• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Does anyone remember those cheap Penguin Classics?

i've seen some with green, black, or white, and some with no strip at all. i checked the us site to be sure. i think it may vary by country.
 
I have a lot of the penguin classics, I recently bought 75 of them off ebay for about $20 s&h included. I also find them at the library free shelf all the time. I have orange ones & black ones. I have not read many of the classics and thought the price was right :)
 
My local bookstore sells the black strip Penguin Classics for 2/$10 (about US$7). I have Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Penguin Classics.
 
I think I know the series of books that we're trying to think of. Cheaply bound mass markets with a liberal use of orange on the jacket. You can still get some books in this edition. I'm guessing there were so many printed that there are still many kicking around. I regularly see Gatsby, Animal Farm, 1984, Of Mice and Men and The Pearl in the Chapters inventory here in Canada. My copy of A Clockwork Orange is in this edition.

I think the Penguin books with the black/silver band across the cover are more of a premium edition. I quite like them. They're usally very nice looking books. I only have one though, The Master and Margarita.

For a good bargain edition consider the Dover Thrift Editions. They're public domain works printed as cheaply as possible. But remember because they are public domain translated works are very old. My copy of Walden happens to be a Thrift Edition. Seemed fitting.
 
While looking for another book in my shelves, I found not one, but two copies of East of Eden in the lovely Penquin Classic edition. One is mine and the other belongs to my oldest dd who moved out in August. What is funny is they both came from our local library's sale cart and were in beautiful condition.
 
Did they have yellow covers? I remember them very well, I've bought quite a few of them. I think they're still around in bookshops here in Portugal, although the more pricey Penguin editions are taking over, as well as the Wordsworth Classic editions.

In all events, Dover Thrift Editions is always a good alternative.
 
Years ago, you used to be able to get a huge variety of Penguin and Wordsworth Classics for £1 or £2 maximum, but nowadays they're often even more than the £6.99 ordinary paperback price.

I recently found one of the ancient editions with an orange cover at the secondhand bookstore. I bought it, although I am not especially interested in the novel itself, but I thought it would be fun to own one of those. As for the most recent edition, I am totally puzzled. Can someone explain to me why one novel will cost about 10EUR and another novel by the same author in the same series will cost twice as much ?:confused:
 
Oops I lied. I have more than one Penguin Classic with the black or silver cover. In addition to The Master and Margarita, which is silver, I have The Communist Manifesto, black cover and a collection of Jack London stories also in the black cover.
 
Yes, I remember in the early 60s walking through a Liggets drugstore and purchasing a paperback copy of Herodotus' History of the Peloponesian Wars for 75 cents, or was it 50 cents.

Où sont les neiges d'antan? - Villon

Where did all those cheap books go?

The phrase "Where are the Snowdens of Yesteryear?" was used by the character Yossarian in Joseph Heller's World War II masterpiece, Catch-22.

The expression itself is a clever pun on the phrase "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" from Francois Villon's 1462 poem "Des Dames du Temps Jadis " or "Ballade of the Ladies of Bygone Times." Villon used the phrase repetitively throughout the four stanzas of his poem to emphasise the passing of time and beauty than once lost can never be regained.

In Catch-22, Snowden was a tail gunner in Yossarian's bomber. Snowden died in Yossarian's arms, flying only his first combat mission. In a farcical scene, cries of agony echo across the intercom and no one is quite sure who has been hit. At one point it's believed to be Yossarian, the bombadier, who later crawls to the rear of the plane and cradles Snowden in his arms during the gunner's dying moments.

Snowden didn't even have time to unpack his bags.

Later in the novel, Yossarian uses the question, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" in a disturbing and ironic manner to demonstrate the futility of war and the fact that once life is ripped from the body it can never be replaced.

From Catch-22 -

Yossarian was a collector of good questions and had used them to disrupt the educational sessions Clevinger had once conducted two nights a week in Captain Black's intelligence tent with the corporal in eyeglasses who everybody knew was probably a subversive. Captain Black knew he was a subversive because he wore eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and because he disapproved of Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating unAmerican activities in Germany.

Yossarian attended the education sessions because he wanted to find out why so many people were working so hard to kill him. A handful of other men were also interested, and the questions were many and good when Clevinger and the subversive corporal finished and made the mistake of asking if there were any.

"Who is Spain?"

"Why is Hitler?"

"When is right?"

"Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?"

"How was trump at Munich?"

"Ho-ho beriberi." and

"Balls!"

all rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer:

"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

The question upset them...
 
I was looking at this collection at amazon earlier, and I remembered this old thread. I know Stewart has more than 100 of these beauties, but I wonder how long it would take a person to buy the whole collection at a book or two a month? Even with Amazon's whopper of deal, I'd still need lots of time and some great garage sale finds. Although I did manage to secure brand new copies of Anna Karenina and East of Eden for pennies at a library sale:cool:
 
Pocket Books

i think you just have to hunt for the bargain places or for any place that stocks things like that. it took me a while to find all the great little secrets about book stores and which ones to go to and where to look.

Does anyone remember Pocket Books? The first paperback book I ever owned, either just before or during WWII, was a copy of Bambi which had a big 25 cents on the cover. While I was reading, the cover disintegrated in my hands, peeling off layer by layer.

I also remember fondly the Modern Library hard cover classics I bought in college for very little money.
 
I was looking at this collection at amazon earlier, and I remembered this old thread. I know Stewart has more than 100 of these beauties, but I wonder how long it would take a person to buy the whole collection at a book or two a month? Even with Amazon's whopper of deal, I'd still need lots of time and some great garage sale finds. Although I did manage to secure brand new copies of Anna Karenina and East of Eden for pennies at a library sale:cool:

A long, long, long time.

I'd love to jump on that Amazon deal but I can think of other things I'd rather spend the money on.
 
A long, long, long time.

I'd love to jump on that Amazon deal but I can think of other things I'd rather spend the money on.


But, didn't you see the part about Free Shipping:p

A favorite bookseller, that caters to the home schooling crowd, Greenleaf Press, used to have deals like this in their catalogs(now they have a tremendous website). They knew their customers were mostly single-income families, but they offered a deal they called their "Yuppy Special." One of every single history or literary title they had in their catalog for something like $4000. This was 15 years ago, so you can imagine what such deal might cost now. I still send people to them if they're looking for good suggestions for quality reading material for their kids.
 
But, didn't you see the part about Free Shipping:p

A favorite bookseller, that caters to the home schooling crowd, Greenleaf Press, used to have deals like this in their catalogs(now they have a tremendous website). They knew their customers were mostly single-income families, but they offered a deal they called their "Yuppy Special." One of every single history or literary title they had in their catalog for something like $4000. This was 15 years ago, so you can imagine what such deal might cost now. I still send people to them if they're looking for good suggestions for quality reading material for their kids.

Oh, I saw the free shipping. I am an Amazon Prime member so I get free 2 day shipping. I wonder how much that would normally cost? :D
 
Back
Top