Constant Reader discussion

Hi there,

I'm sure you all have huge collections of books: overcrowded shelves spilling over with books, piles on the floor, a desk just covered?

I know I do.

And I bet you also have more than two editions of the same book. Which ones do you have?

I have three copies of The Cather in the Rye (two are the red UK edition and I can't tell which was my original! Argh), two Tess of the D'Urbervilles, two Wuthering Heights and two 1984s.

Christian
My novel: The Glass Book

I have two copies of Gone With Thwe Wind. One is a commenrative edition, the other is 40 something years old. I also have two copies of The Brother's Karamazov, different translators.

Have you been able to compare both translations? Choice of translation is so important to enjoying certain books, especially if you're in it for the long hall (as I imagine you would be with Karamazov). I only recently read Crime and Punishment - was quite the pageturner!

Does your 40 year old Gone With the Wind have any special significance?

I have two King Lears, one in German (!).

GWTW is one of the first books I bought when I first started working. Plus I reread it every few years.

I prefer the P&V translations for most Russian Novels. We recently discussed Dr. Zhivago but I did not have the new P&V translation I made do with the older one. Some found The P&V a little disjointed though.

I have two copies of War and Peace. One's the P&V and I don't remember what the other is, but much older.

I haven't read any P&V translations yet. Which translation of theirs did you like?

I have liked them all . I do need to read their translation of Crime & Punishment.

I do have an old Anna Karenina which I haven't read. The text is too small. Oh, and the pages are falling out!

With Russian novels, or any long classic, it's so important to get a decent edition without the text too small or bad printing as you'll be walking around with that thing for weeks!

Don't I know it. I usually leave those tomes for at home reading.

I know. No one-hand holding either. These are two-hand books!

I have two versions of The Aeneid (one in Latin, the other English), as I studied that in school. I bought another The Elements of Style as an illustrated version came out I couldn't resist. I bought The Surrendered in paperback to have it signed after buying a Kindle version, if that counts. And I bought a used copy of Brian Morton's The Dylanist despite having it on the Kindle as well because I couldn't figure out what the image on the cover was and was curious. Thankfully, I don't have to count the books at my parents' home I grew up with, where there were three or four editions of too many books: progress!

Offhand I know I have three copies of Don Quixote, two hardcovers of the Edith Grossman translation and one of the older translation; I have quite a few copies of In Search of Lost Time, some in English and some in French; two copies of Wuthering Heights. I have more than one copy of many books. The problem for me is that I misplace a book, then can't find it, so I buy another copy, or I just completely forget that I have the first copy.

Yulia, do you know which translation of The Aeneid is best? What's your English one like?

Three Don Quixotes! I have the Edith Grossman, which I found very readable. Absolutely a book I have to read again - just stunning, and so funny!

I just received my copy of Don Quixotes on Mon. It will be read soon. I am looking forward to it. If others are interested maybe we can squeeze in a time.

I have three copies of Jane Eyre and two of Wuthering Heights and A Christmas Carol. Couldn't resist those new pretty hardback versions.

I must admit when I first saw the title "which books do you have two copies of", I thought it would turn into a book swap section in the end...
I used to have two copies of , and . Unsuccessful book lending experiences left me with no extra copies.

I have two copies of Colette's The Vagabond and also two of Cheri. All are English translations (my French isn't good enough yet, but I'm working on it). One of the Cheris is trade paper, and the rest are older hardbound editions. One of the hardbounds of The Vagabond was a gift from my ex because he knew how much I liked the book.

Christian wrote: "Yulia, do you know which translation of The Aeneid is best? What's your English one like?"

I have the Robert Fitzgerald translation, which my older brothers used before me, so it's a nicely destroyed book :) The copy evokes a lot of memories, which I love it for.

I'll borrow your copy then!

I tend to have multiples of books I truly love -- I have owned a minimum of six copies of Godden's In This House of Brede for one -- though currently I have only half that many as I gave away or loaned the others (which was the point of having them in the first place). I alos tend to hold onto books which were especially meaningful reading experiences when I read them first and then pick up good harback copies of them as well -- sometimes this means I have two copies though sometimes I also do the pick up a good hardback after reading a library copy of a book. I have a couple of copies of Sandor Marai's Embers for one example of this practice and only recently found a lovely hardback of DuMaurier's The Flight of the Falcon. I have my original copy of Little Women and the one hundredth anniversary edition as well as my mother's much older copy -- so all three of those are sentimentally beyond value for me.

Two copies of Middlemarch (I was in a bookstore and forgot I owned one). 2-3 copies of each of the Jewel in the Crown series, because I've either bought them used or gotten them free.

Two copies of Gibbon' Decline and Fall (one on bible paper in 5pt type now unreadable), Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (one a tiny paperback) Moby Dick (the same), all three translations of Proust and both of Tale of Genji, English and Italian versions of Gadda's Quer Pasticciaccio, all the English translations I could find of all the works of Theophile Gautier and Eugene Sue, the superior Pevear/Volkonsky translations of Dostoevsky... I think that's it. Except for the Gautier/Sue, which was really a curiosity about text transmission, all the other cases are for either superior texts or more sumptuous reading.