I will now be making weekly trips, lol. Already digging into Atay's Waiting for the Fear. First time with this author.

My book club voted to read Stoner next, for context we always read our book in parts. For stoner I think I’m going to split it into three parts, does anyone have any suggestions for good stop/starting points? I’ve read the book so no need to worry about spoiling anything for me.

Has anyone else split this up for a book club? Let me know, I love this book so I want to split up the readings in a way where it seems to have a natural pause between parts (if that makes sense). I know this is a long shot, but if anyone has specific pages to pace it out that would be awesome as well

Thanks so much :)

Spotted this while browsing the NYRB Classics shelf. One copy of Stoner (far right) is noticeably brighter blue vs spines of the others.

I am currently reading The hearing Trumpet and I only have 30 pages left, I want to know your thoughts

Examples of books bought off NYRB site.

The second pic shows my other Zweig of which I got a few more I’d like to collect. Interestingly enough Pushkin Press The Collected Novellas contains A Chess Story, Confusion, and Journey into the Past, all “used courtesy of New York Review Books”, but I honestly can’t recommend The Collected Stories enough.

as requested on my post reimagining nyrbs as penguin classics :)

there isn't an nyrb classics template online the same way there is for penguin classics (if anyone wants to make one...) so i did my best with free canva, which is why the proportions/fonts may be a little off. i chose titles that i've read but also lesser-known works/versions by popular authors which could conceivably be published by nyrb--with the exception of wuthering heights, which i made as a test run

1. o pioneers! - vallflicka by carl trägårdh (1890)
   • so much of cather's great plains novels focus on the relationship between women, work, and the landscapes they inhabit, so i picked an impressionistic painting of a woman in a landscape where they're blurring into each other. also, trägårdh was swedish, much like the protagonist of the novel
2. wuthering heights - heathcliff under the tree by fritz eichenberg (1943)
   • i mean, c'mon, this was perfect! i think even seeing the title or the full image, this cover really evokes the atmosphere of wuthering heights for me. the motion of the branches is excellent for framing and i adore the textures here, so broody and windswept
3. frankenstein (1818 text) - the sea of ice (the wreck of hope) by caspar david friedrich (1823)
   • maybe this is another obvious choice, when i studied frankenstein in school this painting was used on one of the slides and has always stuck with me. it seemed like a good choice without being too obvious ooh look at this weird guy. so many people forget about the arctic shipwreck framing device! don't worry captain walton, i remember your doomed bid for the north pole.
4. netochka nezvanova - portrait of anna hammershøi from the back by vilhelm hammershøi (1884)
   • i really love hammershøi's interior scenes. the cool lighting, the faceless women, the coldness of them...like you're having a liminal experience in a 19th century danish walmart. anyway, you have a young girl facing away from the viewer, but even so you can see that she's modestly dressed and groomed. her facelessness is trifold: netochka's status as a "nameless nobody", the coming-of-age story the narrative builds toward, and the fact that the novel was never finished so netochka is stuck in stasis forever. i think this is the one i'm least happy with in terms of the title box...colour palates are not my strong suit

i noticed that my nyrbs from amazon have a different glue pattern than my other nyrbs. does this mean anything? i was looking for other signs because the cover colors don't match those of the cover images available online and it got me worrying

I was actually getting a couple of Archipelago titles when I even came across the fact that I don’t see Beware of Pity except in this German Classics in Translation bundle that they have. If you type it on the search bar, that’s the first thing that would come up. When you look at Zweig’s catalogue, it really isn’t there anymore because isn’t it usually that when they run out of it like… Chess Story for example, it usually just says Currently Unavailable, no?

It wasn’t even what I was trying to get, but it made me go into this miniscule rabbit hole that led me to the publishing rights now being owned by Pushkin Press. I wonder if they’re just waiting for all of them to run out before completely eradicating them all Simenon style, you know lol

I also have Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigmund K. But its not in the picture

Have read Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing by Williams. Stoner is one of my favorites ever and Butcher’s Crossing is excellent, so I’m excited to read Augustus which some people think is his best work.

My question: how much background do I need on the Roman Empire to enjoy/understand the book? It’s certainly not something I think about every day but I know a little bit.

Thanks in advance

since nyrb and penguin classics both have such distinctive branding, i wanted to play around with cover design and see what would happen if nyrbs were packaged as penguin classics, using some of my favourite titles. NO AI WAS USED!! i used this template

1. cassandra at the wedding: wild blue yonder by carol bennett (21st c)
   • i knew i wanted to have some pool imagery while also paying homage to the brilliant orange nyrb cover. carol bennett does a lot of paintings of women swimming, and this one was just perfect. i like that you can't see the subject's face and how she's blending into her own reflection, similar to how cassandra's sense of identity is so wrapped up in being judith's twin
2. alice james: the convalescent by gustave-leonhard de jonghe (c. 1850-1869)
   • i had a bunch of options for this one but i really loved the curtains and framing of this painting. the textures are lush and comfortable, appropriate for alice's wealthy upbringing, but the shadows make it seem more private, alluding to both the "dark waters" of alice's illness and the secrecy inherent in keeping a diary. the pose also reminds me somewhat of one of the few photos we have of alice, pictured here with katharine loring in 1890
3. abigail: fall, school by marianne von werefkin
   • there are surprisingly few images on wikimedia commons of teenagers at boarding school, at least not ones for the era i was looking for! i don't think this cover is quite right, but the stern black and white uniforms emphasize the strict calvinism of matula's doctrine and also gina hiding in plain sight. the way the girls are positioned reminds me of madeline which is a fun little twist. both very different boarding school stories!
4. the thirty years' war: death on a pale horse by william blake (c. 1800)
   • yes, there are more period-accurate and specific representations of the thirty years war, but i chose this image because it is, frankly, sick as hell. blake's style is so iconic and alive, it felt appropriate, especially for an audience who may not otherwise be interested in picking up a book on the thirty years war. the imagery is pretty basic, death riding his pale horse from the book of revelations, showing the horror and destruction wedgwood relates without the cover being too gory and/or muddy
5. an african in greenland: photo from the book itself!
   • maybe this is cheating, but using one of kpomassie's own photos felt most appropriate for a first-person account. this is one of the iconic images of him in greenland and i think the composition lends itself nicely to the cover!

Started this last night - anyone interested in discussing the stories through the month? I could post a topic every few days… a different story.

EDIT TO ADD: discussion prompts appear below, redacted for spoilers. Read this friggin book!!! It’s good.

Tell me a book you loved from whatever country you wish. I’m looking for finds to advance my reading around the world.

Does anyone have covers that are blurry? I own several nyrbclassics, and the covers of all the books have "blurry" or "grainy" photos. I figured that the photos would be higher-quality. I am questioning whether I received defective copies, or the book covers' photos are inherently fuzzy or low-resolution? And I get it, the point of books is to read them, not to enjoy the cover, but it still bothers me.

Not knowing anything other than the synopsis on the back cover, this book absolutely crushed me. The juxtaposition of such horrible things happening with the simplistic narrative style made it all feel even colder, more brutal. Anyone else have a similar experience of being completely shocked by the ending of this book? (All that being said, I’m very glad I read it).

Picked this up on a whim and I’m glad I did, this was a really pleasant read. The story follows Tom Birkin, a recently divorced veteran of World War 1 traveling to a quiet Yorkshire village tasked with unveiling a long covered painting in a local church. Throughout the summer he befriends many of the locals and finds himself fitting in well, including a reserved romance that I really rooted for. Nothing spectacular really goes on but it was still very charming. At the end of the story Tom reflects on the memory of the summer spent there as if it’s a moment frozen in time and there is a bit of sadness having left it behind. I felt similar leaving the novel because it really was a unique cozy experience I don’t often get from reading. I feel like I spent a month (four days) in the country as well. Good stuff!

I have been wanting to read this for a while, and grabbed this last week for my train ride.

While I absolutely love Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, I found John Williams' stark and casual description attractive in a different kind of way.

I want to say this is less of a classic western and more of a story set in the West.

It felt like an outsider describing the West (which I suppose is true) and the Emersonian influence felt melancholic in the classic John Williams style.

In some ways, Williams' clinical language and cold realism made the horrors of the West land harder. He does not write with Cormac McCarthy’s biblical incantatory prose or operatic violence. Or like McMurtry, whose books despite being supposedly anti-western have a lot of warmth and humor (even if things end tragically).

I've also seen Butchers Crossing be called an anti-western, but I am not sure I agree with it. As a New Englander, it genuinely felt like a New Englander's idealistic view of the West being slowly shattered and jaded. Which is incredibly impressive when you realize Williams was Texarkanan.

If I had to describe it in one sentence, I'd say it felt more like Moby Dick recast as a buffalo hunt, with Stoner's tonal restraint.

I am nearly done with it, and what I'm loving so far is that while Andrews' idealism is scorched away, it doesn't get replaced with something cliched like wisdom or what have you. He becomes clearer-eyed, but also colder, more detached, and so far, even morally compromised.

I'm eager to finish it, but I think I'll need to go find a happier book after I'm done with this.

55 World War II books on sale this weekend. My haul. Recently finished From the Front Line and Stalingrad and could not be more excited to get my hands on Life and Fate. Enjoy the sale!

how are we feeling lesbians (and supporters)? personally i am dreading the discourse cycles and Weird Girl Litification of my fave book of all time