OT but likely of some interest: Macmillan Collector's Library

I don't think I've ever seen this series mentioned on FSD:

www.panmacmillan.com/imprint-publishers/macmillan-collectors-library?sortby=az&page=17

Obviously the book production standards do not equal those of FS core editions. But there are several here that FS has not produced, and some of the cover illustrations are striking.

Nice little pocket cloth-bound hardbacks perfect for traveling or just taking with you on the go. When I lived in London I often carried one around to read on the tube etc.

I feel that Macmillan is not doing a great job marketing the series after they acquired Collector's Library a couple of years ago. Their website for the series is a distinct downgrade from the old Collector's Library site (actually, a buggy piece of rubbish the last time I checked; not sure if they got their things together yet, will check tomorrow, but it was bad - it wasn't even possible to see the whole range of 2 or 3 hundred books they offer, sorting was out of wack, etc.).

The books whose dust jackets have plain light blue as a background for the top half are Macmillan post-acquisition prints, mostly reprints in the new light blue blocked cloth bindings and new dust jackets, although they keep printing some new titles too it seems, just at a slower rate. I don't own any of these yet, but I handled a couple, and they seem to be bound and printed at the same place in China as the pre-acquisition Collector's Library editions, which are bound in red cloth and feature those striped dust jacket backgrounds of different colors.

I actually have a volume of Thomas Hardy's short stories ready for my trip next week.

They're not bad for reading on the tube or for taking travelling. I'd much prefer to be able to purchase these titles as Folio Collectables though, as the production quality of the Macmillan Collector's Library is not great. The Macmillan books are, however, more pocketable.

>2 elladan0891: Problems with the web page are still there, at least on my iPad.

>3 sir.david:
Not "more pocketable" - simply "pocketable", unlike the Collectables ;) Collectables are normal sized books. Not large and pretty light, but you still need a bag or a purse to carry them around. Btw, after seeing Collectables in person, I changed my mind about them. They're quite lovely. I think Folio is not marketing them well. They should never have called them "softcovers".

Agree, CLs are not quite up to Folio standards. But they're still smyth-sewn cloth bound hardbacks printed on acid-free paper which you can pick up on amazon for under a tenner (some around a fiver) in the UK, and mostly under $10 in the US. Value for money. The only downside might be the relatively small type size for those whose eyes require larger letters.

So they fill a niche for travel/on the go books very well - little clothbound volumes that you can shove into a back pocket of your jeans or a pocket of your jacket, take to a restaurant to read while eating and not be really bothered about spotting them as they're so cheap, etc.

There are not that many alternatives. Slightly Foxed Editions are nice and almost as pocketable, but they're 2-3 times more expensive and have a limited range. I still really like Slightly Foxed though.

Then there are Notting Hill Editions (not available in the US as far as I know), Everyman's Pocket Classics and Everyman's Wodehouse, which are all lingering on the fringes of pocketability, and that's pretty much it, isn't it?

>>5 elladan0891: "They should never have called them "softcovers"."
I don't really understand what they mean by that. In my mind, softcover is a synonym for paperback, but that is clearly not what they are talking about.

Does anyone have any of these? Can you tell me whether they're actually sewn? After watching a video on YT, they look glued...

>7 adriano77:
I have The Poems of Thomas Hardy from this series and it is definitely sewn.

I have a bunch, both with the red cloth and the light blue, and they’re definitely sewn. They’re pretty nice for those books that aren’t available otherwise.

>8 Son.of.York: >9 RRCBS:

Thanks both!

I actually love these. I have a dozen or so in my library and they are just so lovely to have. They are for obvious reasons different from Folio but if you are tight for space these can be perfect. Also due to being inexpensive a collection of good literature can be amassed quite quickly and these are perfect for example if you have young children or teenagers and you want to write them a letter explaining why they should read this book.

>11 ironjaw:

These sound like they are worth exploring. I'll look out for them.

I just went over to the campus store to take a look at these Macmillan books, and they're fine. Personally, I like the Konemann classics better. (Are the latter still in print?)

>13 cpg:

Konemann are good as well. As it happens, my wife is currently reading Tom Sawyer in Konemann - small format, cloth binding, nice smooth paper (appears to be acid-free), sewn, explanatory notes in the back. I don't know whether they are still in print. Mine date from the late 1990s and still look like new.

Picked up their edition of The Great Gatsby as a trial run. In one word - cute. I like the pastel blue and gold motif but the overall size is a little too small for me to comfortably hold. I knew the dimensions before ordering but it didn't really strike me until receiving. Many of the pages are stuck together because of the gold edging but I imagine this can't be avoided if you're going for that type of accent. Paper is very, very thin. Not quite onion stuff but near enough, so much so that I feel I might accidentally crease if turning carelessly. It's indeed sewn as mentioned so that's a big plus. Overall, I may order a few more, both as gifts for young relatives, and for titles FS hasn't covered.

>15 adriano77: I agree with this evaluation of Macmillan Collector's Library editions.

I only have one: Ghost Stories by M. R. James.

The size is a bit too small to hold comfortably, and though I still have 20/20 vision—oddly given that everyone else in my family seems to need glasses and I stare at screens a lot—I still find the font to be unpleasantly small.

That said, the books seem otherwise well designed and well made, in the same range of quality as Everyman's Library, or maybe slightly under.

I briefly recall from memory that I once read an article interview with Yann Martel discussing that he was writing a letter to his daughter every month when she started university, introducing her to a new book (classics) and explaining the reasons why she should read the them along with a copy of the book. He mentioned that although she was studying and reading textbooks she shouldn't let go of reading literature in general. He later did the stint with Stephen Harper and wrote a book about it, though I haven't read it. It was such a wonderful article to read but I haven't found it online. I imagine that these small pocket MacMillan's are perfect for this, and my plan is to borrow this idea when my niece enters this journey.

>17 ironjaw:

A true gift lodges itself in the heart

Yann Martel
December 4, 2010 Saturday; page 3
The Daily Telegraph (London)

The announcement this week of the first ever World Book Night, which will take place next March and in which one million books will be given away on the streets of Britain, has me thinking about the meaning of giving a book. I perhaps have more experience in this matter than your average Christmas or birthday giver of books: every two weeks for the last three and a half years, I've given a book to the prime minister of Canada, a stiff little man named Stephen Harper.

With every one I've sent I have included a letter in which I say why that book is worth reading. Why have I been doing this? Because I see in Mr Harper a man whose mind and heart are bereft of the spirit of gift-giving and books. His ideals are not dreams for the world but walls against it.

Just yesterday I mailed Mr Harper the brilliant play Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello. It's the 96th book I've sent and, so far, I've received not one reply (I've kept a public witness of my lonely book club with the prime minister of Canada at www.whatisstephenharperreading. com). Meanwhile, out of the blue, Barack Obama sent me a handwritten note saying how much he and his daughter had loved Life of Pi...

Now, what is the nature of a book that is gifted? Let's look at that more closely.

For starters, any gift is given freely, without strings attached. Something exchanged for money or services is, ipso facto, no longer a gift. As Lewis Hyde points out in his wise and wonderful book The Gift, a gift also creates attachment, while a commodity, an item that is bought or sold, creates detachment. When you buy something, you are alone in your possession of it, indebted to no one. But a gift, given or received, creates an emotional link. You are grateful to someone for their gift, you remember them, you wish them well. The mercantile exchange of goods goes toward creating independence and isolation, while the giving of gifts does the opposite, it creates relationships and fosters interdependence.

A gift has more worth than a purchase. Let's take the example of a nice shirt you've been eyeing in a shop window. It looks mighty fine and you want it. But it's expensive. Finally, telling yourself you only live once, you splurge and buy the shirt. You look good in it and it becomes your favourite. But look what happens next. After a year or two, that fine shirt has lost its sharp look. It's even getting a bit tattered. But you can still wear it when you're doing work around the house. And fashions have changed, anyway. In the last stage, if the shirt is not outright thrown away, it's torn to pieces and turned into rags.

So with all things purchased: a frothing up of psychic excitement followed by a slide into indifference. We buy and sell so many things in the West, we build our cities and our economies and our lives to serve this type of exchange - yet so few of these purchases truly matter to us.

What is bought has no worth.

The gift, on the other hand, the true gift, lodges itself in the memory and in the heart. Remember Citizen Kane's last word: "Rosebud." Rosebud was a gift.

What we give for nothing, we give with meaning. The gift, however small, is the token of something that cannot be priced.

Is a book a superior gift? I would argue that it is, because a book shares that feature of every work of art: it has latent value, that is, a worth beneath the surface. A book is a material object, a thing, one that is not particularly expensive. But turn the cover, read it, love it, and it becomes something priceless, an object in the mind.

A book once read becomes part of us. Meanwhile, the object that has only surface value, the blender, the knickknack, the widget, remains on the outside, transitory and perishable. And a book given, once read, can be given again, the spirit of the gift kept alive by being kept in motion.