The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection: More than 1000 of the Greatest Classics

Apparently no reviewer so far has actually bought the complete Penguin Classics Collection. So here's a review from someone who has. This is an orgy for a book-lover. I have had a wonderful time from the moment I placed the order. They arrived in 25 boxes shrink-wrapped on a wooden pallet, over 750 lbs. of books. It took about twelve hours to unpack them, check them off the packing list (one for each box), and then check them off the list we downloaded from Amazon.com. They take up about 77 linear feet. I have always loved Penguin books. They are a special publisher, and I would not have considered this sort of purchase from most other publishers. Since I have already read perhaps a quarter of these titles in my life, you can see that I have an affinity for their selections. Penguin books don't just contain the text of the book. They generally include editorial material with biographical, historical, and bibliographical information that is scholarly, well-written, informative, and very useful in adding to the enjoyment and understanding of the book. Why buy a collection rather than picking the books I want? This is like having books recommended by a good friend who knows what you like to read. Yes, this collection contains books I wouldn't have necessarily thought about picking up and reading. That is one of the real pleasures. Why buy paperbacks when hardbounds will last longer? Have you have tried to put together a hardbound collection of over 1000 titles like this? It would cost a lot more, for starters. Not all are in print, even classics. If you don't like good quality paperbacks like these, will you settle for a foxed used hardbound copy? I will concede that the print is small. You can get a pair of magnifying reading glasses at any pharmacy for a minor cost. Surely no one is arguing that a classic can only be read in large print versions? I also like books I can carry with me, like these. Well, except for the complete Shakespeare (hardbound), or the Domesday book, or Clarissa, or a few other pretty big volumes. Lastly, this collection has a particular appeal to me as a former cataloging librarian, which it undoubtedly will not for many people. I love handling books, reading books, and also organizing books. Just the process of taking these out of boxes and putting them randomly on shelves has given me hours of pleasure. Deciding how to organize them will provide more pleasure. Yes, I'm going to catalog my collection. Being able to pluck a book at random from that collection and know that it is almost certain to be worth my time to read is the best treat of all.

I find the concept intriguing, though I wish Penguin had chosen to use acid free paper. Browsing through the list of titles though raises some questions however. Does the collection really need two different copies of the Oresteia, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Song of Roland, Capital, The Divine Comedy (2 copies each of all 3 volumes), Medea, Siddhartha, Faust, The Odyssey, Swann's Way The Way We Live Now, Troilus and Criseyde, and Twenty Loves Poems and a Song of Despair? Not to mention three copies of the Aeneid and Beowulf and four of the Illiad. For the most part these are variations of translation, but their also two copies each of Oroonoko and Don Juan, which were written in English. The worst offender is Shakespeare, where the collection includes the complete works as a volume, two editions of the sonnets, four omnibus volumes, plus 39 individual plays, which means you get four copies each of A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, King Lear, and the sonnets, plus two or three copies each of thirty some-odd other plays. It seems if they could have limited themselves to only 1 translation or 1 copy of each work, there are 50 more works that could be included. Besides, if you take out the duplicates, my reading of 4% of the list jumps to 5%. :)

I bought The Penguin Classics Library collection late last year and was as excited as a schoolboy when the pallet arrived at my doorstep. You can imagine my disappointment therefore when, after I had laid the books end to end, the length of all the titles combined nary reached 51 miles, and I found out I had ended up in a rather poor neighborhood with many, many ugly (and I assume illiterate) people. Also, when I attempted to repack to books and return the item to Amazon, I found most of them had been stolen along the route, and a dog had defecated on Tale of Two Cities near the McDonalds near Arrigo Park.