Sunday, April 5, 2009

Beautiful editions from the NYRB

NYRB book cover designs: a study on minimalism

Lately I've been reading a lot of the classics editions published by the New York Review of Books. If not for the NYRB, these wonderful novels, poems, essays, and selected nonfiction would never be rediscovered by bibliophiles such as me. I've read Alberto Moravia's Contempt and Glenway Wescott's Apartment in Athens, both beautifully written novels. The NYRB editions are the books that you take your time reading; each page is a celebration on brilliant writing.

These books may not have the commercial appeal as modern novels, but they're definitely worth collecting. The covers alone are already conversation pieces -- none of those garish visuals and screaming typefaces we see in books nowadays. And, the paper thumbs smoothly. I have 8 NYRB editions on my shelf, and I'll probably get some more since I don't see any other publisher who comes out with the works of Georges Simenon, Leonardo Sciascia, and Adolfo Bioy Casares.

NYRB editions on display

3 comments:

fantaghiro23 said...

Hey, Peter! Another award for you! http://fantaghiro23.blogspot.com/2009/04/awards-awards.html

Rise said...

Hi, Peter. Where is that bookstand of NYRB Classics? Is it in a local bookstore?

Anonymous said...

Got some non-NYRB editions Simenon and Sciascia from Booksale before. But they're not as pretty as those tomes you have there. :)