Currently My Favorite Publisher
I have always played favorites with particular publishers. When I was in high school and hung around at Schroeder’s Books on Public Square in Cleveland, I was enthralled by the New Directions paperbacks. As I went to college and for years afterwards, I was particularly interested in Penguin Books (though I have been disappointed in how poorly they age). Then, for a while I collected the pocket sized hardback Oxford World Classics. Now, I find myself quite addicted to New York Review Books.
In fact, I recently counted how many NYRB titles I read in 2017. The total came to fifteen titles! They included, in the order I read them:
- Teffi’s Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi
- Antonio di Benedetto’s Zama
- Natsume Soseki’s Mon [The Gate]
- John Williams’s Stoner
- Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematograph
- Georges Simenon’s Tropic Moon
- Georges Simenon’s Mr Hire’s Engagement
- Kingsley Amis’s Girl, 20
- Kingsley Amis’s One Fat Englishman
- Patrick Modiano’s Young Once
- Kingsley Amis’s Ending Up
- Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago
- Kingsley Amis’s Take a Girl Like You
- Raymond Quenaeau’s Zazie in the Metro
- Henry Green’s Loving
Looking back over this list, there wasn’t a single clinker in the bunch. And my plans for 2018 call for me continuing to plow through the NYRB list.
