Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I was just checking my account for duplicates and a couple of books I don't really think should be combined showed up. It displayed a copy of Candide (which I read a few years ago) and also an Oxford World's Classics edition of Candide and Other Stories (that I bought but haven't read yet, and which includes several other stories in addition to Candide, as the title suggests). Turns out the latter had been combined with the former. I separated the other editions of my book I could find, since it really isn't the same book, and it's my understanding that these sorts of books aren't supposed to be combined in this way.

Is it safe to assume all the books that append these phrases to the end of the title shouldn't be combined and separate them? I found several others like these combined with Candide, with "and other stories", "other writings", "and other tales", "and related writings", "and related texts" tagged on the end. I'm not sure how many of them are similar to mine, so I don't think they should be combined together should I separate them, but I'm fairly sure they don't belong combined with Candide. Am I correct in thinking this?

Aughadan, In my opinion, yes, you're correct, and you did the right thing to separate those books. It's not uncommon to find combined books that should not be combined/that aren't the same book.

I disagree:

1) Sometimes titles here are incomplete, and if there is no cover there is no way of knowing. So there are many editions of "X and other stories" that are just listed as "X."

2) In many cases the "other stories" are a tiny fraction of the material. There is often less difference than between two different translations of a book.

3) Since the idea of combining books is to be able to compare them with those on friends' shelves, and one can choose to rate and shelve multiple editions, I generally favor combining over not combining in borderline cases like this.