NYRB Classics discussion

I have been a member of the NYRB Classics Book Club since January 2018 so I will share the titles that are part of the Book Club, for those who are curious and may be thinking about getting a subscription.

These were the 2018 selections:

January: Little Reunions

February: All for Nothing

March: The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter

April: Basic Black with Pearls

May: Compulsory Games

June: Sand

July: Journey Into the Mind's Eye

August: A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939–1940

September: Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: A Portrait of a Simple Man

October: Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa

November: Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

December: Portraits without Frames

The January 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel

Introduction by Lawrence Weschler, afterword by Donna Rikfind

The February 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Nothing But the Night by John Williams

March 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Max Havelaar Or the Coffee Auction of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli

Introduction by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke and David McKay

Louise wrote: "March 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Max Havelaar Or the Coffee Auction of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli

Introduction by Pramoedya An..."

Oh I have this book in Indonesian and haven't had the chance to read it yet.

These all sound fantastic. My Winter Solstice gift from my D.H. is a subscription to nyrb!

WndyJW wrote: "These all sound fantastic. My Winter Solstice gift from my D.H. is a subscription to nyrb!"

That's wonderful! I'm hoping for cheaper shipping cost in the near future so that I can subscribe, too! NYRB, are you listening?

Yeah, the shipping cost out of the US is insane. I don't know how they justify that. I buy lots of stuff from the US and nowhere near such high shipping costs. The only way I can afford a subscription is by having it shipped to a friend in the US. I get my books from her when I see her a few times a year.

Would it be less expensive to forgo the subscription and buy the books from The Book Depository since they have free shipping?

WndyJW wrote: "Would it be less expensive to forgo the subscription and buy the books from The Book Depository since they have free shipping?"

The shipping is included in the subscription. So in the US, at $150 for 13 books (one year subscription plus a bonus book) that's only $11.54 per book, shipping included. That's a pretty good deal. Not sure we would get the same using The Book Depository, especially for new releases. I'm lucky that I go to the US often enough that I can just have the books shipped to a friend. I just don't get them monthly but I don't read them that fast anyway.

That’s right, I forgot to figure in the lower cost of the books.

For future consideration

https://granta.com/best-book-of-1966-...

this was interesting

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-e...

WndyJW wrote: "this was interesting

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-e..."

That was very neat!! Thanks for sharing.

I took this presentation as validation that my nyrb obsession is widely shared!

This is beautiful. Well done, LA Times!

I love that infographic, thanks for sharing!

Now I want to organize my nyrb by color. I’m looking at my shelf and I have mostly dark colors....(15 minutes later) Arranging by color does not look good because of all the brown and black books on my shelf.

I need to rearrange some shelves so I can dedicate a second shelf to nyrb books.

I have books I’ve read at one end of the shelf and then put books by the same author together. I have multiple Sylvia Townsend Warner, Magda Szabó, Vasily Grossman, and I just this minute discovered Sanford Friedman, Gyula Krúdy, Olivia Manning. I didn’t realize I had more than one book by all of those 6 until I just looked to see if I missed anyone.

I clearly need to buy more editions to brighten up my shelf.

The April 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Other Stories by Maxim Osipov

Preface by Svetlana Alexievich, edited by Boris Dralyuk, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming, and Anne Marie Jackson

Just joined and catching up.

I've wanted to subscribe for a while, but only for eBook versions of the monthly read. I have enough books. I move every 2 years on average (military) so the last thing I need is more weight. I asked NYRB about subscribing but for eBooks and they said there are no plans for that. :(

Iron wrote: " I asked NYRB about subscribing but for eBooks and they said there are no plans for that. ."

Welcome to the group Iron. The last time I moved (12 years ago) I said "never again", just with the books alone, hahaha, so I can sympathize. I do a lot of my reading on the ereader and the NYRB subscription to Canada is insanely priced so I had also asked about an ebook subscription awhile back. It is too bad that they won't consider it because their books ARE available as ebooks. I subscribe to a few small presses in the UK and they give me free ebook downloads with my print subscription which I think is great customer service.

I have to confess that I had a subscription beginning 5 or 6 years ago but stopped a few years ago because I wasn’t keeping up on what was coming in each month (I’m a slow reader) and I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, plus I would pick up NYRB selections when I visited the Strand bookstore in NYC, which has a large selection. But I did end up asking my husband to resubscribe me as a an Xmas gift, which was something of a comedy of errors as he accidentally subscribed me to the book review instead. We got that straightened out, I’m now getting both the book review and the books monthly.

Just recently read Hughes’ terrific In a Lonely Place and Szabo’s The Door, both highly satisfying reads that I got in my first subscription of 5 or 6 years ago, and now that I finally got around to reading these excellent selections I’m a little sorry that I dropped the subscription for a couple of years.

It is hard to keep up with a book per month when we have other books we want to read as well. I read four out of the first five from 2018 then got hopelessly left behind.

I've bought a few of the NYRB monthly books in e-version in the last few years and loved the few I read. (Little Reunions, One Fat Englishman, and The Go-Between.)

Now I check the subscriber pages monthly to see what the next one is, then read about it and if it is interesting, buy it.

But, they could get more money out of me if they offered an e-version of the club!

Woohoo! My copy of Max Havelaar arrived in today’s mail! So nice to get something that isn’t junk mail or a bill...or some other uninteresting item.

Janet wrote: "Woohoo! My copy of Max Havelaar arrived in today’s mail! So nice to get something that isn’t junk mail or a bill...or some other uninteresting item."

My copy is with a friend in the US so I will only get it next time I see her, but my library has the ebook which I just got today. I hope to be able to find the time to read it at some point soon.

The May 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Castle Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky

translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

The June 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake

with an introduction by Lisa Alther

The July 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

translated from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck

Can't wait to read this.

My copy of Three Summers just arrived. Looks quite intriguing and I may suggest it to my IRL book group.

Been feeling frustrated in that I haven’t been able to keep up with the monthly reading discussions. I’m about a month behind, missed online discussion of Summer Book (but did discuss it in IRL book group).

Have under 100 pages left to read in Max Havelaar so missed that discussion, too, but look forward to reading everyone’s comments on that fantastic book. I never would have come across it if it weren’t for the fact that nyrb made it available. I do think I’m almost starting to fetishize over this series but the choices are just consistently good to excellent!

I feel bad because I just could not get into Berlin Alexanderplatz or Max Havelaar. I want to support the group, but I didn’t like two of our first few books,

The August 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind by Lyall Watson

introduction by Nick Hunt

WndyJW wrote: "this was interesting

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-e..."

WndyJW, thanks for sharing.

The September 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Introduction by Claire Harman

I was excited to open this book! I didn’t know nyrb had published it.

I’m also excited to see that nyrb is publishing Abigail by Magda Szabo in English this month! If we don’t get it as part of our subscription I will order it.

The October 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Images and Shadows: Part of a Life by Iris Origo

with an afterword by Katia Lysy

Stalingrad is listed as “An NYRB Classics Original” and it’s publication date is June 11, 2019, but it doesn’t appear to have been the monthly selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club for any month. So, what is the meaning of the designation “An NYRB Classics Original”? Also, is there any way to find out in advance what the monthly selections of the NYRB Book Club will be? I would like to read Stalingrad but hesitate to buy it for fear that I will automatically buy it again later as a member of the NYRB Book Club. Thanks very much for any information you can provide.

I subscribed to the Book Club for a year. (2018-2019), As I recall, each book 'dropped' as monthly distibrution soon after it was published. Perhaps the book will be on one of the periodic sales lists sometime? I bought the book recently, and let my Book Club membership lapse. Via the membership, books came to me that I had no interest in reading.

November (or December? not sure if it was early or late) was The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays of D.H. Lawrence

Fingers doubled, tripled, quadruple crossed that the January pick is Abigail

Edit: Dang, it's The Simple Past

The November 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays of D.H. Lawrence by D.H. Lawrence

Edited and with an introduction by Geoff Dyer

The December 2019 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Free Day by Inès Cagnati

A new translation from the French and with an introduction by Liesl Schillinger

The January 2020 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

The Simple Past by Driss Chraïbi

Introduction by Adam Shatz, translated from the French by Hugh A. Harter

The February 2020 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Charisma and Disenchantment by Max Weber

Introduction by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, translated from the German by Damion Searls

The March 2020 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Marrow and Bone by Walter Kempowski

Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins

The April 2020 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Malicroix by Henri Bosco

Translated from the French by Joyce Zonana

The May 2020 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club is:

Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson

Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, with illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe

Caillie Canina, thanks very much!