Hey /lit/, was planning on ordering some books soon. Penguin has most of the books that I want. I don't own any penguin books, so I do not know how good the quality is. I was wondering, are penguins worth the money or is there a brand with better price/value ratio?
oxford has higher price and better quality, better overall ratio.
>>8210101
The production quality of Penguin paperbacks (paper stock, printing, binding, the presence of contextualising and explanatory notes and introduction) is superior to what you would see in other mass market paperbacks. This is unless the same material can be found in a scholarly Oxford World Classics volume. In which case, sometimes Oxford is better - but they don't print everything.
I am satisfied with Penguin's collected volumes of Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, for example.
>>8210101
don't even read thus spoke zarathustra, it's a waste of time. You need a phd to understanding anything that's written in it.
I've been pretty disappointed with the black/white/orange penguin classics. They look nice, but the black flakes off so easily and fast. Every one I've had, the ink of the text smudges really easily. In my Paradise Lost copy, the stitching/glue of the top and bottom 2in sucked so pages were basically loose there.
Oxford is nicer imo, I got a used copy of Portrait by Joyce, and have Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake, and Ulysses in OWC editions. Ulysses held up damn well through an entire semester and the Portrait copy is still great.
Oxford UP had a great sale(70% off for leap day i think it was) but I didn't have $ at the time, look out for that from time to time.
Other than that Vintage usually has nice covers and good quality. Same with Everyman's Library. (and they're both owned by Penguin/RH..)
>>8210101
Penguin is usually (but not always) a great and possibly the best value, BUT you need to be judicious in selecting translations. Personally I've never read Nietzsche, but I hear that Penguin translations of him are quite poor, and that Penguin in general has a rather bad philosophy editions. But with most literature, Penguin has been doing a good job recently (last ~25 years) of bringing out fresh and solid translations.
Also can't go wrong with Oxford Classics (sometimes cheaper, at least for history have way more notes--to the point of excess), Vintage has some decent offerings, and Modern Library has always had a strong history of good quality and selection, not to mention being fairly easy to find used and therefore cheap, while holding up far better than used Penguins, as older (90s and before) ML books were all clothbound hardcovers.
>>8211405
That OUP sale was amazing. I spent about $200 to clear out all but 2-3 Oxford books on my amazon wishlist.
>buying paperback books
What are you, poor?
>>8211822
Yes. ;_;
>>8211825
Oh.
Penguins great for English language books but they almost always get the shittiest translations. If your getting a translation I suggest looking at samples and finding the one whose first page or two sounds best to you, but if you don't want to make the effort Oxford World Classics is the safest bet.
They get bonus points for being the only big publisher to tell P&V to go fuck themselves.
