nyrb classics club is having 33% sale in subscription. The 12 month US subscription is $100.

My local Waterstones in Nottingham has a number (20 or so titles) of NYRB books on sale for £5 each at the moment - I couldn't resist buying 5 of them this morning even though none were really on my long term to read list.

Wow! That’s a great sale. Nyrb books are all good. Which books did you get, Hugh?

All older books:

Sybille Bedford - A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error

Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

Anna Seghers - Transit

Tom Kristensen - Havoc

Leopoldo Alas - His Only Son, with Dona Berta

There were a few more that tempted me including a couple of Henry Greens, but 5 was enough for me.

I have Turtle Diary and Transit. I used to pick up any nyrb title I saw at used book stores knowing they wouldn’t disappoint so I have quite a few now. 100 to be exact.

I recently scooped up The Book of Blam which I'm looking forward to. Had trouble choosing between the author's different books so went with the shortest...

The Book of Blam sounds very good, but I have a number of unread books about that period I should read before I buy more.

Emily wrote: "I recently scooped up The Book of Blam which I'm looking forward to. Had trouble choosing between the author's different books so went with the shortest..."

Great choice. I found it very powerful.

I did a subscription last year because it was on sale and have bought others when a sale popped up. I now have 15 or so on the shelf and must try to fit one in.

I bought a subscription this year because they had a huge discount on subscriptions.

$135 subscription for US residents right now. I said no more, I'd rather select my own, but I couldn't resist.

The subscription sale is happening now. $125 for US residents, regularly $190. Hard to resist $70 off.

https://www.nyrb.com/pages/the-nyrb-c...